The conviction on a kidnapping charge of a former Spanish Interior Minister, Mr Jose Barrionuevo, raises serious questions about Spain's transition to democracy 20 years ago and the health of that democracy today. Mr Barrionuevo, his deputy, and several of his senior subordinates were jailed for up to 10 years for the illegal detention for 10 days of Mr Segundo Marey, a French-based businessman, in 1983. The court found that Mr Marey was taken to Spanish territory by mercenaries who mistook him for an ETA member. Mr Barrionuevo secretly authorised his continued detention, knowing he was innocent, to pressurise the French authorities to release Spanish police being held for another illegal kidnap attempt. This was the first operation claimed by the GAL (the so-called Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups), which conducted a dirty war on French territory over the next three years. The GAL killed 27 people, and wounded about the same number, many of whom had no ETA links. When French policy on extradition changed, the GAL ceased to operate.
While it was widely suspected that elements in the Socialist administration were behind the GAL, proof was slow to emerge. The road to the Supreme Court has been long and difficult, obstructed every step of the way by Mr Felipe Gonzalez's governments over 13 years. A very difficult investigation has been gravely complicated, in recent years, by the flagrant use of the GAL scandal as a crude electoral weapon by Mr Jose Maria Aznar's conservative Partido Popular (PP) and by sections of the media. This campaign against the Socialists, however, hardly justifies their claim to be the innocent victims of a "conspiracy" by anti-democratic forces. While four of the 11 Supreme Court magistrates disagreed strongly with the verdict, the evidence against Mr Barrionuevo, confirmed by his subordinates, was substantial. Those who hoped to see the Socialists move into the future under their new leader, Mr Jose Borrel, will be disappointed by the party's attitude to the sentence. which it is to fight in the constitutional court and, if that fails, in Strasbourg. Mr Gonzalez has described the verdict as "radically unjust" and alleged that the court was under pressure from the current conservative government. This Socialist response means that the bitter wounds of the past will be kept open. ETA's accelerated campaign in the 1980s put the Socialists under almost intolerable pressure, and France's apparent indifference was deeply frustrating. The GAL campaign, however, created a pantheon of Basque radical martyrs; many observers believe it gave ETA a new generation of militants, who believed the dirty war revealed Spanish democracy to be a sham. Undemocratic responses to terrorism did much more damage to the fabric of democracy than did terrorism itself. It is much less comprehensible that some senior Spanish democrats should have made such a determined effort to cover up, and even justify, the actions of the GAL and their connections to the security forces. The question of Mr Gonzalez's judicial responsibility, if any, may still be decided in court. But it is nevertheless a tribute to the stability of the institutions developed under the 1978 Spanish constitution that a senior minister and police chiefs can be brought to book for crimes of state terrorism.