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Brutal Act. Why then has Western Europe reacted with such intensity to the events in Spain? In some cases the executions merely triggered a long-harbored contempt for the Madrid government. As Britain's James Callaghan put it last week, "Spain's self-inflicted iso lation is brought about not just by a single act of brutality, but by injustices over a generation or more."
Historians estimate that in the first five years of the Franco regime, some 200,000 Republicans were executed or died in prison. But Spain has changed a great deal since the 1930s. Although it remains very much a dictatorship, what now keeps most Spaniards loyal to the regime is not repression but prosperity. Since 1960, the country has had "only" 13 executions, including the latest five. While that record scarcely qualifies the Franco regime as a pioneer in civil liberties, the situation is far worse in Communist dictatorships, where political dissidents are frequently committed to a living death in secret police-run "mental hospitals" with much less outraged notice in the West (see box page 37).
Thus the eagerness with which Western Europe pounced on Madrid may be comprehensible only as an almost psychological need to repudiate Franco totally and finally. This may be, in part, the catharsis by which the West purges itself of guilt for having tolerated and even courted Franco when his anti-Communism was prized during the cold war. Reports TIME'S Paris-based chief European correspondent, William Rademaekers: "There is much more emotion in this than logic. Franco remains a very special bete noire to most of Europe's leaders and to the leftist elite. Some of them, like the British union boss Jack Jones and Italy's Socialist leader Pietro Nenni, fought for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Others were students in that era and grew up on a steady diet of real or imagined Franco atrocities.
"It is highly unlikely that all this furor will bring about Franco's demise. But if it did, what would be the cost to
Spain? No one in Europe is sure. What is worse, no one seems to care. The object of the exercise is to get Franco. The romantic memories of the International Brigades and the frustrations of four decades have finally coalesced in one hate-object that binds together Western Europe's Communists, Socialists, students, Cabinet ministers and Premiers. Ironically, Franco has managed to do what Hungary and Czechoslovakia could not—unite Europe in a common cause."
The anti-Spanish furor has probably had an effect opposite the one intended. Not only has much of the country rallied around its Caudillo, but the more conservative cliques in Madrid appear strengthened. "Any way you look at it," moaned an aide to Premier Arias, "the executions and reaction to them are a big step backward for Spain and her evolution to democracy."
Angry Police. Further bolstering the conservatives was the public's horrified reaction to a new outburst of terrorism. Just a few hours before the Plaza de Oriente rally, four policemen, guarding banks in different parts of the capital, were shot by terrorists believed to belong to a tiny, Marxist urban-guerrilla group called the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front (FRAP).