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Spanish vultures A voice of death was heard again in the land in Geneva on Saturday when tape recordings of a new speech by Senora Dolores Ibarruri — La Pasionaria of Spanish Civil War notoriety — were played at a rally of Spanish dissidents overseas. The Swiss government had forbidden this still potent symbol of the Spanish left to speak live, but both she and Senor Santiago Carrillo, the Secretary General of the Spanish Communist Party, did so briefly after the tapes were played, and La Pasionaria then led the gathering in singing one of the songs of the civil war period. It is circumstances of open provocation and defiance such as these which give the lie to the hypocritical professions of peaceful intentions made in appeals to the army to overthrow General Franco. It was, Perhaps, inevitable that after recent events in Portugal, and after the dismissal of General Diaz Alegria, the Spanish vultures in exile would begin again to gather to threaten their country with a renewed outbreak of the blood and suffering of forty years ago, For, let there be no mistake, there is very little comparison between the situation in Portugal before the emergence of General Spinola and that in Spain now: the still potent memory of the civil war ensures that. If there is to be continued and peaceful progress in Spain it will depend not on the machinations of Communist exiles Who have lost none of the bitterness of the 'thirties, but on the orderliness of the succession to General Franco, on, in a word, the steadfastness of the Spanish people and those Who make up their present government.
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