Red Flags

What began last fortnight as Spain's least bloody election in years was swelling last week into horrid crescendos of threatened social upheaval, secession and civil war. Overnight 30,000 political prisoners came bustling out of jail. They included the furious Catalonian secessionist, "President" Luis Companys, who had just begun to serve a 30-year stretch in a grim Andalusian prison for having proclaimed the industrial northeast of Spain the independent Republic of Catalonia (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934). Out of jail popped most of this suppressed Republic's Parliament and met in Barcelona, their capital. In Madrid more or less delirious Spanish mobsters and political ex-convicts paraded around, brandishing plain red flags, singing the Internationale and shouting vaguely "Long Live Russia!"

Every train to the French frontier was jammed with taut-faced people. "Who are they?" a correspondent asked a station official at the frontier. "Dukes, marquises and millionaires!" replied the station official correctly.

Even that notorious dastard and Spanish Political Grafter Juan March, popularly supposed to get his way in any part of Spain with 1,000 peseta notes, bolted like a rabbit for France until things should quiet down. A few weeks ago brazen Juan March was offering publicly to highest bidders the Governorship of a Spanish province and all its seats in the Cortes, which he claimed to control. Last week Dastard March and the blameless Duquesa de Fernan Nunez were about equally scared. The Duchess stripped off her great rope of pearls, left it with Spanish frontier guards "for safe keeping," because otherwise they obstinately refused to permit Her Grace to flee to France.

All this was the more shocking because a study of the election returns, when all ballots had been finally counted, forced Madrid correspondents to cable that the election was a draw. Spanish party coalition lines are so loosely drawn that, although the "Left" appeared to have won 253 seats, and the "Right" 220, there was no assurance that a vote of confidence could be won by the bilious Left Republican who suddenly found himself again Premier, sickly-green-complexioned Don Manuel Azana. The President of the Republic, uneasy old Don Niceto Alcala Zamora, was not in the least sure that the unexpected ballot victory of the Left might not enflame the Right's scheming would-be Dictator, Don Jose Maria Gil Robles, to attempt a coup d'etat.

Amid the tense, confused situation in Madrid an ominous reality loomed in the fact that Communists and Socialists had pooled their votes, their voices and their actions in Spain. This was in accordance with the new "united front policy" adopted last year in Moscow by the Comintern or United Communist Parties of the World, on the shrewd instruction of Joseph Stalin (TIME, Aug. 5 et seq.). Intimidation, not votes, was the force which actually opened Spain's jails last week and spewed out 30,000 "politicals."

This week in Spain the burning down of churches by Spanish Communists sporadically erupted; the Papal Nuncio went bustling around to see what could be done with the Republican Premier; the Gil Robles crowd in their newsorgan Ya professed to reveal that just over $200,000 yearly in money from Russia was passed around among Spain's proletariat.

To such charges the red-flag-waving Spanish marchers replied with roars of "Down with Fascism!" Except for the tradition that things always settle down in Spain, a struggle of the most profound nature might seem to have been joined last week. In Barcelona the Catalonians went about screaming that their Republic had already seceded from Spain, but that remained to be seen. Thus Carnival Week burst upon Spain and the revolutionary red-flag-marchers were caught up in a whirl of Spanish citizens gaily dancing and cavorting in the streets. For the time being Spain's crisis was snowed under with confetti.

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