Strike in the Darkness

From the operating theater in Madrid's Lourdes Hospital came an urgent cry: "Quick, bring candles!" The power had failed, the lights were out, and a surgeon, halfway through a cancer operation one night last week, was left in total darkness. On Madrid's Gran Via, the Spanish capital's Broadway, neon-lit theaters darkened, shop windows went black. Stumbling through the darkness, Madrilenos cursed the latest and worst of a series of major cuts in the city's electricity supply. It was the same throughout most of Spain. A season of parching droughts had left the reservoirs empty. The hydroelectric power plants are old. and the grid system that distributes their current does not suffice for Spain's growing need for industrial power.

Christian Mission. Worst hit of all were the drab industrial towns of northern Spain, where factory shutdowns meant less daily bread for the workers. In Bilbao (pop. 230,000), factories and steel plants were rationed to 15 hours of power a week; unemployment soared, wages fell below subsistence. To alleviate the misery and to encourage the workers, Bilbao's energetic young Bishop Casimiro Morcillo Gonzalez set up a mission whose motto was "Towards a Better Life." All week long, 300 priests used 2,000 loudspeakers to urge "Christian solidarity" for the workers, "social justice" from the employers, and quoted the Pope's words: "The workers, objects of my special love." Bilbao's deeply religious workmen listened and hoped.

Then came new work cuts. The men sent a deputation to talk things over with Elisardo Bilbao, the tough, despotic manager of the Euskalduna steel plant. Don Elisardo drove them off with this fierce warning: "Men, you make one move and I'll have you all in jail. Now go and complain to your priests."

Next morning 5,000 Euskalduna workers, defying Spain's drastic laws against industrial strikes, stood at their machines, silent and unbudging. Escorted by armed guards, Don Elisardo strode among the workers, cursing and threatening. Silently they stared back at him, and would not work. Three truckloads of guardsmen drew up and drove the workmen from the plant. Sixteen of them were bundled into a Black Maria.

Conversation Piece. Only 200 men showed up for work next day. Then, when management threatened to fire all who did not report to work, 50% of the workers yielded. Two thousand men in black berets hung around outside the gates in silence. "Sorry, friend," said one worker as he left the plant at night, eyes cast down. "The woman has no money for the market." A striker answered without hostility: "I know, brother. I am lucky. I have no family."

This week Dictator Franco's sindicatos, state-appointed bosses of the state-run "trade unions," were converging on Bilbao to halt the spreading unrest. "These poor fellows are not to blame," said one of the bosses. "There are some very delicate angles. The French say cherchez la femme. Here in Spain we might say cherchez le cure."

In Spain's state-controlled press, no word was printed about the Bilbao strike.

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