Guipuzocoa and Vizcaya hundreds of thousands of workers held mass factory meetings on the Monday morning after the executions and voted to join the two-day general strike called by left-wing and Basque nationalist organisations. In the key cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian the workers were joined by small shopkeepers, who shut up their shops in solidarity. Even the first and third division Bilbao football teams joined the strike, after two footballers from another team were arrested under the anti-terrorist law for wearing black armbands during a In a frantic effort to weather the present storm the regime was forced officially to organise mass demonstrations to denounce the 'leftist Masonic conspiracy against Spain But such desperate measures only serve to stress the total dead-end it finds itself in.
In order to pull this stunt off the regime has had to reaffirm its commitment to a policy of brutal repression and depend heavily on the personal magnetism of a dictator whose days are numbered. In an attempt to overcome the uneasy suspicion felt by many of its supporters that the regime cannot outlive the 83-year-old dictator, Franco's intended successor, Prince Juan Carlos, was roped into these proceedings. of this has been to destroy his last grain of credibility as a figure who might introduce 'democratic change' when he becomes king: a notion the Spanish capitalists (aided by the social democrats and Communists) have desperately been trying to sell to the Spanish working class. But the effect text in which it was issued? The Spanish Embassy in flames in Lisbon Q. Could you explain the meaning of the recent 'anti-terrorist law' and the political conA. The most immediate reason for the passing of this law lies in the extraordinary political general strike movement of 11 June in You can see the violence of these decrees being applied at all levels. One example: a 12-year-old child was arrested by the Guardia Civil because he had telephoned a newspaper in Saragossa saying he was going to plant a bomb. He was accused of terrorism. Another example, at another level: in Pamplona in the Super-Ser factory an employer who is