Royal Marriage
ALTHOUGH everyone is talking about her in Madrid, there seems to be very little to tell of Fabiola de Mora y Aragon, except that she is a thoroughly 'nice' girl, who has written some fairy-tales and plays the piano by ear, whose ser- vaflts adore her and who piously spends a great deal of her time visiting the poor. On the whole, people think that she and Baudouin make a good pair. But only the Spanish journalists are gen- uinely thrilled by the news. They have every reason to be. For once they may let their pens run wild.
They are certainly taking every advantage of the opportunity. The present, past and future of Fabiola are painted in the most glowing colours. Special editions of illustrated magazines publish every conceivable detail about her, ranging from her family tree to her horoscope. The headlines are exuberant : 'Spain and Belgium are no longer separated by the Pyrenees!' One writer recalls this is the second time in history that the First Lady of Belgium is to be Spanish. 'May she• be as happy and beloved of the Belgian people as her illustrious predecessor!' he pleads—having presumably forgotten that Isabel Clara Eugenia, the daughter of Philip II, King of Spain and Ruler of Belgium and the Netherlands; had to leave the country rather hurriedly when the Belgians decided that they had had enough of Spanish domination.
The, most characteristic article on the theme is probably the one published on September 22 by the Catholic daily Ya: `. . . at last the dreary grind of the Cold War, of the vulgar outbursts of Khrushchev and Lumumba . . . has been broken by a ray of light. . . . Thanks to Fabiola Spain has at last come into the headlines of the world press. While other countries are producing rockets and satellites, Spain has• put something far more important into orbit, a genuine woman. . .
With the papers so full of Fabiola and Baudouin, it is easy not to notice that the Spanish press is publishing few comments on the North American elections, though they may be of vital importance to Spain. One reason is that the religious issue may be so important in the elec- tion campaign. It cannot fail to be embarrassing for such a country as Spain, which is ruled by a firm alliance of Church and State, to see its * It has been announced that next October one of Federico Garcia Lorca's plays, Yerma, will be presented in the theatre here. In the past the poet's sisters have refused to give permission for them to be staged in Spain while their brother's enemies remain in power. Malicious rumour has it that Lorca's sisters have run short of money and have therefore discarded their principles; but it may well be that they have realised at last that their refusal only served to deprive the generation of today of some of the finest works of the Spanish theatre, while those who were the poet's enemies during his lifetime are unaffected. So now, at last, Madrid will see one of the plays which have for so many years been applauded in all the capitals of Europe.
After the long summer holidays the school year has started with an official announcement that all Catholic priests will henceforth be considered the equals of graduate teachers in secondary education. This means that a priest does not need a university degree in order to be considered capable of teaching in a grammar school. In future it will become even more difficult for a graduate teacher to obtain an appointment in the schools run by religious orders—that is to say, in the majority of Spanish schools—because obviously these schools would prefer to employ a priest rather than a layman. This new regula- tion does not seem to apply to nuns, but pessimis- tic secondary school teachers tell me that they would not be surprised to see a sort of suffragette movement spring up in the convents, claiming that nuns also should be allowed to teach ht grammar schools without diplomas. Big Brother and Protector express so vehemently the conviction that the Catholic Church should keep its hands off politics.
Strangely enough, the opposition groups do not seem to have woken up to the idea that here they have an excellent opportunity for staging demonstrations against the part which the Church plays in the government of Spain, congratulating the American people on their wisdom and pro- gressive convictions regarding this point. It would be amusing to watch the efforts of the Spanish press trying to tie a Communist label to pro- American demonstrations.
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