A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE plucky attempts by the Spanish censorship
to prevent General Franco's subjects from hearing any- thing at all about the Coronation are said to be based partly on the fear that news of this event might stimulate monarchist feelings, and partly on one of those waves of anti- British feeling to which foreigners are periodically—and on the whole, I suppose, very understandably—subject. The Spanish Ministry of Information is being extremely thorough. Air-lines and travel agencies are forbidden to allude to the celebrations in their advertisements, and when a Madrid evening paper quoted Mr. Bing Crosby as saying " I shall be going on to London for the Coronation festivities," the sentence was obliterated as the paper went to press. Believing as I do that if there must be dictators they should never be discouraged from making themselves ridiculous, I wish the Spanish authorities the best of luck in their exacting and risible enterprise.
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