SPAIN: Disaffection with Spain's socialist government is spreading among the military, with the publication yesterday of a letter to the prime minister that accused politicians of "sacrificing the ideas of nation and fatherland to fatten their longing for power".
The letter, signed by Capt Roberto González Calderón of the Spanish Legion, follows the sacking last Friday of Lieut Gen José Mena for urging the army to intervene if parliament granted more home rule to Catalonia.
Prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said his advisers had assured him there was no unease within the armed forces over the demands of several regions for more autonomy.
"Well, Mr Prime Minister, your advisers have not told you the truth," he said in the letter published by Melilla Hoy. "There is a lot of unease within and outside the armed forces, which see how Spain is being dismembered, how the national flag is burned in public, how terrorists are allowed to hold demonstrations and social events, and how a generation of Spaniards no longer recognise Spain as their fatherland." - (Financial Times service)