Word: madrid
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Died. Otto Skorzeny, 67, audacious Nazi SS colonel, saboteur and guerrilla fighter during World War II; of bronchial cancer; in Madrid. Skorzeny led the September 1943 glider-borne rescue of Benito Mussolini from the mountain-top hotel where he had been imprisoned by the pro-Allied Badoglio government. The exploit earned him the Iron Cross and der Fuhrer's gratitude, which he repaid by helping to thwart the July 1944 plot against Hitler, rallying SS units and halting a wave of executions so that Gestapo torturers could extract from conspirators the extent of the plot. As German armies pressed...
...designed to demonstrate el Caudillo's remarkable recovery from a near-fatal stroke last summer. Yet even that performance could not overcome Spaniards' feelings that Franco's days in power are numbered-perhaps only until July 18, the anniversary of the Falangist uprising in 1936. From Madrid, Bureau Chief Gavin Scott cabled the following report...
...four northern provinces, for example, Arias has been unable to check the terrorism of Basque separatists. After the small secret ETA, the most radical of the Basque groups, recently shot five policemen, the Guardia Civil retaliated by sweeping through the areas around Bilbao and San Sebastián. Madrid admits to the arrest of 200 suspects, but a group of Basque lawyers claims that the number jailed totals 2,000. In the past month the government has also detained and beaten two Catholic priests suspected of aiding the separatists. So explosive has the situation in Basque country become that...
Nomad Independence. Spain's sole remaining colony, the Spanish Sahara, has also been an increasing source of trouble for the regime. During the past five years, Madrid has invested $400 million in developing the colony's rich phosphate deposits. Now Spain is planning to abandon the whole area. The reason: threats by neighboring Arab states to liberate all or part of the sparsely populated (60,000 nomads), mineral-rich region. Pressure on Madrid intensified last month when ten Spanish soldiers based in the Sahara disappeared. Their fate remains unknown. It has also been reported that Moroccan troops fired...
Finally giving in to the pressure, Madrid last week declared its intention "to transform the sovereignty over the territory as soon as possible in the form and manner that best suits the inhabitants." While Franco must regret losing the valuable phosphate deposits, he has undoubtedly learned from the Portuguese experience just how costly an attempt to hang on to a colony can be. Moreover, as a Madrid University political scientist notes: "What this government does not need is a new international problem...