Thursday, December 20, 2012

39th anniversary of the execution of fascist vice-dictator Carrero Blanco

On such day as today (December 20th), the Basque guerrilla ETA successfully placed and exploded a bomb under the car of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, second in rank in the fascist regime of Spain, just after Franco.

The car flied so high that it ended up inside the Jesuits' school beside which it was parked, not before hitting a cornice, which was the matter of some hostile Christian jokes about how he could never reach heaven. The event was celebrated for decades and is still celebrated today by a popular song that goes (translated):

Scheme of Carrero's "flight"
(source)
Carrero Blanco, naval minister,
he always dreamed of flying,
and one happy day ETA militar
made his dream a reality. 

He flied, he flied, Carrero flied
and against the eave he striked!

Ooooooooooooooooooooo...
All to the eave, all to the eave, 
all to the eave like Carrero!

Here you can listen to a punkified version by Soak (in Spanish).

Previously the infamous fascist minister, very close to that Catholic-materialist brainwashing cult that is the Opus Dei, had betrayed the Republic with the help of the supposedly friendly governments of Mexico and France becoming a very close advisor to Fascist tyrant Francisco Franco.

He was critical in the approximation of the Fascist-Fundamentalist regime to the USA already in the midst of WWII, fearing to lose Canary Islands and risking a seaborne invasion while the dictatorship was not yet consolidated (the Maquis guerrillas were active until the 1960s).

His position as second in command was consolidated after WWII reaching the posts of Admiral of the Spanish Navy and Vice-President of the State Council (an institution that still exists in Spain, watching from the shadows). In June 8th 1973 he was appointed Prime Minister under an obviously ailing Franco, what consolidated him as the successor of the dictator. 

He could not rule for long however.

The guerrilla operation, planned long before was performed by a commando of four led by Argala (later murdered by the Spanish secret services), who, for five arduous months, dug a tunnel under the street to the place where the fascist strongman always parked his car before his daily mass. 

The commando, pretending to be electricians, successfully blew up the car the morning of December 20th and then cried that it was a gas explosion, running away successfully before police could arrive. His chaffeur and bodyguard died immediately but Carrero survived to suffer still for some hours. 

One of the commandos, Julen Agirre, would explain years later(source):

The execution in itself had an order and some clear objectives. From the beginning of 1951 Carrero Blanco practically occupied the government headquarters in the regime. Carrero Blanco symbolized better than anyone else the figure of "pure Francoism" and without totally linking himself to any of the Francoist tendencies, he covertly attempted to push Opus Dei into power. A man without scruples conscientiously mounted his own State within the State: he created a network of informers within the Ministries, in the Army, in the Falange, and also in Opus Dei. His police managed to put themselves into all the Francoist apparatus. Thus he made himself the key element of the system and a fundamental piece of the oligarchy's political game. On the other hand, he came to be irreplaceable for his experience and capacity to manoeuvre and because nobody managed as he did to maintain the internal equilibrium of Francoism.


(h/t Ahaztuak[es])

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