Spanish Writer Gaoled

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31586, 25 January 1968, Page 11

Spanish Writer Gaoled

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MADRID, Jan. 24. A progressive Roman Catholic writer from Barcelona was sentenced in Madrid yesterday to 16 months imprisonment for writing an article denouncing a “wave af repression” by the Franco Government. The 35-year-old writer, Alfonso Carlos Comin. was convicted in the Public Order Court of illegal propaganda and “spreading false reports” in an article published in January last year in the French Roman Catholic weekly “Temoignage Chretien” (Christian Witness). Comin, an engineer and economist who has written a

book analysing the problems of poverty in southern Spain, was expected to appeal to the Supreme Court against the sentence. The article, headlined “After the Referendum, the Repression,” commented on arrests of underground labour leaders after the National Referendum in December, 1966, which approved General Franco’s new Constitution or “organic law.” In. another case, the Public Order Court sentenced three men, accused of belonging to a Communist group in the Basque province of Biscay, to six years imprisonment each.

They were convicted on charges of illegal and subversive association and illegal propaganda. The Court was told they printed leaflets inciting workers to hold May Day demonstrations.