Flare-up feared at Mass to honour Spanish hero

Press, 21 December 1976, Page 9

Flare-up feared at Mass to honour Spanish hero

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NZPA-Reuter Madrid Spanish Right-wingers planned yesterday to commemorate the assassination of one of their greatest heroes, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, with a Mass that was likely to turn into a protest against the unresolved kidnapping of a senior Government official.

I Right-wing leaders have denounced the kidnapping of ■Mr Antonio Maria de Oriol y jUrouijo, abducted by Leftist (guerrillas 10 days ago, as (symptomatic of what they jcall a growing vacuum of power in post-Franco Spain.

The Right, which suffered a set-back when an overwhelming majority of voters supported democratic re-

forms in a referendum last ' week, was expected to use the third anniversary of the : assassination of Admiral Carrero Blanco to call for a ■ tougher line with extremists. Three years ago, Basque , nationalist guerrillas tun-

nelled under a Madrid street and planted a bomb which blasted the Admiral’s car over a church roof. A memorial Mass was to be said in the i church yesterday. The kidnappers of 63-year-old Mr Oriol, president of the Advisory Council of State, have withdrawn their threat to “execute” their hostage in the hope that the Government will meet their demand for the release of all the country’s estimated 200 political prisoners. But the Interior Minister (Mr Rodolfo Martin Villa) said at the week-end that the kidnapping could prejudice

rather than speed up any extension of a royal amnesty for political prisoners, granted last July. The kidnappers belong to a Maoist organisation calling itself the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups. (G.R.A.P.0.1 Originally they threatened to kill Mr Oriol unless the Government released 15 Leftwing extremists, including Basques jailed in connection with the assassination of Admiral Carrero Blanco.

The Government refusing to give in, the kidnappers later cancelled Mr Oriel’s “execution.”

The police have arrested 36 persons believed to be members of G.R.A.P.O.’s political wing. But thei’- nationwide search and arrests do not seem to have brought them any closer to finding Mr Oriol.