FASCIST CHIEF GAOLED

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 July 1936, Page 14

FASCIST CHIEF GAOLED

DR IJIVRnA CAUSES UPROAR

MADRID, June 1

Primo de Rivera, leader of the Spanish Fascists and son of the former dictator, threw his hat at the judge here to-day when he was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment for illegal possession of arms.

Uproar followed when he shouted the Fascist war cry “Up Spain!” and this was taken up by his supporters. The President ordered the court room to he cleared. De Rivera, becoming more incensed, leapt on the President's dais and began to insult iho magistrates. He hurled reflections on the parentage of members of the Bench, which is considered to he the gravest, insult that can be levelled against anyone in Spain.

De Rivera then stamped up and down the presidential dais, kicking the bencli and sweeping on to the floor all the files and legal papers and a. statuette of the figure of Justice. When the time came for de Rivera io sign a report of the trial, he complained that there was no reference in the official version to bls statements about the bench. He called the secretary a “gigolo.” The secretary thereupon threw an inkstand at de Rivera, ft struck him on the head, inflicting a cut in which the doctors had to place two stitches. Several arrests were made in the court.

News of the disturbance soon spread to the numerous Fascist inmates of the adjoining gaol, who began to demonstrate in sympathy with their leader.

An unsuccessful attempt was made this morning to blow up the fashionable Ritz Hotel in Madrid’s Piccadilly, the Prado.

Disgruntled employees of the Palace Hotel, which closed its doors last night, placed two bombs in the Ritz. The explosion, however, merely broke a few windows.

Spanish bullfighters sat up until 3 a.m., for their trade union meeting. They declared that the strike against unauthorised and Mexican bullfighters must continue. —B.U.P. and Reuter.