BALEARIC ISLES

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 18, 19 October 1936, Page 18

BALEARIC ISLES

EXODUS OF ARTISTS

THE GRIP OF REVOLUTION

(By Nelle M. Scanlan.) LONDON, September 10. I had dinner last/night with two artists who have been living in Spanish territory. One, Miss Gwen Knight, of Wellington, had spent four years in the Balearic Isles. Just before the Spanish Revolution broke out she had a hunch that she would like to get back to England, so she packed up her pile of canvases and left her sunny peaceful retreat at Ibiza. Today the hotel where she had lived is a pile of ruins. Many of her friends had to be evacuated by British warships, some of them losing most of their possessions. Now that she is back in London, Miss Knight is planning to have a one-man show of her paintings, and she has some very fine pictures to exhibit. The other artist was an Englishwoman who had arrived that afternoon from Teneriffe, another Spanish possession. She told me that there had been two days' fighting at Santa Cruz, and things > settled down to a state of anxious uncertainty. It was impossible to work. One was conscious all the' time of an undertone of fear—fear about what might happen next. They had little accurate news of what was happening in Spain, mails were uncertain, and rumours alarming and contradictory. So she packed up at a few hours' notice, caught a boat that had come in from South America, and set out for England. They called at Portugal, and just missed the- brief outbreak there on Monday, when the forts bombarded two warships that had mutinied. Hundreds of British people who have lived for years in Spain have been obliged to return, often leaving their homes and furniture, their business premises, and their money. One couple who were spending their honeymoon in the Balearic Isles, were lucky.to get away with then? luggage; their new motor-car had to be left to its fate. These sunny isles in the Mediterranean have long been the haunt of artists! with the usual crop of retired Admirals and others;who have little money. Living was cheap, and the English pound went a long way. Numbers of the artists who declined to leave at the first sign of trouble were later compelled to take ship hurriedly, leaving their paintings behind —the work of years, their/only asset, fi°There have been many rumours that both sides in Spain were, offering the Balearic Isles to foreign countries, in return for help. The Communists are said to have offered them to France if she would supply them with war material. And the insurgents, so .it was said, had offered them to Italy if she would give them her support. This small group of islands is of considerable, strategic importance. _ H Italy had control it would go a -long way towards establishing Italian domination in the Mediterranean and would cut France off from Morocco. If they were, held by France they would strengthen her position in these waters. Great Britain is vitally inSsted in keeping open this important f^oSdVSSrfoS^ Meanwhile, British warships are stanSTby the Balearic Isles. There arealso Italian and German warships fn the neighbourhood. The Spanish Government's attempt to capture^ Isles failed, and she has since evacuated her troops, so they are at present or the most important of them, held b> the insurgents.