ASSASSINATION OF LUIS CARRERO BLANCO
Spain’s First Astronaut: Carrero Blanco and Operation Ogre
Like all fascists, Luis Carrero Blanco was unimaginative. His submarine tactics, which he taught during the Spanish Civil War, were conventional and uninspired. After establishing himself as the right-hand man to the right-wing dictator Franco, Carrero Blanco functioned as a dependable flunky, dutifully enacting the gruesome policies of Franco’s limpieza social, which was itself a pedestrian fascist concept—namely, that society needed to be “cleansed” of undesirables.
When Carrero Blanco became Prime Minister, having been previously handpicked by Franco, he continued the regime’s plodding, blunt violence against the Spanish population. Carrero Blanco’s predictability extended even to his route home following Mass.
That’s how the ETA knew where to dig.
Planning Operation Ogre: The ETA’s Tunnel Tactic
Members of the separatist Basque group took five months to construct a tunnel that stretched from a rented apartment on Calle Claudio Coello into the street, directly into Carrero Blanco’s path. On 20 December 1973, Carrero Blanco walked out of church and got into his chauffeured Dodge Dart. The car took its usual route, but this time it ambled toward destiny. The ETA had stuffed the tunnel with 180 pounds of Goma-2 explosive. ETA fighters posed as electricians to monitor the street. When Blanco approached the tunnel, the Goma-2 detonated.
Carrero Blanco’s car launched more than 100 feet in the air. It cleared a nearby five-story Jesuit college, crash-landing onto a balcony on the building’s back side. The incredible flight earned Carrero Blanco the sarcastic nickname “the first Spanish astronaut.” Carrero Blanco, his bodyguard, and his chauffeur all quickly died from their injuries. Operation Ogre was a multifaceted success.
The Aftermath: Democracy from the Debris
First, from a tactical perspective, the ETA neutralized its target. Second, politically, the liquidation of Carrero Blanco weakened the fascist government, which was already diminished as an aged Franco crept closer to his well-deserved eternity of damnation. Following the attack, Spain quickly transitioned back to democracy, which officially happened in 1978.
Cultural Legacy
Artistically, the 1979 film Ogro immortalized the assassination. A still from the movie became part of global antifascist iconography: Blanco’s car lifting off atop a massive blast of powder and rubble, and with it, democracy rising from the grip of fascism. It is an indelible image of freedom, an embodiment of moral resistance, and a visual encapsulation of the historically informed question that all Cola stuff—in one way or another—asks to those offended by my brand’s lack of decency: What the fuck did you expect?