LIVING DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 28 November 1932, Page 7

LIVING DEATH

EXILED SPANISH GRANDEES

KING’S FRIENDS IN “LIVING

HELL.”

MADRID, November 12. A shipload of 138 political exiles, including many grandees of Spain who were close friends of ex-King Alfonso, were secretly' despatched recently to Villa de Ciseros, a lonely peninsula on the coast of Rio de Oro, the sun-baked Spanish colony that borders the Sahara desert in North-West Africa.

There 'they will face what many Spanish newspapers declare to be a ‘‘living hell.” ' Comprising the flower 'of Spain's former aristocracy, many of the deportees are already ill and in a weakened condition.

Among them are former distinguished officers of the Monarchical forces, titled and untitled grandees, and a number of brilliant lawyers, professors and big landowners. Their fate is a sad one, for few are physically fit to survive for long the baking heat of that military outpost at which even seasoned .troops can only remain for short periods. Siberia and Devil’s,'lsland are known as living tombs, but Spain’s “African Hell” is popularly described at a death-trap. Bloodthirsty Arabs lurk in the sandhillg of Rio de Oro day and night, in the hope of catching unaware a Spanish soldier or sniping at the sentriei on the high wall* of the outpost,

The aristocrats were exiled by the Spanish Government for complicity in the abortive revolt at Seville on August 10, led by General S'anjurgo, The general was sentenced to death, but this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He is now behind the bars at Santander.

After the deportees were collected from all over Spain, the Government selected as a convict ship an old German vessel. The Press of Spain alleged that the vessel was a “death ship” and was not seaworthy. There were sinister rumours that) the Spanish Government had deliberately chosen this vessel so that the deportees would never reach the coast of Africa.