Spain Jittery in Wave of Basque Terrorism : Separatists: Expo ’92 and the Summer Olympics may be targeted.

When fire destroyed a landmark pavilion under construction at Expo ’92 in Seville recently, Spaniards immediately wondered whether it had been set by Basque saboteurs.

Expo officials later termed the blaze accidental, but the question was pertinent. Basque terrorists on a bombing rampage are giving Spain a bad case of national jitters. There are only a relative handful of them, but they are skilled and zealous killers.

The Basque separatist group ETA has warned that it will target Seville’s world’s fair and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, cornerstones of yearlong national celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World.

Already this year, ETA has claimed 14 victims, including four soldiers and a postal worker blown up by a remote-control car bomb in downtown Madrid during the rush hour one February morning.

“Killing is easy. There is an ETA psychosis. ETA is taking advantage of it,” said Inaki Anasagasti, a member of the Spanish Parliament from a democratic Basque party that opposes the separatists. He spoke one recent evening at his congressional office where guards, like their brethren throughout Spain, watch sharply for ETA. Two hours later, an ETA car bomb killed three passers-by and wounded 15 in Santander.

ETA seeks to force the government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez into negotiations over independence for the three-province Basque region in northern Spain. Gonzalez--who, like the entire Spanish political establishment, opposes any breakup of Spain--says he will not negotiate with terrorists.

Spanish officials promise that a combination of high-tech security precautions and old-fashioned shoe leather by an army of police will assure safety for the millions of tourists Spain expects this summer.

Reflecting its concern over ETA’s potential, the government announced last week that it will assign up to 9,000 troops to patrol the 310-mile track of a new $4-billion bullet train between Madrid and Seville that has been built for the jubilee. Officials said there will be about 300 army control posts along the route, plus 100 to monitor the conventional rail system between the Spanish capital and the world’s fair city.

Odds are visitors will be vexed more by heat and high prices than by ETA. Still, for the terrorist group whose name is shorthand for Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language, Spain’s jubilee year is a made-to-order chance to pressure the government and to draw disproportionate international attention. ETA’s long and quixotic struggle is flagging. The current offensive suggests that ETA leaders may have concluded that it is 1992 or never.

“Next year is too late for ETA,” said Anasagasti. “The capacity for blackmail is gone.”

This year, as everybody in Spain is uncomfortably aware, the stakes are huge. At risk are not only lives but also Spain’s international image and the investments of thousands of individual Spaniards--T-shirt manufacturers to hotel owners--gambling on success of the jubilee. Little wonder that the Spanish government reacted with fury to recent reports that the Japanese government was cautioning travel agents in Tokyo about security threats to tourists in Spain this year.

An ETA insurgency that began in 1968 during the reign of dictator Francisco Franco has continued unabated against his democratic successors, claiming more than 700 lives so far. But in the judgment of most analysts, ETA’s shadow is more menacing than its substance. It alarms Spain the same way the Irish Republican Army alarms the British government, but it is no more threatening.

Augustin Valladolid, spokesman for Spain’s Interior (police) Ministry, says that ETA’s forces have been reduced by arrest and attrition in the last few years. There have been about 30 new arrests this year. More than 500 ETA activists are in jail in Spain, and about a dozen separatist leaders are held in France, traditionally an ETA haven.

Security sources say that only two or three known ETA leaders are believed to be at large in the region that straddles the mountainous Spanish-French border, and they add that pull-the-trigger activists may in fact number no more than a dozen. ETA cells are thought to exist in Valencia and Barcelona, but much of the violence this year is blamed on a roving hit squad.

“We don’t deny it’s a problem. It worries us. But we’ve been worrying for 30 years,” Valladolid said. “Security measures at the Games and Expo will be of such magnitude that it will be very difficult for ETA to stage a direct attack.”

ETA draws on a deep-seated hostility to Madrid in the Basque region. The government and Spanish newspapers describe the Basque political party Herri Batasuna (National Unity) as the terrorists’ political arm. Herri Batasuna won seven seats in the national Parliament but refuses to occupy them.

The party, which runs third in regional elections with about 200,000 votes, is now under fierce government pressure stoked by the wave of bombings. Its support has fallen a point or two to around 17% of the total in recent elections.

Three party leaders, including a member of Parliament, are formally accused of abetting terrorism.

In right-wing circles, there are demands to ban the party. That troubles some Spaniards who have no use for ETA but fear that overreaction could erode the standards of Spain’s flourishing era of democratic government.