GROOMING MADRID

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 133, 2 December 1937, Page 34

GROOMING MADRID

REMOVAL OF WRICKAGE

Madrid looks much smarter, these days with streets swept and hosed daily. Efficient wreckage units clear away the debris from shelling in record time, says the "Daily Telegraph arid Morning Post." The British Consulate is a busy centre. In July, 1936, when the war started, Acting Consul J. H. Milanes had. a staff composed of .on c- secretary. Today he controls 55 Consular assistants, many of them voluntary workers. The interests of some 250 British subjects and their dependants are looked after, but the main work is evacuating non-combatant Spaniards anxious to leave Government territory and aiding Spanish families in need. Emergencies are prepared against. An "iron ration" to supply the British colony for six weeks, in ease of the Nationalist forces cutting Madridts communications, is always kept intact. A £2000 order is being dispatched by a British firm so that the British in Madrid shall not lack food during the winter. Mr. Oswald Wolfe, brother of Mr. Humbert Wolfe, the writer, is in charge of the stores, a voluntary position. .--■ Evacuation of non-combatants to Marseilles by the British Consulate costs only £ 1 10s. A Central American Consulate charges. £15 for the same service. The work involved is tremendous. Each person ■ must have six or seven different safe-conducts and visas. Luggage'must not exceed a certain weight. Food must be provided en route. Motor-buses and. drivers must be obtained. STREAM OF CALLERS! A stream of callers," often ■ reaching a hundred daily, is dealt with at. the Consulate. All want to speak" to the Acting Consul, whom they . seem .to regard as an-, omnipotent* miracleworker. When he has a little .time to spare and the big guns are not too noisy Mr. Milanes indulges in .'his.favourite occupation of writing music. An enormous map in six colours is nearing completion on which each. of the 15,000 buildings in the centre.oj Madrid is represented. According to the colour it may..be seen, at once if any particular building is completely wrecked, partially, destroyed, but uninhabitable, damaged but.-habitable, touched by shells or bombs, or completely intact. Sixty-five architects and building experts with 1800 workers, using 1Z motor-lorries, 70 mule carts, and 28' trucks run on tram lines, are constantly at work "cleaning up" Madrid. When a shell hits a building a shock squad of thirty men .with: a foreman and an architect are sent to'the scene.. The wreckage squads'" are. so active in repairing damage and clearing away the debris that almost, invariably the first remark of visitors to Madrid is: "Why, the city is far less battered than I expected." . :