Arrests Weaken Spanish Opposition
MOWRER, RICHARD SCOTT
ARRESTS WEAKEN SPANISH OPPOSITION Secret detention of prominent anti-Franco Socialists spells new problems for the Caudillo's regime By Richard Scott Mowrer MOST SPANIARDS still don't know of...
...Whether the arrested Spaniards will eventually come before military or civil courts is uncertain...
...The fact that the non-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the executive committee of the British Labor party, and students demonstrating outside the Spanish embassy have also denounced the arrests has been kept out of Ya...
...The IFCS is one of several non-governmental organizations affiliated to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC...
...If they are charged with "acts against the security of the state" they will face a military court...
...According to the wife of one of the detainees, the police came for her husband at their home at 3 : 0 0 A. M. She has since been able to visit him in jail...
...if the charge is "illegal association" they will be tried by a civil court...
...One theory is that the regime feared the Socialists were planning to organize strikes this winter to protest against rising prices, and thus decided to crack down now, before anything happened...
...The IFCS, it says, " i s an organization of slight importance" whose meddling in Spanish affairs "is so impertinent and so lacking in knowledge of the facts that one wonders whether its interference stems from ignorance or bad faith...
...They include lawyers, professors, doctors, at least one industrialist and several specialized workers...
...Antonio Villar, assistant to Antonio Garrigues, a lawyer for the American Embassy...
...It has headquarters in Brussels and branches in several countries of western Europe...
...Except for the Falange, political parties are illegal in Spain...
...But Ya is mad all right...
...exile because of activities which are condemned in all the penal codes of the world, like plots against national unity...
...Martin Santos, a leading psychiatrist of San Sebastian...
...Catholics abroad, the paper says, would do well to avoid using as points of reference "the opinions of groups or individuals who live in...
...But the regime has a problem too: how to win acceptance as a respected member of the free world community and at the same time keep authoritarian rule going at home...
...This awareness has been brought on by an editorial outburst in Madrid's Catholic newspaper Ya, directed against the International Federation of Christian Syndicates...
...The Spaniards arrested, believed to number about 80, are all under 40...
...Vincente Urcola, medical adviser to the Basque Coast Brotherhood of Fishermen...
...Since nothing is printed in Spain without official approval, Ya's outburst may be taken as a reflection of the displeasure the Spanish Government felt at the IFCS's protest to General Franco against the recent arrests...
...Some of the men detained are suspected of having established contact with exiled Spanish Socialists in France in the course of visits to that country...
...But the list contains prominent names: Juan Reventos y Carner, professor of the history of law at the University of Barcelona, grandson of Jaime Carner, who was finance minister during the republic...
...Juan Rion, head of the chemistry department at the University of Barcelona...
...Rather, they should turn "for true and just guidance in Spanish matters" to the "hierarchy of the Church, starting with the highest echelons...
...There are rumors, so far unsubstantiated, that the Army wants no part of the latest police operation and has said so in the proper quarters...
...The arrests began early in November in San Sebastian and continued over a period of three weeks, the police operating methodically in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Victoria, Bilbao, Seville and Zaragoza...
...Most, if not all, are Socialists or Social Democrats, or Socialist sympathizers...
...According to Ya, the IFCS knows nothing "of the realities of Spain...
...Ya doesn't say what the IFCS has done to make it mad, presumably because the censorship won't let it...
...Censorship is clamping down on the news...
...There is no information as to why the Security Police chose to strike at this particular moment...
...Joaquin Bradera, nephew of the Spanish Ambassador in Tunisia...
...But they are aware that something has been going on, serious enough to have upset at least one of the free world's international bodies...
...As far as can be ascertained, there are no Communists in the group...
...The arrests have demolished further the efforts of Spain's nonCommunist opposition to organize an anti-totalitarian front against the Franco regime...
...ARRESTS WEAKEN SPANISH OPPOSITION Secret detention of prominent anti-Franco Socialists spells new problems for the Caudillo's regime By Richard Scott Mowrer MOST SPANIARDS still don't know of the nation-wide police sweep which recently resulted in the detention of almost a hundred opponents of the Franco regime...
Vol. 41 • December 1958 • No. 47
