The Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco
In the Autumn of 1972 ETA received information that heir apparent to Francisco Franco; Luis Carrero Blanco had established a pattern of attending Catholic Mass via a specific road. At first, ETA planned on kidnapping him but later decided to simply assassinate him in the hope of bringing down the regime.
In early 1973, an ETA cell stormed a powder factory in Hernani and stole 3000 kilos of explosives. That Autumn, a three man cell rented a basement apartment parallel to the rout that Blanco was known to take to church. Over the course of a month or so, these men dug a tunnel out into the road directly underneath where they hoped Blanco would be driving. They explained to their neighbors that they were artists and they were making a statue in the basement. This explained the chiseling noise.
The hole underneath the road was then loaded with 80 kg of Goma-2 explosive to be detonated by a remote controlled device. A metal slab was placed underneath the bomb to force the explosive force upward. On the day of the assassination, the three men had parked a car along one of the lanes to force Blanco's driver to drive directly over the site of the IED. Disguised as electricians, they observed his travel from the road and detonated the bomb as he passed over it. He and his driver died in the explosion.
This act more than any other event doomed Fascist Spain to democratization. It would, in the regime we live under, be akin to assassinating Hillary Clinton in 2015. Not to imply Francisco Franco was Spain's Barrack Obama.
Just put that into perspective.
That is power. That is using violence to defeat a repressive government.
However, there was a worm in the apple for ETA.
As a social experiment, I want all of you to pause reading and take a wild guess what ETA did after this astonishing accomplishment. Just stop for a minute and take a guess at what happened next.
That's right anons; They held another assembly in France and purity spiraled over ideological differences and split into multiple different competing factions. What else would they do?
The Decline and Fall of ETA
During the chaos of the post-Franco era and the various splinter factions of ETA, a deadly paramilitary force named GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación) was created under the new leftist government to hunt down and disrupt ETA in their bases in France. The effects were devastating as this counter-terrorist organization was well trained and often relied on professional terrorist hunters. They managed to assassinate several high ranking ETA agents.
In addition to this new threat from counter-terrorist organizations, ETA embarked upon a new strategy that proved devastating in the long run for the organization. This strategy involved detonating car bombs in economic areas of Madrid, Barcelona, and other Spanish cities.
Normally, I'd say this is a great idea because I love that shit. However, for whatever reason ETA cells began to attack shopping malls. ETA claimed to have given the police warnings before the bombs went off (some going off at peak shopping hour) while the police claimed that they had not received warnings with adequate time to evacuate shoppers. In any case, casualties soared and economic damage to the new regime was minimal.
ETA attacks against the regime became less frequent but deadlier to civilians. Attacks appeared to be intended to cause high civilian body counts. This played right into the hands of the media corporations that found no shortage of bloody bodies to plaster on television and break the resolve of the civilian population, Basque and Spaniard alike.
In 1997, ETA kidnapped Miguel Ángel Blanco, a Spanish politician in Biscay and demanded the release of ETA prisoners in exchange for his life. The democratic elites couldn't care less about a nameless low level political leader and refused. Blanco was executed and used as a martyr by the regime who suddenly could remember his name to rally the public against ETA.
Stymied and outsmarted at every turn, ETA continued conducting attacks against shopping malls, football stadiums, and parking lots. Failing to cause significant damage to the regime, failing to provoke serious repressive retaliation by the democratic government, failing to force the government to make concessions, failing to avoid civilian casualties.
By 2010, their cause was exhausted and this once mighty terrorist organization meekly surrendered to the democratic government.
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