FRANCO’S PLANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 3

FRANCO’S PLANS

PERSONNEL OF PRESENT MINISTRY MAJORITY MILITARY OR NAVAL MEN. The question of how General Francisco Franco intends to govern Spain, a London correspondent of the Christion Science Monitor wrote recently, has become a matter of importance in view of the fall of Barcelona. The Franco Government formed in February of last year is inseparable from the Army and the leader himself. It is very evidently the instrument for a military dictatorship better equipped for repression than construction. The Government consists of a Premier with dictatorial powers and 12 ministers. Of these, seven are military or naval men; there are five generals, including General Franco himselfj who is Premier, and the VicePremier, who is also Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Minister of Justice is Count de Rodesta, a Navarre traditionalist like his family for three generations. The Vice-Premier is General Count Francisco Jordana, and one may safely assume that all the military men are aristocrats as birth was formerly the only road to promotion in the army. The civilians in the Government are Falangists (Spanish Fascists) of long standing. For three members of his Government General Franco is indebted to the generosity of carelessness of his opponents, as one escaped from. Republican territory, another was permitted to leave after taking shelter in a foreign embassy, and yet another was an exchange prisoner. SUNER NEXT TO FRANCO. The Ministry of Public order has now been taken by General Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramon Suner, who was previous Minister of Interior and of Press and Propaganda. Senor Suner appears to be the most important figure in the Government, next to General Franco himself, with all police Work and a very strict censorship under his control. Ministers of War (General Luis Orgaz), Navy (Vice-Admiral Joaquin Cervera) and Air (General Alfredo Kindelan) are all generally admitted to be figureheads heavily loaded with foreign “advisers” in their ministeries.

The Minister of Agriculture is Ramundo Fernandez Cuesta, a wellknown Falangist. Falangists have a programme for the regeneration of agriculture which is not entirely in the interests of the great landowners who kept large areas quite uncultivated. If they get to the point of applying this programme, a conflict may result as any method of improving conditions of the peasants in Spain will involve sacrifices on the part of the nobility. WELFARE WORK OMITTED. There is no Minister of Social Welfare in Franco Spain, although there is in Republican Spain. This function presumably is left to the Church although many complaints have been heard from religious orders that they are heavily taxed, that contributions have fallen off, and that they are now hampered by state regulations. There is the Minister of Labour, Gonzalez Bueno, who has tried to organise and make compulsory a kind of official trade union unable to strike or give trouble. There is the Minister of Culture and Public Education, Marin Francisco Roderiguez, who recently formed a board for the protection of art treasures similar to that which has been functioning in Republican Spain since the summer of 1936. That in Republican Spain, chiefly occupied with safeguarding works of are from 1 bombing, was violently blamed by Franco partisans for “stealing” privately owned works such as those of the Duke of Alba which were moved from his Madrid Palace to Valencia. However, the Franco board also makes free use of its powers to requisition” works of art in cases where owners are absent or negligent and take them into temporary charge of the state. Beyond this there is little for it to do but restore churches that have been damaged by warfare. PREVALENCE OF GENERALS. The surprising fact, however, is not that there are so many generals in the Franco Government but that there is anybody else. According to “Burgos Justice,” a book by a Burgos magistrate, Antonio Ruiz Vilaplana, in an early discussion between General Emila Mola and the other officers on the form that Government should take, the suggestion that some civilians ought to be included was stoutly opposed. Before the civil war the Spanish Army was, for its size, ridiculously overloaded with generals, several embryonic dictators among them. Had it not been for the elimination from the scene of General Jose Sanjurjo and General Mola—who both were killed in aviation accidents— they would both undoubtedly have claimed places in the Government. As it is General Queipo de Llano, who is in charge of Andalusia, is likely to prove difficult to deal with. His radiocasts, which anyone who heard them can testify were both coarse and ambitious, were also very indiscreet. He roundly abused the Italians as cowards at Guadalajara. His radiocasting was subsequently stopped. POLICY OF REVENGE. The internal policy of the Junta and the Franco Government as recorded in their Press and in numerous books on the administration of their territory, of which the best known in “Burgos Justice,” seems to be relentless liquidation of all opponents or even possible opponents, which makes wearying and discouraging reading. The full details given, names, places, and dates, hcnyever, cannot admit of doubt. Efforts are being made to wipe out regionalism; it is forbidden to use the Basque of Catalan languages and some the most severe repression has been in the Basque country and Gahca. both regions which aspired to autonomy. Against this the republic can show countless new schools, social services and agrarian reform. It encouraged autonomy and Catalonia and the Basque country enjoyed full autonomy until the latter fell to General Franco.