TROUBLED SPAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 April 1934, Page 3

TROUBLED SPAIN

OUTLAWS AND STRIKERS CONTRASTS IN HOLY WEEK LONDON, Ist April. Barcelona's newly organised Catalan police force lifts brought off a* spectacular coup arresting 30 ssujfccts, many ot whom are beiieved to be pistoleros (outlaws). The police have, seized arms and ammunition and a phantom motor car which figured in recent robberies, and have recovered much booty. Syndicalists' (revolutionaries) met on a, suburban common known as the Rationalist Athenaeum, owing to the leniency of the regular police toward the outlaws. A body of recruits from the police training school watched the area,with field glasses for several day?,: then casually boarded a train and stopped it by pulling Uie emergency cord as it was passing the . common. Then they jumped off and rushed the assemblage, whose retreat was cut off by police in ambush with a machines'” l - - Statements made by the prisoners enabled further arrests. One .prisoner; confessed that be relinquished cabinetmaking because the wages and hours for outlaws were much better.

Gunmen killed a policeman ini Granada and also at Malaga, whore-;') though a general strike failed, gangs of workman ordered taximen. and. trails-, port workers homo, causing fierce riots in the. workmen’s quarter. A motor bus was burned and several people were wounded. Strikes continue in Madrid and Valencia, and also at Saragossa, where, prisoners beat a visiting magistrate and prosecutor. . A general renewal of religious processions and demonstrations during .Holy Week forms a marked contrast with the widespread lawlessness. The faithful flocked to churches in Malaga immediately after the rioting. The explosion' of ii petard in a church at Zamora,:.and threats to burn other churches, have not damped religious fervour. Revival of the world-famous celebrations at Seville indicated a remarkable recovery of the influence of Catholicism, lost under (lie new regime.

A striking scene was witnessed ,in the working-class district at Macavena at 1 a.m., when the statue of the ’virgin Do La E-speranzn. swayed forth from .a church on the shoulders of 40 hearers, and passed between ranks of candles and parterres of flowers as the. multitude chanted pious couplets.