WILL SPAIN CHANGE HER REGIME?

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5289, 30 December 1946, Page 7

WILL SPAIN CHANGE HER REGIME?

UNITED NATION'S MOVE

ARMY HOLDS KEY TO NATION'S FUTURjE Spain is a country of bitter and often harrowing contrasts. Youi see on the f ashionable Gran Via in Madrid, among the sleek, well-fed people and luxurious limousines, wretchedly ragged women, boys and girls stretching out their hands to snatch a biscuit, a piece of sugar, or a few crumbs from the cafe tables; writes John Ridley in the Daily Telegraph. Go into the country areas, and partiaularly down south in Andalusia, and you find me'n, women, and children literally" dying of starvation. Queues of hungry mothers with their half-naked, famished children clinging to their skirts- wait for the meagre plate of lentils or beans doled out to them by relief organisations. Families of decent working people live like animals in caves and holes in the ground. Yet on the other side of the picture one finds opulent restaurants and hotels which serve meals of the rarest foods and wines, and magnificent shops where yoiu can buy all the clothes and luxury goods you could possibly require. But all tbese are at a price, and that price is far beyond the means of 90 per cent. of the people. „ • _ The real ruler of modern Spam is the black market. Evexything is governed hy it. Since the .legal rati-on is so pitfully inadeqiuate it has to be augmented by the meat, olive oil, bread and eggs that are now almost the monopoly of the black marketeers. Even railway tickets are sold estraperlo or "under the counter." The average weekly wage of a slrilled worker is 30s. A meal in a moderate restaurant costs 16s and in a good restaurant at least £2. A loaf of bread on the black market costs 4s 6d, a pint of olive oil, the people's only fat, about 24s, and rice, another staple food, from 6s to 7s a lh. One egg costs ls 3d. Flat rents are high, and the cost of elothing though unrationed, is exorbitant. • The only way a Spanish workman can earn eno'ugh to keep himself and his family from starving is by havmg two jobs and continuing to work after his official eight-hour day is finished. This is not so easy now, as despite official figures, -there is increasing unemployment. Nor has the tremendous rise in the cost of living ever heen met by a corresponding rise in wages. Seven years after the end of Ihe civil war General Franco has not only failed to win over his old oppqnents, but has lost a really considerable number of his former supporters. Manv .Spaniards I iiave met told me

they now realise that a regime which they had placed all their hopes and faith had failed them completely. His Trump Card To-day General Franco is exceptionally iunpopular. If it were -possihle to have a free election and the people eould vote for or against him, there would be a '95 per cent. ballot against him. On the other hand, at the present juncture what is the alternative? A vote between Franco and Giral, the president of the emigre Spanish, Republic, would result in an overwhelming vote in his favour. The essential spirit of Franco's regime can, perhaps, hest be judged by comparisng the expenditure of some of the Goverament departments. The army, for instance — and it must be rememhered that Spain has heen at peace for more than seven and a half years and possesses hardly any modern equipment — absorbs 22 per cent. of the general Budget. The Ministry of the Interior, whose responsihility includes the maintenance of civil order, takes 10.8 per cent. In striking contrast the Ministry of Agriculture, in a predominantly agrarian country, is allotted a mere 0.9 per cent., while the Ministry of Education on which one might reasonably suppose the future of Spain depends, re- j ceives only i per cent. .Spain is united to-day on only one thing, and that is there must not be another civil war. General Franco realises this and is using it through his tame press as the trump card which holds up his economically tottering black market police dictatorship. Corruption and ineffilciency were certainly known in Spain during the Monarchy, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and the Republic, hut they never reached the proportions they achieve to-day, and the penalties for voicing grievances against them have never been so stringent. Spaniards of the Right, the Left and the Monarchist Centre feel that a return to normal economic and social conditions is urgently needed. Oudustrial and financial interests are especially restive under a rigid control which for the most part is exercised by men who entirely lack technical ahility, but who happen to be staunch, . unwaring supporters of Franco and the I'alangist party. Role of Army It is glaringly evident to any one who has visited Spgin that +he key to the Spanish question lies with the army. It, andi it alone can and, I believe, eventually will, depose Franco. Already there are murmurs of dissensiqjn a(mO!ng de^tafn) offic^rs against the regime, and particularly among those of land-owning families. It is always dangerous to be didactic ahout such an extremely unpredictable country, but I would say that this still very mouse-like palace revoltition is the first. step towards the restoration of the Monarchy. iSocialist Republican leaders of the undepground movement have already opened conversations with Monarchists in Spain, and so far as I was able to gather are malcing considerable progress towards a mutual agreement. Royalist supporters, and now, to a certain extent, Socialists and Liberals, claim that, alone among .Spanish

[ symbhltion, To gain more support from the Left it will have to be progressive also. *4 . , From men I have met who have talked recently with the Pretender to the throne, Don. Juan, I hear he has learnt a great deal of the democratic way of life during his years of exile. If a constitutional monarchy could be re-established. almost every shade of political opinion would welcome the restoration. During the last few months I have frequently seen Franco, and have talked to many people who have been closely associated with him. W'hen I have seen him he has generally heen surrounded by Ministers generals, guards, and secret police. But in Burgos in September, at the' anniversary celehrations of his appointment as leader of the State, I was able to get clos'e to him while he made that impassioned speech in which he virtually declared himself to„he a sort of male Joan of Arc of Spain, whose mission in life was not only the saving of Spain from Communism but also the rest of the world. In physical appearance he is not inspiringr' as a leader. He is fat and very ,short. He has a round, plujnp face, which tapers away to a small chin under his long sharp nose and thick, sullen lips. His eyes are blank and childishly wide iopen. His voiee is soft and rather clerical. Unbelievably Stupid An officer who has been with Franco almost throughout his career hnt who now, as an ardent Royalist, secretly opposes the regime, said to me that "Franco, although very good -as a military tactician, is almost unbelievably | stupid, but is fundamentally sincere. He is to-day extremely vain, and has ! terrible fits of anger whenever he j reads a newspaper report from a" ; foreign country wihich attacks his pol1 itical astuteness. ! "Nobody, not even his bitterest pol- ' itical opponents, denies that he is an honest man, honest in the sense of financial correctness and incorrupti- ' bility, and even in scandal-loving t Madrid there has never been a breath ' of scandal connected with his name. i His ignorance of politics and economics is abysmal." i Franco is first and foremost an | army man, and, rightly realising that ' his precarious po'wer depends on the ' army for its life blood, he fcreats the • army well. An army officer or n.c.o. ; eats well and is superbly uniformed and well housed. He gets good pay ; and, better still, draws unlimited raj tions — a large proportion of which is i sold on the black market — from the > Economata Militar, a sort of Spanish ! equivalent to N.A.A.F.l. | On the other hand, the ordinary 1 private soldier is paid 2s a week, and | is hadly dressed, badly fed and hadly housed in filthy and often venninous I barracks. l

| Thus one finds thesa are often a proj dluctive field for the,. efforts of the j underground movement, who flood I most barracks with clandestine news- ! papers, and although the penalty for ' a soldier being fround with a copy is death, they are widely read. Travelling around Spain, as I have done during* the last five months, one might quite reasonably imagine that the country was at war. Everything is on a war basis, with mass movements of troops and all the fantastic display of a totalitarian State— gaudy unifoxms, brightly * polished packboots, police armed with automatic rifles and revolvers, extreme poverty and extreme riches. "War" is in the air, yet the main concern of the majority of. Spaniards I met is to avoid another fratricidal struggle. . They want a period of quiet and assured progress and it is to this country they look as th'e symbol and the emhodiment of the middle way.