REBUILDING OF SPAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 October 1939, Page 12

REBUILDING OF SPAIN

PROBLEMS FACING FRANCO. Generalissimo Francisco Francos Government in Spain is faced with a double problem, and it is still niuch too early to see what the answers will be to these questions: How is the civil war to be liquidated? How will Spain be reconstructed? wrote Jules Sauerwein, foreign editor of the “ParisSoir,” in the “New York Times” recently. In some ways it is the first of these questions that is more important. For on the manner in which tlm Franco Government liquidates the civil war depends the general economic and political policy that will follow and inevitably also its foreign relations. ; If the civil war is terminated by re-1 pression, the Government will not be! able to count of the good will of its! former domestic enemies. It will have to set up autarchy and institute a regime nf strictly authoritative forces, and Spain will become a dependent of the Rome-Berlin. Axis. If it does otherwise, the consequences will be the reverse. Spain will re-enter the concert of liberal nations, she will not push her authority as far as Fascism, she will be neutral in the event ofj war, and she will become a factor fori peace in the world. | What the answer will be to these] questions interests not only Spain hut all Europe, and no answer can yet be given. During my fifteen-day visit to Spain, I was told by some that “repression is ferocious, the prisons are full to overflowing. and every 'day hundreds of men are executed.”

Others were equally emphatic in saying that the only persons in prison and being judged were those accused of common-law crimes. “They will receive punishment proportionate to their crimes,” it was stated. It was impossible to verify which of these descriptions of the situation corresponded more exactly to the truth. Even from impartial people it was not possible to obtain an exact impression of the extent of repression. One estimate that was given me was of 20,000 political prisoners and twenty executions daily in Madrid alone. On the other hand, at Vigo, which was almost entirely spared by the war, 1 was told there had been executions everv day during the past eighteen months and that the same thing had happened in most of the towns ol Spain. I One fact that can be confirmed and ' is in favour of General Franco’s armies | is that there was no massacre after their victory. Discipline was maintained. Whereas in Barcelona the Republicans had spread terror among: the population by reports that the, Moroccans were torturing and cuttingi the throats of the population without! restraint and the Valencia radio Jtn- ( nounced on the day the Nationalists entered that city that, mutilated corpses were piled in heaps in the' Place de Catalogue, funcionaries of the French Consulate situated on that.j square assured me that nothing of thei kind took place. They saw no assassinations in the' streets. It appeared to me from much that I heard that very often reprisals, especially in small localities, were acts of personal vengeance. Some months before the cud ol the civil war, a highly-placed society woman was heard declaring in Lisbon, Portgual, that she had obtained from a high source authorisation to have nine persons executed when she returned to Madrid for assassination, robbery, and destruction of members and property of her family. I

MANY ARRESTS MADE. On the other hand, a considerable number of persons were arrested and imprisoned. The procedure in many

of these cases was summary. In other cases, as that of Professor Julian Besteiro, public trial was accorded. In many villages and small towns, private persons, some of them, priests and some of them functionaries who had escaped during the Republican regime, returned with lists of militant syndicalists and anarchists whom they claimed to have the right to have executed. There is no doubt, too, that the police in the first days after the war ended assumed the right to eliminate certain prisoners; and it is said that even some Italian and German military units acted in this way.

I All these reports are disturbing, but I when one considers the severity of the civil war and the really enormous Inumber of Spaniards assassinated or executed summarily by extremists acting in the name of the Republic, it is not surprising that the Francoists should act no differently. What is, in my opinion, even more serious than these trials and executions is the attitude of the victims towards their former enemies as a whole. In France we had a short but ( very violent civil war during the two ’months when the Commune held Paris in 1871. It was followed by nearly 10,000 executions. The United States had a civil war comparable in passion and much greater in military importance than that which has been fought in Spain. That repression occurs after such a trial is not surprising.

i But what is essential is that afterwards those who are beaten shall not be trodden on and that they shall be permitted and even enabled to resume their place in the nation’s social life. In Spain that is not happening. What is happening all too often is that those whose only crime is their loyalty to the Republican Government are being denounced by candidates for the jobs they hold and turned out of their jobs to swell the army of unemployed and discontents, whereas they might easily be made into good useful citizens. On the other hand, as has happened in Italy and Germany, men without any value who were six months ago members of the Anarchist Federation are to-day being enrolled in the Falange I was told of cases lin which these quick converts wore 'already receiving promotion. I If (hat procedure is maintained and [if a. large part of the population is dis- ' criminated against, it will mean that [the victors have not been able to rise [above their worst instincts, that 'peace will not be secured, and that .Spain will be under the constraint <-f [a totalitarian regime with all its poll'tical consequences. [ My personal view is, however, that economic necessities will inevitably bring the rulers of Spain towards a more liberal policy within their country so as to permit employment of all its vital forces and to a. prudent policy abroad so as to obtain the credits essential for the work of reconstruction. Even ah hough pacts of friendship have been signed with Italy and Germany, they should not be interpreted as a decisive indication of the future. Another six months must pass before it will be possible to judge the role that Spain may play in Europe.