State of the Republic

In Madrid last week Deputy Jiminez Asua made formal request to the Supreme Court to reopen the famed de Arrizola case of 1901 on the basis of new evidence in behalf of the plaintiff and proof of forgery presented by the defendant. Alfonso XIII. The move called world attention to a cause celebre of 20 years ago, to ex-King Alfonso mouse-quiet in Fontainbleau and to the state of the Spanish Republic.

Unlike Don Jaime de Bourbon, Alfonso XIII's cousin, Alfonso Sanz y Martinez de Arrizola never claimed to be the rightful King of Spain, but he did claim that the Spanish royal family owed him a living, promised him an inheritance and defaulted its obligation. The story:

Alfonso XIII's father, Alfonso XII, was married to his pretty cousin Maria de las Mercedes de Montpensier only six months before she died. Almost immediately after he listened to the advice of his ministers and married the Habsburg archduchess Maria Christina, and to console himself entered into a liaison with the singer

Carolina Martinez de Arrizola. According to legend he presented her with two sons and a complaisant husband, one Sanz. In 1885 Alfonso XII suddenly died. Three months after his death it was suddenly announced that the Queen was pregnant. Three months later Alfonso XIII was born and the little Sanz y Martinez de Arrizola boys, aged 2 and 5, were hastily smuggled to France.

When Alfonso Sanz y Martinez de Arrizola was 20 in 1901 he brought suit in French courts claiming that the inheritance settlement promised him had never been paid. According to Deputy Asua the case was quashed when King Alfonso, Don Carlos de Bourbon and Fernando Marlo de Baviera presented documents disproving the entire story. In France the case dragged on & on. Should Deputy Asua's charges of last week stick, it may be possible for the Spanish government to demand Alfonso XIII's extradition on charges of forgery. True or false the affair revived not only the de Arrizola scandal but all the still earlier rumors of Alfonso's illegitimacy which even the growth of his super-Habsburg jaw never entirely obliterated.

Spanish republicans had special reason to belittle their former King last week. On Good Friday the Spanish Republic will celebrate with much pomp its second birthday. How was the young state doing?

Church & State. In the Cortes last week final approval was given the bill presented by President Alcala Zamora in October to seize "temples of all classes, episcopal palaces, rectories, seminaries and other buildings of the Catholic cult . . . also all ornaments, pictures and other such objects in them." Such property is valued roughly at $500,000,000. As in France it is expected that these treasures will not be sold but turned back to the clergy as wardens for the state.

Land. Slowly and cautiously the government of bag-jowled Premier Manuel Azana proceeds with the confiscation of the grandees' great estates. Minister of Agriculture Marcelino Domingo Sanjuan announced last week that a census of Spanish farmers is being taken, will be completed by autumn when final distribution of the confiscated lands can be announced. Next day he issued a special order exempting the estates of the Duke of Veragua (descendant of Christopher Columbus) and the Bishop of Urgel (joint suzerain with France of the Republic of Andorra). All this was much too slow for hot-headed Andalusians. At Sorinano last week peasants spat on their hands, hitched up 140 teams of mules, overran and squatted on the estate of Saturning, defied the shiny-hatted Guardia Civil to eject them.

Catalonia. Since September. Catalonia has been an autonomous state in Spain, with its own "President," its own Parliament which has fought bitterly ever since over the exact proportion of Catalan taxes it should pay to the Madrid government. Life has not been dull. President Francisco Macia and his Council have battled up and down the corridors of the

Captain Generalcy over whether the President or the Council shall have final executive authority. Meanwhile Barcelona was stricken with a crime wave: police discovered a humming bomb factory that had already turned out over 100,000 bombs. All this President Macia's private newspaper blamed on undesirables from the rest of Spain. Under the headline CATALONIA REFUSES TO BE THE NATION'S SEWER! it said:

"Catalans must not marry Spaniards. If they do Catalonia will be inhabited by half-breeds in a few generations."

For the first time last week President Macia spoke to the U. S. public through a newsreel address filled with amiable generalities on liberty and international goodwill. "The Spanish Constitution," explained a Barcelona correspondent, "expressly prohibits Senor Macia's speaking on foreign affairs."

Prietograd. Most obvious change in two years of the Republic has been the tremendous program of civic improvements in Madrid pushed by egg-headed Minister of Public Works Indalecio Prieto. Because he is a Socialist, because his only solution for unemployment is to build more buildings, lay out more streets, conservatives have long dubbed the city Prietograd. To date the city has been given an enormous outdoor swimming pool with an artificial beach, the old race track has been demolished to make way for a spectacular Plaza de la Republica, the aristocratic Paseo de la Castellana has been renamed Gran Avenida de la Libertad and lengthened nearly two miles, and a great deal of work has been completed on the 900-acre University City (started by King Alfonso) in suburban Moncloa Park. Next on the program is a new railroad station, and the electrification of all Madrid railway lines.

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