Red’ Duchess To Go To Gaol

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32297, 15 May 1970, Page 13

Red’ Duchess To Go To Gaol

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MADRID, May 14.

The “red” Duchess of Medina Sidonia has a one-month gaol sentence hanging over her head when she returns to Spain from Paris, her lawyer said in Madrid yesterday.

The 32-year-old duchess was in Paris when the Spanish Supreme Court announced on April 24 that it had condemned her to one month and a day imprisonment, and a fine of 3000 pesetas ($64), on

charges arising from a novel about corruption and injustice in southern Spain. Her lawyer, Mr Mariano Roble Romero, yesterday said: “It could be two or three months before the order comes through for her to begin the gaol sentence. Bureaucratic delays of this sort are quite normal in Spain. “As she has a previous conviction, she will hstve to serve the sentence. With normal remissions for work in gaol, she will have to spend between 16 and 17 days in prison.”

N.Z.kA.-Reuter erroneously reported on April 24 that the duchess had been put in gaol for a month and a day.

The duchess is an ardent social crusader. She was released from prison last November after serving eight months of a one-year sentence for leading southern Spanish villagers in a protest march at Palomares, where United States hydrogen bombs accidentally fell, without exploding, in 1966. Her lawyer said that she also has charges of “insulting the authorities” pending against her for a series of articles about her prison experiences which she wrote for a Madrid magazine.

“I do not know when she will return to Madrid,” he said.