Red blossoms in Spain.

RECENT EVENTS in Spain provide a striking example of those abuses of diplomatic privilege, by the Soviet Union and other Soviet-bloc countries, that President Reagan denounced in his speech of June 29.

In a remarkable piece of positive investigative journalism, the Madrid news magazine Cambio 16 reported that considerable sums have been made available to the pro-Soviet Communist Party (PC) in Spain through the Soviet and Czechoslovakian embassies, and indirectly through the "Democartic Republic" in East Germany.

Let us come back to this funding later. Meanwhile, some necessary background. The great losers in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s were the Spanish Communist Party (PCE: note the subtle but significant difference between PCE and PC) and Stalin's ruling party in Moscow (CPSU).

The veteran Spanish Communist leader, Santiago Carrillo, tried in the late 1970s, after Franco's death, to give his party the electoral appeal of apparent independence from Moscow by sailing under the Eurocommunist banner. Indeed, he wrote a book entitled Eurocomunismo to establish his credentials.

He took his distance from Moscow and nominated as his successor a long-time protege named Gerardo Iglesias. Well, what happened next, a couple of years ago, was that the PCE split down the middle (as the British Communist Party did not long ago, by the way). A new Communist Party, totally aligned with Moscow, emerged, led by another veteran of Civil War days, Ignacio Gallego. (As a young man, Gallego had indeed led a youth battalion fighting against Franco. Later on, he tought alongside the Red Army in the defense of Moscow against Hitler's hordes.) To distinguish itself from Carrillo's PCE, the new party dropped the "E" (for Espanol), calling itself simply the PC.

Politically, Gallego is now doing a good deal better than his mentor Carrillo, who, for his pains, was recently expelled from his own PCE. To say that Gallego is doing well, relatively speaking, does not refer to the electoral appeal of the PC, for it polled a miserable 3.8 per cent of the vote in the general elections of October 1982. No, what I mean is that thanks to the generous funds provided by or through Moscow, the PC is extending its tentacles in a somewhat alarming manner.

Since the 1982 elections, Gallego has made at least two visits to Moscow: in February 1984, on the occasion of the funeral of Yuri Andropov, and on May 21 of the same year. On each occasion, Gallego had lengthly discussions with that veteran of veterans, Boris Ponomarev, who for many years has run the International Department of the Soviet party's Central Committee, a direct lineal descendant of Lenin's Comintern.

With them were Ponomarev's Number Two, Vagim Zagladin, and the International Department's Iberian specialist, Vladmir Pertsov. There have been many other such trips by lesser members of the PC, all expenses paid by the Soviet embassy in Madrid. Moreover, dozens of discreet (and some not so discreet) meetings have taken place between members of the Soviet embassy and members of the PC.

The results of these contacts have been spectacular. A purge in the Span-USSR Association has seen the departure of the Eurocommunits and other undesirables. New PC headquarters have been opened in nearly all Spanish provinces. Moreover, last September, Zurab Abashidze, a Soviet hardliner said to have KGB links, arrived in the Soviet embassy to set up liaison with the purged Spain-USSR Association.

To cap all this, the PC is about to open imposing national headquarters in Madrid, at an estimated cost of one hundred million pesetas (over $600,000), and is organzing an international festival for the coming fall, to cost some fifty million pesetas. America's own Angela Davis will be there, along with a group of Black Panthers and a large-scale, well-choreographed visitation from the USSR.

Gallego naturally brushes aside any suggestion that this money is of tainted Soviet origin (although he would not call it "tainted" anyway). PC leaders claim, as self-respecting pro-Soviet Reds normally do, that the money for the new HQ has been raised largely by the sacrifices of individual members, plus a loan from the Banco Popular.

Moscow's Money

THAT IS NOT the view of the Spanish security services. Nor is it the view either of Cambio 16, or of the French news magazine Le Point, which carried an informative article last fall about the Spanish industrialist Ramon Mendoza, president of the Real Madrid football team. Mendoza, it stated, is one of the new "Red millionaires," said to have made $250 million in Spanish-Soviet commercial deals through his export business, Prodag, and to be generously disposed toward the PC. (I have to add that Mendoza denies any close links with Moscow.)

On June 17 last, Ponomarev led a delegation of Soviet "parliamentarians" to Spain to strengthen "links with democratic institutions" (such as the PC).

Do not suppose that all this activity is of purely Spanish interest. The point is that the Soviet-backed PC is leading the offensive against Spain's membership in NATO (to be put to the test of a referendum). It was the PC that spearheaded the hostile demonstrations against Ronald Reagan's visit to Spain in May, and, specifically, flooded city streets with anti-Reagan posters depicting the President in the guise of an invading creature form outer space. Moscow's money is being well spent.