NEW SPANISH CUSTOM.

Western Star, 10 July 1936, Page 3

NEW SPANISH CUSTOM.

FOOTBALL IN A GAOL. Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning and outside the new prison of Madrid is a constant stream of wealtliy-lookiiig cars wrote Oliver Baldwin from Spam to the ‘Daily Mail’ recently. Packards and Hispano-Suizas, Clin slers and Hudsons, stop outside the prison gates and deposit the welldressed wives, mothers, and ssters of the Fascists who were arrested for assumed implication in an expected coup d-etat , With food and clothing for their menfolk, the families enter the prison and pass an hour or two in free conversation with them, then, happy and undisturbed, return to their homes, I suppose that nowhere else in the world could such a thing occur in a country ■which is still in a state of political tension; nor could the friends of political prisoners he given such freedom anywhere else. When the Socialists were m prison before the last election, many of them were fed better than they had ever been in their lives, and now that the shoe i s on the other foot there is an extraordinary absence of revenge or hatred, . . ■ . . One of these prisoners is Antonio Prime de Rivera, the son of the former Dictator of Spain, and the young leader of the Spanish ' Phalanx—a group of well-to-do young men supported by members of the bourgeois and artisan classes, which is a Fascist organisation calling itself the National Phalanx on the lines of the German National-Socialism. As I have heard many tales of Socialist victims of Right persecution, I asked Senor Primo de Rivera of his present conditions, and whether lie had any complaints. He assured me he had only one, and that was that his country was not a serious country, and that if a man was condemned to two years he should serve lii s full sentence and not be let out as a favour. Here. I thought, is a real conception of a disciplined State, There were many hundreds of exofficers in prison with him, hut few belonging to his organisation, which he insisted was not affected by his temporary absence. He was afraid he was taking too much liking to football, which he played every day, and hoped it would not affect his political keenness, as he would he out soon. What was hie programme?—National Syndicalism. Had he many supporters?—About 80,000. X 1 Were they all well-to-do? —No; they included shopkeeper? and artisans. Did he believe in direct action?—He smiled. Was he not surprised that a news- | paper man should pQjne to sec him? ' Not in the least; anyone coukl come. So I hoped he would he as lenient to,others if he ever ruled the State as the present Government was to him and left him to his 'friends. and the six. vear-old sop of a fellow prisoner, who saluted him with hand on high. This then, was the ultimate hope of big business on flip Right Wing, those people for whom everything in Spain is in chaos and who. living in their own circle, recount strange tales Jive to another. Within an hour I have met two big. business men of different fore'gn nations both anti-Socialist ; the one had no word had enough for Senor. A/.un-'

and hiq Government; ‘the other had found nothing upsetting to his intefesjjs.