The Lone Voice

Among the 1,400-odd newspapers and magazines of Spain, only one is free of ironhanded censorship by the Franco government. The exception is Ecclesia (circ. 17,000), official weekly organ of the Spanish Catholic Action group. Ecclesia owes its freedom to its powerful chairman, Enrico Cardinal Pla y Deniel, Archbishop of Toledo and Cardinal Primate of Spain, who is able to stand up for his rights as no Spanish journalist can. Last week Ecclesia Editor Jesus Iribarren, 42, a Basque priest who is the cardinal's journalistic right hand, used the weekly's unique freedom to denounce Franco's censorship, on behalf of the silenced Spanish press.

In an editorial, Editor Iribarren reported on a recent trip he made to France to attend the International Convention of the Catholic Press. Members of the Spanish delegation, he wrote, were the only newsmen on hand, of 30 nations represented, who came from a country with no press freedom. Wrote Editor Iribarren: "Newspapermen from other countries have a spirit of initiative and personal decision, compared to [our country], where the press is directed. [We can] write only what is ordered ... In Spain public opinion is disregarded, and anybody who wants to read the news has to look anywhere except in newspapers." Spain's rigid press censorship dates from the civil war, when Franco published a "provisional law" giving the state the right to appoint and dismiss editors. By daily directives to editors, the government also dictates what to print and what not to print. As a result Spanish newspapers have fallen into such low esteem that the combined circulation of all seven of Madrid's dailies does not even equal the circulation of one daily before the "provisional law" went into effect 16 years ago.

The government does not limit itself to controlling its own press; foreign correspondents have been harassed, and foreign newspapers and magazines (including TIME) have frequently been banned.

In such an atmosphere it was small wonder last week that Ecclesia's free-swinging editorial was read over and over again and passed by word of mouth. Or that not one line about it appeared in any other Spanish paper.

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