Letter from Spain
From FRANCISCO SUAREZ
MADRID
El OR the last twenty years of his life, the IL Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, best -mown in England for his ballet The Three- Cornered llat, worked on what was to be his masterpiece, the Atlantida, based on an epic poem by the Catalonian writer Jacinto Verdaguer.
Having left Spain at the beginning of the Civil War, Falla settled in Argentina and died there in 1946. Luckily his doctor advised his sister a few days before his death to gather all the loose pages of the score into a case and to deposit it in the National Bank of Argentina, for immedi- ately after the funeral the house was overrun by people searching for the score—or parts of Then, five years ago, the Milanese music pub- lishers, Ricordi, who had originally com- missioned Falla to write the Atlantida, entrusted the job of its completion to Falla's outstanding pupil, Ernesto Hal ffter.
When the Atlantida was finally ready to be staged, the • Spanish Government paid a hand- some sum to Ricordi for the privilege of putting on the world premiere at the Lyceo Theatre in Barcelona. But rehearsals were carried on hap- hazardly. Halffter was not consulted at all; the choirs were only assembled at the last moment; and Victoria de los Angeles did not have time to absorb the part, reaching only technical per- fection. Nevertheless Falla's music came across and Halffter's additions fused in with it. But in Barcelona more attention was paid to the social than to the artistic side. Catalonians resented the fact that most of the tickets were reserved for Madrid, but there is no doubt that the Lyceo has never seen such a brilliant gather- ing. The young Prince Juan Carlos, heir of the pretender to the Spanish throne, was enthusiasti- cally applauded upon his arrival, during the in- terval and when he left—a fact which was immediately interpreted by royalist circles as a most important manifestation in favour of the Monarchy.
Juan Carlos is in fashion at the moment. Although the news of his coming wedding has ceased to occupy the Spanish press, it is still being widely talked about by those who are in- terested in the fate of the exiled Royal Family. Apparently General Franco had expressed his wish that the wedding should take place in Madrid, hoping that the representatives of certain ruling houses might thus be induced to come to Spain; but Don Juan, the Pretender, has refused outright, not wishing to compromise himself with the present Spanish Government.
Yet a recent bulletin of the Spanish Pretender's private council shows that in theory at least his aims are not very different from Franco's. The `Fundamental Principles of the Monarchy' are in favour of the most diehard traditionalist form of authoritarian rule. This comes as a surprise after the recent rather more liberal phase, during which Don Juan had even gone as far as in- viting the Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto to discuss some form of collaboration in the future. At the last moment, however, when Prieto was already in Europe, the private council vetoed the plan.
In Beasain, an industrial centre in the province of Guipuzcoa (heavy metallurgical industries : railway engines, weapons, etc.), several thousands of workers have been on strike, though the Decree of Martial Law of September, 1960, which is still in force, classes strikes as one of the aspects of military rebellion. Though the police have proceeded sternly against the demon- strators, wounding several of them (one died of his injuries), the strike continued to spread. Needless to say, not a word of this has been mentioned in the national press.
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