Conzinonwealth and Foreign

THE STATE OF FRANCO SPAIN

By GEORGE EDINGER

I TALKED quite recently to General Aranda, an outspoken leader in Franco's military mission to Germany, who has upset his hosts by stressing Spain's neutrality in case of a European War.

It was an unusual kind of interview, conducted on a hilltop in Aragon, while we were theoretically under fire. The General was directing an attack on Castellon de la Plana. So we were continually interrupted by staff officers, motor cyclists and miscellaneous visitors who made the headquarters in a Moorish watch tower look like a non-stop cocktail party. It was typical of the leisured atmosphere of the War that the General should choose that moment to discuss the future of Spain with a foreign journalist.

" We must rebuild," he waved figuratively at the Moorish tower, " rebuild everything. We want all the friends we can get. We should not be stupid enough to make new enemies." The General was obviously sincere, and he has proved it since. British opinion was sceptical then, but today even such dutiful Italian Fascist periodicals as Gerarchia ("founded by Benito Mussolini ") admit that "while the influence of Moscow will be eliminated from the New Spain, London may resume her place owing to certain powerful economic and financial influences."

These " influences " are not specified. But to anyone in touch with Franco Spain they are obvious.

Aranda was well aware of them when he spoke. Franco has heavy debts, notably for petrol to the Standard Oil Com- pany. He must sell his oranges, tomatoes and sherry, and Britain is virtually his only market.

He has to guard an exposed and extensive coastline with a navy that has lost its best ships and cannot count on its crews, because their sympathies are still with the Republic. He must repair the damage of a struggle in which some million Spaniards were killed, executed, massacred or exiled. And he must feed and rehouse everywhere.

Paradoxically, there was more to eat in each half of a divided Spain than there is in the whole of a re-united one. As the Daily Telegraph correspondent remarked in the most ingeni- ous message that ever circumvented a censor : " Madrid is well supplied with food except for coffee, sugar, rice, beans, chick peas, potatoes, codfish and flour," which means " Madrid is well supplied with food except for all the staple articles of her people's diet." Nerves are giving under the strain.

There is rebellion in the Asturias and " brigandage " in Andalusia. Rival parties. of Monarchists and Fascists continu- ally come to blows, with loss of life—the last-reported clash was in Pamplona last week. Acddents such as recently cost the life of the Franco air ace Garcia Morato while he was giving a display before German cameramen in. Madrid, sug- gest a widespread sabotage. Although many peasants and factory workers have welcomed back their old masters and

employers with obvious relief—at Lerida I knew one to be carried shoulder-high round the workshops while the men pressed forward to kiss his hand—there remain undercurrents of unrest and nuclei of hatred that make everyday life both disagreeable and insecure for the reinstated victors.

Neither Germany nor Italy can help Franco to tackle these troubles.

Their nationals are not popular. Inevitably many Spaniards recall the number of their relatives and friends who were slaughtered by these strangers with bombs and cannon. The Nationalists who may or may not owe their victory to this " co-operation " from abroad do not like to be reminded of it; and both Hitler and Mussolini insist on reminding them.

Typically, General Yague, the hero of that very Falange which is supposed to embody all in Spain that is pro-Axis, refused to ride in the Victory parade because of the place given in it to the Italians.

The Nationalists say, " We wanted their material and we paid for it. We did not want their men, they were forced on us." " Now they want us to pay for their guns with our lives' by joining their Axis," a veteran Monarchist politician said to me; " do you not think there is rather a Jewish trait in the bargaining of these anti-Semites? "

Both Germany and Italy built high hopes on the Falange, but Spanish Fascism as a popular movement has been stillborn.

Perhaps an immediate post-war atmosphere is unfavourable to ideological hysteria. The Falange has certainly been a forcing ground for certain young theorists like Stier, Cuesta and Gonzalez Bueno, who have brought back efficient ideas of organisation from Germany. But its programme is nebu- lous and it has few popular roots. Before the war it could not count 6,000 adherents in all Madrid, and its Party Militia, now disbanded, was chiefly useful as a means by which Syndicalists and Anarchists could escape the wrath to come by putting on a blue shirt embroidered with red arrows.

Efforts to put Hider over have been disastrous. A film that showed him addressing the Munich Conference, to an audience of soldiers-and Falangist militiamen in Bilbao the other day, roused the comment : " Tomatoes would be in demand if we had a clown like that."

Yet terrific efforts backed by unlimited aid from abroad are still being made to foist the Falange on the new Spain, while outwardly its character remains that of an Axis propa- ganda agency. Its catchwords and slogans are literal trans- lations from the German and Italian, it has its youth and children's organisations on the Nazi model, and it is allied to a Labour organisation under Gonzalez Cuesta that is officially styled " National Syndicalist," and is, in fact, a close copy of Dr. Ley's Labour Front.

Falangist leaders and organisers are constantly attending courses in Italy and Germany, and however apathetic the rank and file may be in their attachment to Axis ideals, and however shaky the hold the organisation has on the Spanish people, there is no doubt that Germany and Italy hope to impose a pro-Axis policy on the Falange through its leaders, while the Nationalist Government impose the Falange on their own people at home.

They are encouraged by the fact that the only organised opposition allowed to exist is a Royalist Traditionalism with a limited and even localised appeal. The red-capped Requetes were Franco's best native fighters, they died gallantly for " Christ and King," while the Falangist militia excelled in " keeping order " behind the line. But such things weigh very little against a vast demagogic organisation backed by ample funds and carefully fostered by foreign Powers.

If the Royalists were our only hope, the outlook for the democracies would be discouraging. But there are other factors against the Axis. Portugal gave twice as many lives as Italy to the Franco cause (6,000 as opposed to 3,000), and Salazar is warning Franco to go slow with the Axis. The Church in- clines towards the democracies, and the Hierarchy has now managed to wrest the control of " Accion Catolica," principal organisation for educating the young, out of the hands of Falangist laymen. Franco's chief financial adviser, Don Juan March, is racially not quite Aryan (racialism, by the way, is unpopular in Franco Spain), and politically he is in favour of neutrality. Count Jordana, the Foreign Minister, has a great liking and admiration for France, which he acquired in Morocco while he worked with the late General Lyautey. And Spain as a whole grows increasingly conscious that the needs all the friends she can get. The form of friendship she would chiefly appreciate today would be the dispatch of food and medicines, and, above all, of transport to distribute them, for Franco's rolling stock is worn out and most of his lorries have broken down.