UNREST CONTINUES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 13

UNREST CONTINUES

PRISONERS SET FREE MANY DEMONSTRATIONS (Received February 21, 5.5 p.m.) MADRID. Feb. 20 While Senor Azana and his colleagues were drawing up a formula for an amnesty, reports were arriving from many parts of Spain of attacks on gaols, the wrecking of local headquarters of the Rightists and the burning of churches. A mob of several hundred people stormed the Oviedo gaol and after sweeping the police and guards aside opened the cells and released every prisoner in custody. These numbered nearly 1000. Those released joined their rescuers in a triumphal march through the city. A procession of 20,000 people in Corunna marched to the gaol, where the guards allowed a deputation to take 17 prisoners, who were carried shoulder high to the City Hall. There the demonstrators dispersed peacefully. A crowd at Gijon liberated the inmates of two prisons. Demonstrators at Alicante came into collision with the police, who fired, killing two and wounding two. Thereupon martial law was again imposed. Extremists set fire to the offices of a Roman Catholic newspaper, burned a convent to the ground and sacked the headquarters of tho Popular Action Party. Demonstrators at Murcia wrecked the printing presses of the Roman Catholic newspaper Truth and set fire to the building.

Prisoners in a reformatory mutinied and set fire to the building, which troops surrounded. Don Emieiio Iglesias, formerly Ambassador to Brazil, was arrested on a charge of attempting to falsify election returns at Lalin. A crowd cried: "We want Iglesias' head!"