OPERATION OGRO: The Execution of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco

On December 20, 1973, a young Basque provincial detonated a large cache of dynamite hidden in an underground tunnel on Madrid's calle Claudio Coello, skyrocketing the automobile of Luis Carrero Blanco, President of the Spanish Government, over the fifth story of the Catherdral San Francisco de Borja. The plot made headlines all over the world and this is the story of how four Basque revolutionaries conspired and successfully executed one of Spain's most hated oppressors. The revolutionaries seem to have entertained no illusions that their action would cause the downfall of Franco's regime; they wished to demonstrate that even a police state is not invincible: prior to the Blanco plot, no attempts had been made on anyone in Franco's government. The present narrative achieves neither theoretical argument nor ideological fervor; it is more a matter-of-fact account of the tactics and strategies of terrorism. The story reads like a script for Mission Impossible complete with disguises, false papers, always-changing apartments, clothes, cars, and occupations--even a hand-dug underground tunnel. One is struck by the incredible tedium and boredom involved in such an operation. Appendices provide the political objectives of the Basque nationalists, as stated by the ETA (Basque Nation and Freedom). Txabi, the dynamite detonator, sums up his achievement by indicating that ""We have showed the Spanish people, with Operation Ogro, that the most difficult goals--if people try hard enough--can be obtained."" A succinct statement from one of Europe's oldest and most tenacious guerrilla movements.