“Carrero disturbed the Franco regime and his political enemies within the United States”

If we compare Carrero’s attack with Prim’s attacks in 1870, they are very similar. Since the first big swords were put into action in the assassination at that time, everything ended like the Carrero investigation: with blank and deleted pages, great pressure on the judges and complete indifference from the political power. They were not interested in discovering the truth. This is a cursed assassination because the family never had a chance to know who was behind it.

Revisit the assassination. What is the contribution of this work half a century after Carrero’s death?

ETA has claimed responsibility for the attack from day one, but what I contributed is a very significant variant that no one is interested in investigating; How does ETA thus gain access to Carrero’s daily life and the names of the people who carried out the attack? This conspiracy, for example, PCE dissidents such as Eva Forest and Alfonso Sastre, who contacted and gave new information about a character I highlighted in my book: Ugalde Aguirresarobe, aka Kaskazuri, and this is why. It acts as a bridge between La Sombra and Argala. Kaskazuri were never detained or questioned, and they never cared to find out who the Shadow was. They might have been surprised because he was part of the regime. Then I publish new declassified documents from the United States, which appears to be not in favor of Carrero being the head of government.

He claims that it was La Sombra who gave the information to ETA members at the Mindanao hotel. Will we ever find out who he is?

Some historians say the Shadow may or may not exist. I spent two days with Wilson in Vitoria in 2001. When I said that La Sombra was a person around 35 years old, over 1.70 meters tall, with gelled hair, and very well dressed, it was because Wilson was at that meeting. The Mindanao hotel in Madrid and the person who defined it and made that profile. We don’t know who he is, but he showed up in the Watergate case shortly before Deep Throat died. Let’s see what will happen now with the 50th anniversary, but it was there, because ETA knew it, Forest and Sastre circle knew it, and he was a key player in carrying out the attack.

How do you explain the fact that a commando who made many mistakes killed the Head of Government in the middle of the Franco regime?

The attack that took place in Madrid at that time cannot be explained without news, without someone to guide ETA and even search the basement on Claudia Coello Street. We even found that a gang of non-veterans had been preparing an attack in Madrid for a year; The construction of a basement in the most sheltered area of ​​Madrid, 100 meters from the American Embassy, ​​coinciding with Kissinger’s trip; They buy and rent a dozen flats, practice shooting in Madrid, rob a gun shop and the DNI office… They even shoot a gun in one of their flats, leave a gun on the counter of a bar, ETA brought its board together in an apartment in Getafe and nearly 20 leaders attended… All this was unthinkable because I was studying in Madrid at that time.

What role did the regime play?

His enemies from El Pardo and the Falangist far right impose on Carrero that the person who should protect him is Interior Minister Arias Navarro.

But the secret services were subordinate to Carrero…

In 1972, Carrero’s secret service, Seced, was established, but the regime at the time was concerned about university students, red priests, trade unionists and Freemasonry. They underestimated ETA. We cannot say that Carrero had a praetorian guard consisting of a large army of spies, and also that they devoted themselves mainly to investigating skirt affairs and other stories affecting the Marquis of Villaverde or other ministers. The only person with the capacity to investigate ETA was Commissioner Sainz. He sent emails to Madrid, even warning that there was an ETA commando in Madrid preparing for something big, but no one did anything. This suggests that Carrero has angered his political enemies within the regime and the United States.

However, he rejects the possibility of direct US intervention…

No, the CIA has no direct involvement. Nobody has any direct action, they just let it happen. The United States Government was clear that Carrero was in charge of the negotiations for the renewal of the arms treaty and that he opposed the conditions set by the Americans, and later Carrero opposed the use of bases on Spanish territory for the supply of weapons and even the refueling of aircraft. Yom Kippur war. There was tension, and it showed during Kissinger’s meeting with Carrero.

“There is no evil that does not come with goodness,” Franco said just days after the attack. If you had to get wet, who would you say benefited more from the attack?

Those who benefit most from this situation are those on the right wing, facing Carrero. Carrero and the Falangists couldn’t even see each other. But Spain already had a road map and a known end; and that was Transition. Democracy benefits from Carrero’s death, and the beneficiaries above all are those who were in office in Spain from January 1974 until Franco’s death. The one that benefited the least was the terrorist organization, which did not benefit from amnesty until 1977.

Why is it so difficult to access reserved documents in Spain?

This country is a shame. We have an Official Secrets Act of 1968 and since then eight documents have been declassified, mostly by judicial decisions, and there is no distinction between socialist and popular governments.

To what do you attribute this lack of transparency?

In the Spanish State, there was tutelage of the secret services, successive governments took over the legacy and no one was interested in knowing the truth.

Why don’t new generations know what Transition means or who Carrero is?

An education policy has not been made to let people know what it costs us to achieve democracy. That’s why I’ve heard many times Podemos leaders speaking so lightly, criticizing how the Transition was achieved… They lived on scholarships, they knew a stable Spain, but during my time at university you had to run in front of the horses. The passage was not given to us, the Spanish people conquered it.

So where are we half a century later?

There were significant moments of tension, such as 23F, the Atocha Street attack, or the ETA attacks, but there were also some red lines that were never crossed. No president has ever crossed the red line of making Bildu or the Catalan independentists a government partner to make the appointment.