Linear connections with a propagating spin-3 field in gravity

We show that Fronsdal's Lagrangian for a free massless spin-3 gauge field in Minkowski spacetime is contained in a general Yang-Mills-like Lagrangian of metric-affine gravity (MAG), the gauge theory of the general affine group in the presence of a metric. Because of the geometric character of MAG, this can best be seen by using Vasiliev's frame formalism for higher-spin gauge fields in which the spin-3 frame is identified with the tracefree nonmetricity one-form associated with the shear generators of GL(n,R). Furthermore, for specific gravitational gauge models in the framework of full nonlinear MAG, exact solutions are constructed, featuring propagating massless and massive spin-3 fields.