Behind the Barriers of the Pyrenees

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 16

Behind the Barriers of the Pyrenees

|| From a BBC talk on life in |

1} Franco’s Spain by

JOHN

RIDLEY

PAIN has become more remote and mysterious than countries many thousands of miles away. While I was flying to Madrid last year I had the feeling as I looked down on the Spanish countryside, brown and ridged like a walnut shell, that I was going to a

country more foreign to me than China, India, Japan, or the islands of the South Seas. Yet Madrid is but two and a-

half flying hours from London, and this feeling of distance passed quickly when I had once more made contact with the Spanish people. It all comes from the fact that for the past 11 years Spain has been almost cut off from the rest of Europe. People in Britain,-I find, regard it hardly as a reality, but a strange land behind the barriers of the Pyrenees which has little or no relationship with anywhere else in the world, least of all with Europea country of savage revolutions, bullfights, serenades beneath moonlit balconies,‘and an intensive use ‘of garlic. They seem scarcely to realise that ordinary everyday sort of people live there. at all. But those who remember with gratitude the immense services that Spain has made to civilisation-to the arts, religion, philosophy, and literature -and who know the innate culture, humanity and charm of her people, these people look forward with hope to the day when she will again take her place among the foremost countries of the western world. Bitter Contrasts Conditions in Spain are extremely bad, She has always been a country of bitter and often harrowing contrasts, but I | doubt whether they have ever in history been so marked as they are to-day. If you should walk along the magnificent streets of west-end Madrid, the Castellana, the Alcala and the Gran Via, you would see an incredible display of wealth -sleek limousines, shop windows filled with every luxury, fat well-fed peopledrinking expensive apéritifs in open-air cafés or eating large and exquisite meals in restaurants. But even in this amazing facade of opulence, you would also catch a glimpse of the other side of the picture: wretchedly ragged women, boys and ‘girls with arms and legs no thicker than knife handles,» hungrily: stretching out their hands to snatch a few crumbs from café tables; men staggering and falling through lack of food. And if you should go into the country districts, or even into the poorer suburbs of Madrid itself, you would find men, women and children dying the slow terrible death of starvation and from the diseases brought about by malnutrition. Travelling around’ Spain, as I have been doing recently, one might after a time reasonably imagine that the country was at war. Everything is on a military basis, with mass movements of troops and all the fantastic display of a totalitarian state- gaudy uniforms, ‘polished jack-boots, police armed with \revolvers and tommy guns, the extremes

of wealth and the extremes of poverty. Spain, I was told by a cynjcal Englishman in Barcelona, is being run on a policy of war economy: the only difficulty is thaf there is no war and no economic policy. The real ruler of Spain to-day is the " black market. Everything is governed by it-you can even buy black market

tickets for short journeys on the underground _ railway. As always, the black market is the signal of underproduction, which

simply means that "the cost of living is inordinately high, even higher than in Paris. While I was in Madrid I stayed for some time with a lower middle-class family and heard from them and their neighbours something of the, story of the desperate losing battle against privation and misery, a battle which they fight in company with more than 90 per cent. of the people of Spain, There has been rationing for the past 10 years, and to-day it is as stringent as ever. In fact, in many respects, it is much worse, since wages have remained static while the cost of everything has increased tenfold. Bread is severely rationed, and this is a real hardship, as Spaniards normally are enormous bread eaters. One small putty-coloured roll costing 2d is allowed daily. Consequently bread has to be bought on the black market at a price of over 4/6 a pound. Similarly only two pounds of potatoes are allowed on the ration each ‘week and they cost 9d; further purchases have to be made at 2/4. Meat is rationed to two pounds a month and costs 4/-, but "under the counter" it Costs double or treble this amount. Butter, which is unrationed, is sold at 20/- a pound..In order to live housewives are compelled to buy, foodstuffs on the black market, or estraperlo as it is called. The legal rations are totally inadequate and anyway seldom met in*the shops, as indeed is the case in Italy and France. These prices seem prohibitive even to us, but when it is realised that the average working man earns only about £2/8/- a week, and a clerk only about £3/10/-, the difficulties the average Spaniard is facing are obvious enough. Flat rents are high and although clothes are sold without coupons their high price keeps them beyond the reach of the ordinary wage-earner. The only way in Which a Spanish workman can earn enough to keep himself and his family from starving is by having two jobs-, but this is not so easy now, as there is increasing unemployment, despite official figures. _ The British Are Popular Britain, to-day is very popular in Spain. Everywhere an Englishman seems assured of a warm welcome, even though for the first time there is in Spain, perhaps understandingly, a faint feeling of anti-foreignism. I remember that this was made very clear to me* when I strayed late one night into a small café in a back street of Madrid. It was filled with what novelists would undoubtedly describe as "ugly customers," who made

no move to allow me to get near the bar. "Get out," one of them said: "Fuera." I asked why. "You are a forweigner . .'. get out." I agreed that I was ‘Ca foreigner; and added that I was an ‘Englishman. Immediately the air cleared of menace. "Ah, you are English .. . weli, in that case you must come and join us and take some wine," they said. We parted terrific «friends. Many Spaniards I talked to said that England represented everything they wanted in a government for their own countryneutrality, tolerance, morality and tradition. Spain, and especially Madrid, is an uneasy place to live in. Apart from the scare rumours that are prevalent night and day, there is always the unpleasant knowledge that you are being watched, followed, and your movements, together with lists of the names of people you talk with, are being reported in detail to the Direccion General de Seguridad, the police headquarters. Officially there is no censorship, but every letter I received while I was there had been opened and then gummed up again before delivery. As I said before, war is in the air of Spain, but war is just about. the last thing most Spaniards want. Memories of the last one are far too bitter. Undoubtedly there is considerable discontent all over Spain, and very few people I met there were wholeheartedly in favour of Franco. Seven years after the end of the Civil War, General Franco has not only failed to win over his old opponents, but has lost a considerable number of his former supporters. I believe, without exaggeration, that were it possible to hold a free election and the people could vote for or against the present regime there would be an overwhelming ballot against it. But at the present juncture what, they ask, is the alternative to Franco? Most of them look at the Spanish situation this way: they believe that without Franco they would have communism in Spain _ because of the general position in the rest of Europe, and communism is universally detested there. These two points-the Spaniards’ fear of another civil war, and their loathing of communism-are being used to the hilt by Franco in his tame press to bolster up his economically tottering black-market police dictatorship. But there are audible murmurs of dissension against the regime in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville and in the provincial capitals, among high-ranking

army officers, but mostly among the aristocratic landowners, who are monarchist to a man. Anti-Franco Forces I met a number of members of the socialist underground movement, which despite its apparent quiescence is strong and well organised. I wrote a story for my paper that there were 50,000 anti-Franco guerrilla fighters in Spain. The Spanish Press Office objected very forcibly to this statement, saying it was absolute nonsense and produced a colonel to prove their point. He was an inspector-general or something in the

army. "This," said one) of the press officials to the colonel whom | we met, "is an English correspondent, | and he has said that there are 50,000 anti-Franco guerrilla fighters in Spain today. Now what do you say to that, Colonel?"’ They leaned back, beaming, and waited expectantly for the Colonel to. give me some harsh categorical denial. "Oh," said the Colonel unexpectedly, "there are far more." The essential spirit of Franco’s regime | can perhaps best be judged by comparing the expenditures of some of the government departments. The Army and | the Ministry of the Interior which are. both engaged in keeping civil order, ab-. sorb no less than a third of the total | income of the state. . | Roads, Trains, Schools With such a government policy, it is not surprising that the country is getting poorer and poorer. The fine roads _ built by Primo de Rivera, the Monarchist dictator of the early thirties, considered at one time as being among the best in Europe, are falling into a shocking state of disrepair. The rolling stock of the railways is antiquated and falling to pieces, while the permanent way is positively dangerous. The merchant shipping fleet is miserably small and many of the vessels are old and _ unsafe. Through lack of fertiliser the land is. losing its productivity, so that in songs | areas, I was told, where at one time an acre yielded almost a ton, to-day it. only produces half as much. The majority of the industries, particularly the. textile factories of Barcelona, urgently need new machinery. Education is certainly inadequate. Although by law children are supposed to attend school until they are 14, a very small percentage actually do. Children’ of poor people are sent to work or beg at a pathetically early age in order to earn a few more pesetas to keep at bay the horrors of starvation. In any case what they are likely to iearn at school is negligible; I visited a school where there were only three subjects for all. the children; religious teaching, singing Falangist party songs, and military drill, Many of the older pupils could neither read nor write. Illiteracy in Spain must be inordinately high. I have purposely not made any prophecies here about the immediate political future of Spain. It would be unprofitable to dwell on these topics, since part of Spain’s attraction is that her politics are perpetually unpredictable,