Harsh Days in Spain

Throughout Francisco Franco's long dictatorial rule, Spain's press has usually been kept as docile as his political opposition. Then, two years ago, the Generalissimo signaled a change. By abolishing some forms of censorship and adopting a more relaxed press code, his government seemed to be saying that it would tolerate freedom of information--up to a point. That point has now apparently been passed.

In the past three months, the government has confiscated the press runs of three newspapers, seized the editions of four magazines. It has also brought criminal charges against seven journalists and sentenced two others to jail--all for violating the purportedly liberalized law. To their chagrin, newsmen found that the government could hold them or their publications accountable for any breach of a vague and all-embracing clause that demands respect for truth, morality, public order and the family honor of all Spaniards.

In most European countries, even some of the Communist bloc, the alleged offenses would be classified as trivia. The Madrid daily El Alcazar, for example, was fined $375 for erroneously reporting that a Falangist leader had paid a call on Franco. A Barcelona editor was given an eight-month prison term for publishing a letter that denounced Catalan nationalism--a letter that echoed the government's own views. Why, then, was he punished? In a nation where veiled irony and subtle ridicule have been wielded so often in place of open criticism, nervous officials may detect calculated mischief-making even in some reports that seem to follow the official line.

Loudest Protest. Now 168 journalists --nearly a third of Madrid's press corps --have sounded the loudest protest yet against the regime's renewed press crackdown. They wrote an angry letter to Information Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, which has not been published but which was widely quoted in Madrid last week.

What outraged the journalists most was the case of the evening paper Madrid. Its offenses: quoting a French scholar's reference to the disorders at the University of Madrid, where students have repeatedly clashed with police, and printing a remark by the rector of the University of Salamanca blaming student unrest on a "political vacuum." Finally, there was a piece by Editorial Writer Rafael Calvo Serer. Wrongly anticipating the defeat of De Gaulle, he had written: "What remains clear is the incompatibility of a personal and authoritarian government within the structures of the industrial society and with the democratic mentality of our epoch." Even though Serer had referred to another man in another country, Franco's censors felt that the cap might fit all too well, and suspended Madrid for two months.

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