ELECTION AFTERMATH

Evening Star, Issue 22272, 25 February 1936, Page 9

ELECTION AFTERMATH

RADICAL PROGRAMME IN SPAIN ATTACK ON VESTED INTERESTS REINSTATEMENT OF STRIKERS Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, February 23. The ‘ Daily Herald’s ’ Madrid correspondent says the Government is reinstating 7,000 transport workers who were dismissed for striking in 1934, making up their pay for the period of dismissal. The Madrid correspondent of ' The Times ’ points out that this means the expulsion of men who at great risk helped the constitutional authorities to break the revolutionary strike. Already 1,000 municipal employees have been summarily dismissed. This pales beside the situation in the Asturias, to which region the majority of the 30,000 liberated prisoners belong. Many of these had vowed extermination of the Civil Guard, of whom they killed 100. They will now return

triumphant to the scene of their exploits. They include 40 miners condemned for shooting without trial in cold blood a mining engineer, eight Christian Brothers, and two excise officers. When they were liberated they marched to the cemetery and placed wreaths on the tombs of two comrades who died in captivity. They then departed with fists raised, singing the ‘ Internationale,’ Luis Company's, former President of the independent State of Catalonia, which lasted 24 hours, drove to Madrid accompanied by a fleet of cars filled with admirers, in order to confer with Senor Azana regarding reconstruction plans.

Senor Azana... who was interviewed by the ‘ Daily Telegraph,’ prophesied great cultural, economic, spiritual, and material advance. Laij and order now reigned throughout the country, though naturally the Republican Socialist workers had jubilantly celebrated the victory. The state of alarm would shortly be withdrawn, and the Government would carry out at the earliest possible moment, in a spirit of liberality, with liberty of conscience, the Republican policy, which was the basis of the Popular Front’s election programme. The Government would be formed only of Republican elements, and Socialists and Extremists would support it. Gonsalez Pena, who was condemned to death in connection with the Asturian revolt, but was reprieved and elected deputy for the Asturias, will be triumphantly received on February 24.

The ‘ Daily Telegraph,’ in a leader, declares that Spain is not threatened by a violent revolution or Bolshevism, because Senor Azana formed a predominantly Left Centre Cabinet. There is no visible justification for the flight of panic-stricken refugees belonging to parties of the Bight. Nevertheless, the Azana plans foreshadow a strongly Radical programme which will strike hard at vested interests and parties supporting the recent Right Government.

"MARTYRS AND PALADINS"

POLITICAL EX-PRISONERS FETED

MADRID, February 23

Until next Sunday, when the Left victory will be officially celebrated, political demonstrations will be overshadowed by the observance of a carnival throughout Spain, singing crowds in fancy dress thronging the streets. Thirty thousand political ex-prisoners, most of them from the Asturias, were earlier feted as martyrs and paladins, and posed surrounded by cinema tripods under a halo of photographers’ flashlights.