The attack caused a great deal of controversy within the ETA organisation, which already had quite a few internal problems. The 1970 Burgos Trial gave much prestige to ETA, also in Spain, and nothing to say about the deadly attacks on the Spanish Army Chief, Carrero Blanco, in December 1973. The regime regarded Carrero Blanco Franco as the person who was going to happen to Franco.

The fact is that on 13 September 1974, at 14:35 hours, an explosive device erupted in the cafeteria of the Madrid district of Sol, where thirteen people died and another 70 were injured. Apparently, two people entered the cafeteria and after a while left the bomb ready to explode, without letting them know what time it was going to be.

Café Rolando was on one side of the building of the General Security Directorate (famous DGS) and was frequented by local policemen. For ETA, most of them, including the servers, maintained links with the DGS, and most of those who were there were policemen. The DGS was a terrible leadership of the Francoist political police, who harshly persecuted and punished citizens fighting Franco. The DGS was the main torture center of Franco.

ETA had a support network because of the armed actions it carried out in Madrid, especially that offered by the militants of the return of the leftist communist parties. For this reason, it is said that some of these militants raised with ETA the attack on the Rolando cafeteria.

Within ETA, however, not everyone agreed with this, nor with the way it was done, because the lack of notification of the device could have serious consequences. That will surely remain in the air forever, to see whether or not those who prepared the attack had the will to make known the existence of the device. Why, among other things, is that being said? An aunt detained in Donostia-San Sebastián on 29 August was asked about the case “Rolando: 2:15-2:45” because the written note was found on a paper and it is said that this prevented the artifact from being made known.

Many others believe, however, that ETA more or less linked the DGS to those who worked in the cafeteria and therefore expected the majority of the deaths to be police or spies. Therefore, do not inform or notify a large artifact.

ETA-m and ETA-pm

The attack came in a confrontation between ETA-m and ETA-pm and its authorship, whether public or not, was a source of conflict at a meeting of ETA management. The return of ETA was in favour of acknowledging the attack, arguing that in any war innocent people were killed and believing that the truth for the future would give ETA more credibility.

On the contrary, those of ETApm seemed to oppose the recognition of the authorship of the attack, with the consequent damage to the organization. The members of the ETApm Lap said the attack had been perpetrated by the far right or by para-police groups. Many believed this version. At that time, the division had not been fully executed, so some of those who investigated it believe that the members of the eta involved in the preparation of the attack were bilateral. Finally, and in the final steps for its disappearance, ETA’s Zutik newsletter picked up the attack that was already claimed in 2018.

This attack followed the Burgos case and the Carrero Blanco attack, in which 23 people died. ETA had no operational links with the leftist anti-francoist groups in Spain, but the relationship with its members was different, which led ETA to seek numerous support points, especially in Madrid. This attack was a serious damage to the image that ETA had built up so far.

Those who have investigated the history of ETA in the Spanish press and subsequently from an anti-terrorist perspective regard this attack as the first indiscriminate attack by ETA. This is the second deadliest attack in ETA’s history, whether in this case, after Hipercor in 1987, in which 21 people died. The topic is mentioned in many media and books, among which is Lidia Falcón, a feminist militant known in Spain, who uses Friday and 13 in Calle del Correo. Falcón, Eva Forest and other members of the leftist movements in Madrid were arrested following the attack that killed their lives. One of the most serious comparative analyses of the attack and its sources is the one carried out by Emilio López Adam Negro, in the book La lucha armada en Euskadi (1967-1980).