The Lead Years
In 1972 a terrorist gang was planning to abduct one of the most important members of the Spanish government, the admiral Carrero Blanco. Their goal was to interchange exchange him for more than a hundred terrorists of their gang who were imprisoned at the time. They began to discreetly follow discreetly the admiral's movements. Shortly afterwards they found out that the admiral never changed his itinerary; he stopped at the same places every day which made him a very easy target. They also got came to know as well that he only had two bodyguards. When they had made all the arrangements for the abduction to take place, Carrero Blanco was appointed Prime Minister.
Consequently, his security measures would increased, which made it impossible for the operation to take place/to happen/to occur (or more simply 'Consequently his security measures increased, which made the operation impossible.' Given that the abduction was not possible dismissed, they decided to kill him instead. There was a cellar for rent on a street where that the admiral's car passed through/passed by every day by. They rented that cellar and managed to dig a tunnel which ran from the cellar to the street, just below the road. When the tunnel was ready, they put there some explosives there.
To make their job easier, they had marked the exact place where the explosives were by painting a red circle on a wall. On December 20 1973, the admiral didn't change his itinerary. When the car reached the point where the red circle was painted, one of the terrorists detonated the explosive charge. The explosion was so violent that it left a huge crater in the road. Needless to say, that the admiral and his two bodyguards passed away. As for the terrorists, they managed to make/they managed to leave for a nearby town, where they hid for were a couple of months hidden. Then, a contact of them theirs took them out of the city. This bombing provoked an increase of in violence on both sides for both parts in the years to come, which were called, "the lead years" (los años de plomo in Spanish.)