War Divides, Confuses Spaniards; Strange Alliances Being Formed : Europe: Intellectuals are not united. Socialists and rightists back the U.S.-led coalition.

BARCELONA, Spain —  In a recent interview, a Spanish journalist had a truculent question for Jorge Semprun, the renowned screenwriter who is Spain’s minister of culture: “How does it feel, as an intellectual, to work as a minister for a government involved in the Gulf War?”

Semprun, a former Communist who wrote the screenplays for the Costa Gavras film “Z” and the Alain Resnais film “La Guerre Est Finie” while in exile in Paris from the Francisco Franco dictatorship, did not accept the implication that he was somehow out of step for supporting the increasingly unpopular war.

The minister insisted that intellectuals are divided, not all opposing the war. He acknowledged that writers and artists were demonstrating against Spanish involvement in the war but countered that philosophers and essayists “were not in the front rank of the rejecters.” As for student demonstrations, he went on, it would be “abnormal and worrying if students were not in the street crying for peace.”

By all accounts and measures, Spanish intellectuals are deeply divided over the war, much the way Semprun said. In the Catalonia region, a group of writers and artists, obviously disappointed over press support for the government, has created a new weekly newspaper, La Pau (The Peace, in Catalan), for the duration of the war.

The war, in fact, has divided and confused much of Spanish society, setting in motion strange alliances.

There have been no greater antagonists in recent Spanish history than the Roman Catholic Church and the Communist Party. Yet both Msgr. Agustin Garcia Gasco, secretary of the Spanish Conference of Roman Catholic bishops, and Julio Anguita, the leader of the Spanish Communists, agree that the war is unjust.

On the other hand, both the ruling Socialist Party of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and the right-wing opposition insist that the war is just. Gregorio Peces-Barba, a former Socialist politician who is now president of the Carlos III University of Madrid, has broken with the government in an article titled, “The Injustice of the Just War.”

Most of Spain evidently agrees with the Communists and the Roman Catholic bishops rather than with the country’s leading politicians. According to a poll published this week by Cambio 16, Spain’s most influential newsmagazine, 71.5% of Spaniards believe the war is unjust and only 9.5% believe that it is the best way to handle the problem of Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait.

But, according to the poll, Spaniards are more closely divided about Spanish government policy toward the war: 41.5% support the government’s decision to send three Spanish warships to the war zone, while 51.6% do not.

The sampling was done before Thursday’s unconfirmed reports that American B-52s are being allowed to fly bombing raids on Iraq from Spanish air bases.

The debate among intellectuals is really a debate on the role of Spain. Those supporting the war believe that Spain, now that it has become a part of Europe after years of isolation during the regime of the dictator and pariah Franco, must accept the responsibilities of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“To be in Europe entails obligations,” Semprun said in the interview. He acknowledged that Spain is not defending democracy by defending Saudi Arabia and working for the return of the Kuwaiti ruling family. But, listing the accumulation of military aggressions by Saddam Hussein, he said “it seems to me that the war is just.”

Semprun’s stand reflects the prevailing view among newspaper columnists, editorial writers, political analysts and prominent politicians. But many intellectuals and leftists, usually at home within the Socialist Party, see Spain much differently. They believe that the newly democratic Spain has a special role to play in Europe, not as a blind follower of NATO and Common Market policies, but as a champion of democracy, a promoter of socialist ideals, a defender of the Third World, and a sympathetic observer of the Mediterranean and North Africa.

In their view, the U.S.-led military assault on Iraq is far out of proportion to the wrongs of Saddam Hussein and it is the duty of Spain to cry out against this.

Although this view does not prevail in the government and in the press, the latest poll indicates that it is influencing public opinion.

The government of Prime Minister Gonzalez is clearly worried, and its concern has led to some confusion. Although Spain has sent the three warships, allowed allied planes to refuel, take on supplies, and now, reportedly, even to bomb Iraq from Spanish air bases, Gonzalez has insisted he will not send Spanish troops into battle.