COMEDY IN SPAIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 326, 13 September 1932, Page 7

COMEDY IN SPAIN

PROMINENT POET AND DEPUTY SHORN OF HIS LOCKS. As Senor Gassols, a Catalonian Deputy, who is also a poet, and whose classical locks are the joy of Spanish caricaturists, was on the way to the bathroom of a Madrid hotel at which he was staying, four men armed with scissors pounced on him. They pushed the poet into the bathroom, and while he striiggled to free himself and shout'ed for help, one of the amateur barbers managed to clip and drag away some of his locks. The poet finally got away, rushed to his room across the corridor, became a Catalonian Deputy, grabbed a revolver, and chased the assai'lants through the hotel, firing shots, none of which hit the men with th'e scissors (or, fortunately, any one else), and all four escaped. One of the would-be shinglers, however, in his hurry to get away, mistook the route, ran through the kitchen, lcnoclced over the cook, and smashed a lot of plates. Senor Gassols is one of Colonel Macia's right-h'and men, well known for his —l^nalist tendencies and his violent anti-Spanish speeches. • He recently published an article in a Barcelona newspaper which he controls, in which he said that when the Catalonian statute of autonomy was ap>proved, "it would he time to turn all the pigs out of Catalonia," evidently meaning the Spaniards or those wh'o were not Cataloniansi . , He was inade Minister of Education hy President Maeia in the short-lived Republic of Catalonia, which was proclaimed on the downfall of the Monarchy.