GADDAFI'S EYES ON SPAIN
Richard West reports on a strange alliance of Muslim and Christian
Salamanca AS SPAIN comes up to a general election, also the 50th anniversary of the civil war, it appears that Colonel Gaddafi of Libya is backing a new right-wing revolt against Spanish democracy. Several Libyans have been expelled, including the cultural attaché, and more than a dozen arrests have been made of right-wing extremists, among them a cavalry colonel, Carlos de Meer de Ribera, who calls Gaddafi a great personal friend and the defender of humanity.
Colonel de Meer is a graduate in architecture, politics and sociology, who enjoyed a brillant early career during the Franco regime, becoming the governor of the Balearic Islands. But because of his right-wing political views he has not pros- pered under democracy, and now at the age of 56 has no hope of promotion to general. Colonel de Meer became a friend of the Libyan cultural attache and with him journeyed to Tripoli, via Paris, where the two were photographed by agents of Spain's hard-working and very efficient counter-intelligence service.
`Talking of contaminated fruits . . By Wednesday, Colonel de Meer had not been charged with any offence more serious than the abandonment of his post. However the government information ser- vice had leaked to the press that de Meer had asked Gaddafi for £3 million for a project of the extreme right, by implication a coup d'etat. In an interview in Wednes- day's ABC, Colonel de Meer admitted that he had seen Gaddafi in January and had asked for money, but this was to found a great independent newspaper in the style of Le Monde that did not depend on political parties . . . . I am not an ultra because ultras murder, and I am a Cathn' lic. I believe in hell.' So now we know.
Colonel Gaddafi is also alleged to have subsidised a group, the Call of Jesus Christ, which has planted bombs in Spam and Portugal and has taken money frorn Libya to murder citizens of the United States. Colonel Gaddafi is also said to have interviewed and subsidised two Spanish journalists of extreme Nazi anti-sem/he opinion who have taken over a magazine called El Imparcial (The Impartial). . The revelation of Colonel Gaddafes links with the right-wing military, El Im- parcial and the Call of Jesus Christ has brought consternation to the Spanish Left' which only last week was raging against the United States bombardment of Tripoh. The Socialist students at Alicante Universe' ty have called off their demonstrations against the expulsion from Spain of a Libyan colleague. Only last week the Spanish Communist party was fulminating against the presence in Spain of the French right-wing demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom it accused of fostering hatred against North African immigrants in Spain and in France. And there is indeed great resent" ment against the moros, the Moors, who come to Spain in spite of the country's 0 per cent unemployment. 'I'd throw out all foreigners,' a young Spaniard told IT `especially the Moors, the Chileans and the Cubans.' Two Algerians I met in Madrid told me that in spite of some disadvantages the were better received here than they ha been in France. On a train going NI from Madrid to Burgos, at least a third 0 the passengers in second class wore Arab clothes. In my compartment there was a barefoot Libyan student and a fezzed old Moroccan, with gnarled teeth, who Pointed towards the barren countryside of Castile and boasted that back in Morocco the wheat stood as high as his chest. The present troubles with Libya are easy to see in terms of the ancient struggle against Islam which is the main theme of Spanish history. The leader of the con- servative Popular Coalition, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, was recently asked by a newspap- er what was his favourite historical event and answered with the capture of Granada in 1492, which ended Muslim rule in the whole peninsula. In that same momentous Year for Spain, Columbus discovered America and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion or the con- version of the Jews, of which tragic deci- sion we still suffer the consequences, among them Colonel Gaddafi's rage against Israel. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain was followed in 1608 by the expulsion of the Moors, about 275,000 out of a total of 300,000. It was a foolish and cruel decision, taken by an incompetent government in order to win popularity with the lower class of society. The Spanish were envious of the Moors as skilful and industrious farmers and artisans. There was also a fear that the large Moorish community in the Valencia • region might take the side of the Ottomans if they invaded. The Moors at the time were redoubtable soldiers, as Shakespeare reminds us: although a modern Othello would not be out in Aleppo 'smiting the uncircumcised dogs', but handing out cash to Venetian terrorists with instructions to Plant a bomb in Shylock's gondola. If Colonel de Meer proves to be guilty, he would not be the first Spanish military man to take the side of the Moors against his own country. The 11th-century hero El (better known as Charlton Heston) spent the start and end of his long career fighting against the Moors, but the middle Pall fighting with them against an ungrate- ful Christian monarch. Most of the Spa- niards ignore this lapse, but all are aware that 50 years ago General Francisco Franco landed in Spain with an army composed largely of Moorish troops, the Regulars. In the articles on the civil war which Spanish almost daily in every part of the Spanish press, there are constant refer- e_ instance to los terribles moros. In El Tiempo, for , I read: 'They were appalling for their ferocity in attack and for the cruelty with which they treated the van- quished enemy . . . People were terrified by the sight of them, especially the blacks.' 1,11 another page of the same magazine, an Portuguese journalist tells how he saw by Moors setting fire to the corpses slain °Y them at Badajos. With memories such as these, the Spaniards do not take lightly the antics of Colonel de Meer, El Imparcial and the Call of Jesus Christ.
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