BOOKS OF THE DAY
Visit to Spain
An Interlude in Spain. By Charles d'Ydewalle. (Macmillan. 8s. 6d.)
Tins book is the first of what is likely to become a long and exciting series : it is an account of prison life in a Fascist country. Only that country is not German-occupied Europe, but Spain. The author, M. d'Ydewalle, is no enthusiast for Left-wing views. On the contrary, he is a distinguished Belgian journalist well known in this country, a lover of horses and of quiet dinner-parties at the Ritz, the author of a biography of King Albert and a strong Con- servative and Catholic. During the Spanish Civil War he supported the Nationalist cause and was one of the few foreign journalists permitted to interview Franco. And then in November, 1941, escaping from Belgium to England, he found himself in a Spanish prison. This book is an account of the eight months he spent there.
His first place of detention, where he spent four months, was the Camel Modelo at Barcelona. This place, built to hold 700, then accommodated 8,000. Although only one of the regular prisons in Barcelona—not to speak of the innumerable churches and convents which the present regime has converted to prison use—it seems to have been the best. For though crowded, underfed and dirty, the prisoners had one immense privilege : they could mix and talk with one another.
In Fascist countries today the truth is to be found not in the streets but in the prisons. There alone people can talk freely. And they talk all day because there is nothing else to do. So M. d'Ydewalle soon learned the secrets of Franco's paradise : the million or so people in prison, the unknown number in labour battalions, the continual executions, the beatings and tortures, the starvation and misery. Some of these things stared him in the face. One wing of the prison housed the lunatics who had either gone mad under their treatment or were shamming madness to avoid worse things. Another contained the condemned cells, where large numbers of wretches sat awaiting their execution.. At this time, three years after the occupation of Barcelona by the Nationalists, five or six were being shot every week. As M. d'Ydewalle says, " I can scarcely imagine that ever in the course of history the practice of killing could have been pursued so deliberately, and with such tedious monotony." There was a very revolting kind of cruelty, too. M. d'Ydewalle spoke to an old man who had been compelled to stand giving the Falangist salute and singing the Falangist hymn whilst his son was executed before his eyes. I often heard of such things being done by Franco's followers during the first months of the Military Rising, but I hesitated to believe them. One of his most extraordinary stories is about a Belgian Barnabite priest, Father van Nekker, who had been threatened by the Rexists on account of his anti-fascist sermons. Warned to leave Belgium, he set out for England. In Spain he was arrested and imprisoned. Interrogated by a German Gestapo agent in the presence of the Spanish police, he was tortured to make him give information. After
this he was taken to a prison at Madrid, where the lowest type of criminals were housed, and subjected to daily insults. His cell was so low that it could only be reached on all fours : 45 centimetres. was the space allotted to each person : tortures and shootings went on all the time. It was not till eight months had passed that the Papal Nuncio secured his transfer to the camp at Miranda. And Farther van Nekker was not the only foreign priest to be treated in this way. Yet Belgium had received the Spanish monks and Jesuits during the Civil War with extreme generosity. '
A feature which especially shocked M. d'Ydewalle was the " constant intervention of priests and nuns in judicial matters." The prison was plastered with pictures of the Sacred Heart, agonising Christs and Our Ladies of Mercy. Sunday mass was compulsory, although none of the Spanish prisoners believed, and the more they saw of this mockery of religion the more they hated it. " Seldom," says M. d'Ydewalle, " has a Christian soldier, claiming to serve the Catholic religion, done it such mortal disservice."
The author spent the last months of his stay in Spain at the
concentration camp for foreigners at del Ebro. Here con- ditions were better. Yet he has some Miranda"heart-breaking stories to tell, not least of which is that of the starving boys of the Labour battalion —the sons of Spanish " Reds "—who scrambled and fought for crusts of food thrown out of the window. His portraits of other prisoners, especially of the foreigners, whom he understood better than the Spaniards, are admirable and make up the most fascinating part of this most readable book.
There is one point where I do not agree with M. d'Ydewalle. He cannot forget that he once- ardently supported General Franco and he still sees the recent history of Spain through Nationalist eyes. This leads him to the belief that there is little to choose in point of savagery between one kind of Spaniard and another. I find such an attitude too cynical. The Spaniards are a race with a great and noble history. Their tragedy today is part of the general tragedy of Europe. On top of an old quarrel between Left and Right, between a fanatical Church and a fanatical anti-clericalism,'came the Fascist poison. And one of the peculiar evils of Fascism is that it corrupts its victims as well as its supporters. Nations that are not well knit break up under it, both politically and morally. Look at Greece and Yugoslavia. This book teaches us one thing: that to leave the present regime in control of Spain after the defeat of Germany would be to leave an open and infectious sore in Western Europe. It is nonsense to think that there are no better alternatives. Up to now we have not even tried to find them. Why should the ambiguous angel of Munich still preside over our approach to
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