text: Nationalists who refused to follow the tenets of Marxism–Leninism and who sought to create a united front appeared as ETA-V, but lacked the support to challenge ETA.
  The most significant assassination performed by ETA during Franco's dictatorship was Operación Ogro, the December 1973 bomb assassination in Madrid of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco's chosen successor and president of the government (a position roughly equivalent to being a prime minister). The assassination had been planned for months and was executed by placing a bomb in a tunnel dug below the street where Carrero Blanco's car passed every day. The bomb blew up beneath the politician's car and left a massive crater in the road.
  For some in the Spanish opposition, Carrero Blanco's assassination, i.e., the elimination of Franco's chosen successor was an instrumental step for the subsequent re-establishment of democracy. The government responded with new anti-terrorism laws which gave police greater powers and empowered military tribunals to pass death sentences against those found guilty. However, the last use of capital punishment in Spain when two ETA members were executed in September 1975, eight weeks before Franco's death, sparked massive domestic and international protests against the Spanish government.
  During the transition
  During the Spanish transition to democracy (which began following Franco's death), ETA split into two separate groups: ETA political-military or ETA(pm), and ETA military or ETA(m).