DAILY FOOTBALL IN A SPANISH GAOL

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1936, Page 29

DAILY FOOTBALL IN A SPANISH GAOL

Eleven o'clock of a Sunday morning and outside the new prison of Madrid i» a constant stream of wealthy-look-ing cars, wrote Oliver Baldwin from Spain to the "Daily Mail" recently. Packard* and Hispano-Suizas, Chryslers and Hudson* stop outside the prison gates and deposit the welldressed wives, mothers, and sisters of the Fascists who were arrested for afgiffnyri implication in an expected coup d'etat With food and clothing for their menfolk, the families enter the prison and pass an hour or two in free conversation with them, then, happy and undisturbed, return to their homes. I suppose that nowhere else in the world could such a thing occur in a country which is still in a state of political tension; nor could the friends of political prisoners be given such freedom anywhere else. When the Socialists were in prison before the last elections many of them were fed better than they had ever been in their lives, and now that the shoe is on the other foot there is an extraordinary absence of revenge or hatred. One of these prisoners is Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the former Dictator of Spain, and the young leader of the Spanish Phalanx—a group of well-to-do young men supported by members of the bourgeois and artisan j classes, which is a Fascist organisation' calling itself the National Phalanx on the lines of German National-Socialism. As I have heard many tales of Socialist victims of Right persecution. I asked Senor Primo de Rivera of his present conditions, and whether he had any complaints. He assured me he had only one, and that was that his country was not a

serious country, and that if a roan was condemned to two years he should serve his full sentence and not be let out as a favour. Here, I thought, is a real conception of a disciplined State. There were many hundreds of exofficers in prison with him, but few belonging to his organisation, which he insisted was not affected by his temporary absence. He was afraid he was taking too much liking to football, which he played every day, and hoped it would not affect bis political keenness, as he would be out soon. What was his programme? National Syndicalism. Had he many supporters? About 80 000 Were they all well-to-do? No; they included shopkeepers and artisans. Did he believe in direct action? He smiled. I Was he not surprised that a newspaper man should come to see him? Not in the least; anyone could come. So I hoped he would be as lenient to others if he ever ruled the State as the present Government was to him, and left him to his friends and the six-year-old son of a fellow-prisoner, who saluted him with hand on high. This, then, was the ultimate hope of big business on the Right Wing, those people for whom everything in Spain is in chaos and who, living in their own circle, recount strange talcs one to another. Within an hour I have met two big business men of different foreign nations, both anti-Socialists; the one had no word bad- enough for Senor Azana and his Government; the other had found nothing upsetting to his interests.