SPAIN'S DON SUNER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 226, 23 September 1940, Page 6

SPAIN'S DON SUNER.

INGRAINED FASCIST. DRIVING NERVOUS ENERGY. Don Ramon Ferrano Suner, Spain's Minister of the Interior, is as strongly pro-Fascist as he is anti-British, and is obviously actively employed at present in working for an early abandonment of Spain's aloofness in favour of becoming an ally of the Axis Powers.

According to "Time," a British offer to help finance Spanish reconstruction in return for Spain's continued neutrality held some interest for Franco, who is faced by an internal debt of some £500,000,000, but after the German successes in France Suner persuaded him to change his mind, and it was not long before -he had endorsed the claim to Gibraltar, made by the extreme Fascists, plus an unspecified piece of Nortih

Africa. It seems that if there is anything to be picked up while Britain is involved in the struggle with Germany and Italy, there is a section of Spaniards strongly minded to be in the hunt. Control of Vital Services. Senor Suner is an important personage for the following reasons: He heads the Ministry of Propaganda, and so determines what Spaniards learn. He controls the police and so determines who shall live free or in prison.. He 'heads the Ministry of Government (Interior), which now includes the Ministry of Communications, and so controls the post office, telephone, telegraph and cable systems. He heads the Falango Espanola Tradicionalista and so controls Spain's sole political party, its 2,000,000 members, 800,000 associated female Falangists and 600,000 Falange youths.

This man gained lib Fascist ideas from Italy, where he was educated. Under the Republic he was an obscure lawyer, but when Franco became leader

of the Rightist revolution he saw his chance to impose his ideas on the "politically uneducated" generalissimo.

A man of driving nervous energy, he organised into the Falange the various elements which supported Franco, anil when the. war had ended ho managed to keep these elements from falling into disputes which would endanger the new regime.

In internal policy Suner has some ideas described as far to the !e.ft of those of the people who first supported the revolution, but he takes care to see that every concession to liberalism and social service is also made to strengthen the position of the Falange. In foreign policy he follows his good friend, Count Ciano, Italy's Foreign Minister. A Wreck of a Country. Of Spain itself, "Time" says that that wreck of a country could use a few conquests to divert the people's minds from their empty bellies, their sick and their war-crazed, their smouldering hatred and their ever-present fear. Spaniards say: "It is hell now, but it is Heaven conijwired with the war." Half a million people are still in gaol, packed six to 10 in two-man cells and sleeping in two-hour relays. Twenty or 30 are. executed a day.

" The rich . . . can eat game, fish, fowl, meat. The fairly well-to-do can get enough to eat by keeping chickens in their apartments. But to the poor everything is rationed. The bread ration consists of two small rolls, hard from brown flour adulterated with chick peas, beans, potatoes, sometimes gravel. The olive oil in which Spaniards cool; everything is rancid; the good oil was sold to Italy.

" Eggs arc rationed at one a person a week, and cost as much as fi/3 a dozen. Milk is a luxury and coffee does not exist. Tobacco is rationed at 40 cigarettes a week for me.n, none to women.

" There is no hard money in Spain, no more big duros for shopkeepers to clank on their counters. The paper money of large denominations is printed in Leipzig, the small bills in Milan. That, too, is symbolic. At the end of July there were 80,000 German engineers, craftsmen and clerks in the country and 30,000 Italian labourers and farmers.

* With 100,000 to 150,000 tons of petrol in storage, Spain could probably wage a short war. If Britain withstood a blitzkrieg and dragged the war through the winter, Spain would soon be helpless. But if Britain begins to totter, Don Ramon Serrano Suner might well push Franco beyond the verge of battle."