<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>September 25th marks the 50th anniversary of the execution of two ETA members and three members of the FRAP by the dying dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco, which ignored all international calls to prevent it. As a result, the then European Economic Community (EEC) suspended accession negotiations, the largest withdrawal of Spanish foreign ambassadors since 1946 took place, and mass demonstrations took place outside Spanish representations abroad, including the burning of the Embassy in Lisbon.</strong></h4> Those executions, the last of the Franco regime and, indeed, in the history of Spain, were intended as a show of strength by a regime increasingly cornered in its "bunker" in the face of mounting internal and external pressures and the evident deterioration of Franco's health, who had barely two months to live. To the challenges that Franco's regime had faced in its final years (accelerated but unbalanced economic growth, growing social and political unrest in the streets and universities, internal struggles between the regime's political families over the dictator's succession, pressure from Morocco to seize Western Sahara, and critical positions from the Church since the Second Vatican Council), had recently been added the rise of terrorism, which further exposed the weakness of a regime that believed it had everything under control, especially in terms of repression and security. The terrorist group ETA, which just two years earlier had assassinated Luis Carrero Blanco, Prime Minister and Franco's true right-hand man, had killed nineteen people in 1974 (including the thirteen victims of the Calle del Correo attack) and another fourteen in 1975. For its part, the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist and Patriotic Front (FRAP) had carried out a campaign of attacks in the summer that resulted in the deaths of two police officers and a Civil Guard. The regime's immediate response was the promulgation of Decree Law 10/1975, of August 26, on the Prevention of Terrorism. This served as the basis for five courts-martial (August 28 and September 11, 12, 17, and 19) in which eight members of the FRAP and three members of the ETA politico-military group were sentenced to death for their involvement in the murder of four members of the security forces between 1974 and 1975. The government of Carlos Arias Navarro commuted six of the maximum sentences but upheld the other five. Finally, on September 27, 1975, José Humberto Baena, José Luis Sánchez Bravo, and Ramón García Sanz of the FRAP group, and Ángel Otaegi and Juan Paredes Manotas or Manot (Txiki) of ETA pm, were executed. absolute solidarity of the people and government of Chile with the people and government of Spain" in the face of the "infamous international campaign facing Spain." <h5><strong>International outrage</strong></h5> The news that the executions had been carried out despite all international calls for clemency, including that of Pope Paul VI, sparked profound outrage around the world, with massive street demonstrations and attacks on Spanish businesses and institutions, including the storming and burning of the Spanish Embassy in Portugal. In France, thousands of people gathered outside the Spanish Embassy in Paris, and demonstrations took place in Bayonne, Toulouse, Metz, Perpignan, Nîmes, Lyon, Rouen, and Le Havre. Separately, left-wing groups demanded greater forcefulness from the French government and accused Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of "tacit complicity" for failing to address these events, while the president justified his "prudence" by the need not to damage "bon voisinage" relations with Spain. This stance did not prevent Paris from ultimately joining the nine EEC member states on October 6 in their decision to freeze negotiations for Spain's accession until progress was made toward a "pluralist democracy." Most of the Common Market members and other European countries withdrew their ambassadors from Madrid. In fact, the withdrawal of foreign diplomatic personnel was more forceful than the one that occurred in 1946 after the UN General Assembly recommended that its member states sever diplomatic relations with Spain because of Franco's apparent support for Adolf Hitler during World War II. Likewise, manifestos were drafted and protest sit-ins took place, along with boycott campaigns from France and Italy, a press conference in Madrid by intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Régis Debray, and Costa-Gavras (immediately expelled from Spain), a campaign led by Jean-Paul Sartre and others demanding "the blockade of fascist Spain," and an attempted international demonstration in Hendaye, near the Pyrenean border, which was banned by the French authorities under Giscard d'Estaing's government due to Spanish pressure. The most serious incident occurred on October 8, with the machine-gunning of the military attaché at the Spanish Embassy in France, Bartolomé García Plata, by a group calling itself the International Brigades. García Plata was seriously injured, and the Spanish government attributed the attack to the "freedom of movement that certain Spanish terrorist groups enjoy in France." There were also several significant institutional initiatives. The Mexican government closed Spain's business office in the country and the representation of the EFE news agency, canceled flights between Madrid and Mexico City, and called for Spain's expulsion from the UN. However, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully pressured the Mexican proposal to fail. An unsurprising exception was Chile under Augusto Pinochet, who wrote a personal letter to Franco (from dictator to dictator) expressing "the most absolute solidarity of the people and government of Chile with the people and government of Spain" in the face of the "infamous international campaign facing Spain."
