When Piero Saporiti first began thinking about his career in Italy more than 20 years ago, he decided that "the only profession retaining some romance, individuality and personal initiative" was journalism. The intervening years have not changed that opinion. This month Saporiti becomes our first fulltime correspondent in Madrid (and brings the number of TIME'S overseas bureaus to 15).

Saporiti was in Portugal when he first started as stringer (part-time correspondent) for TIME in the spring of 1946. Before that he had been free-lancing for Reuters, United Feature Syndicate and France Presse, as well as writing a weekly syndicated column for the Portuguese press. His first major assignment for TIME was filing background material for the cover story on Portuguese Premier Salazar (TIME, July 22, 1946).

Late that year Saporiti moved to the French Riviera, then staging a comeback as the playground of the international set. There he showed a talent for cultivating key people, like the private detective who helped him identify visitors traveling incognito. Three years ago he moved to Spain. There he has covered such varied assignments as the anti-Franco activities of Spanish monarchists, including the colorful Duchess of Valencia; the visits of a U.S. Navy squadron and Jordan's King Abdullah; Barcelona's general strike over high living costs and the subsequent government clampdown on the strikers; the controversy in Avila over the birthplace of St. Teresa and Professor Sidney Sufrin's recently -completed mission to study Spain's economy for the EGA.

Some of Saporiti's major difficulties as a journalist have grown out of TIME stories which found official disfavor in Spain, sometimes resulting in confiscation of the magazine. He has twice been brought to police headquarters, and once had his press credentials suspended for two months, but, says Saporiti, "The authorities never accused me of inaccuracy."

While working on the St. Teresa story last fall, he received a cable asking him to locate and interview Gypsy Rose Lee, reported to be in Barcelona. After hours of trying to find her by telephone, he was told she had left for Paris. He wired the Paris office and, with a huge sigh of relief, resumed his work on the St. Teresa story. But Paris wired back, saying Gypsy was still in Spain. Dialing number after number, and talking to almost every tipster he knew, he finally located her, registered under her husband's Spanish name at a Madrid hotel--only a few blocks away from his own apartment.

On one occasion, Saporiti's ingenuity backfired. To interview the nuns at the strictly-cloistered convent of Las Huelgas, he brought along his wife (the former Jocelyn Bush of Boston), because he expected to be denied admission. It turned out that he was able to get into the convent, by special permission, but that no woman other than a nun is permitted to enter. His wife waited outside for two hours in the cold.

Madrid's leisurely pace, Saporiti finds, means less leisure for him. His mornings start with a two-hour bout with Spanish newspapers. ("Local journalism," he explains, "is based on a challenge: 'Find the facts if you can, reader.'") At 11, he is joined by an assistant, Eric Ericsson, of Kokomo, Ind. They telephone news sources and write until lunch time, after which Spaniards of any repute can be located only in their favorite coffeehouses.

"After six years of the most exciting experience of my journalistic life," writes Saporiti, "I believe the essence of reporting for TIME is a continuous curiosity about facts and people, a zest for accuracy, a flair for news sensibility, trends, understanding the other man's feelings and some sense of humor."

With such an outlook, TIME'S newest bureau is off to a good start.

Cordially yours,

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