SPAIN: 22 Divisions

From Madrid to the most remote villages, young Spaniards went on parade last week. Some sported colored paper hats. Others lurched along brimful of wine. All wore on their chests red-and-gold cardboard badges with the inscription “Quinta 50″—Class of 1950. The young men, 160,000 of them, were going to join the Spanish army, the biggest non-Communist fighting force in Europe today.

Beyond the Pale. The nations of Western Europe, led by France and Britain, find it hard to forget that Dictator Francisco Franco was the protegé of Hitler and Mussolini; they have put him and his army beyond the pale of their defensive alliance. But lately Atlantic pact strategists have been thinking hard about the Spanish army. If the Communists marched across Europe, Franco’s men would be needed to fight from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar for the Continent’s strategic southwest corner.

Franco has 485,000 “bodies in the line”: a standing army of 422,000 men in 22 divisions, 23,000 men in a 72-ship navy, a 40,000-man air force. In all-out mobilization, Spain’s military leaders say they can put 2,000,000 men in the field.

Most conscripts come from poor peasants or urban families. Military service (as in Asiatic armies) often betters their living standards. The Spanish army gives its soldiers comforts unavailable to many civilians: three solid meals a day, warm clothing, good leather boots, free medical care, even legal aid. Camps and barracks may grow their own vegetables. One motorized artillery regiment just outside Madrid has 400 pigs. Its commander boasts: “Cerdo [pork] is one of the secrets of the fine fighting spirit of my men. Give them cerdo twice a day and a gun, and nobody can stop them.”

One thing the camps can’t grow is equipment. Armament is the Spanish army’s most pressing weakness. Though national arsenals produce plenty of machine guns, Mauser rifles and revolvers, they are tooled to turn out only about a dozen 60-mm. and 105-mm. guns a month. For heavy artillery, the army relies on a jumble of obsolete German, French and Italian guns; finding shells to fit the odd-sized barrels is a head-splitting problem.

The navy is even creakier. Spain’s biggest ship, the 10,000-ton cruiser Canarias, is 20 years old; other capital vessels date back to 1923, and none has modern radar. Of the navy’s four submarines, three are never sent below the surface for fear they might not come up again. Spain has 1,550 trained pilots, but only 350 outdated military aircraft.

This threadbare force costs Spain $150 million a year, about 30% of the total budget—a crushing burden for a poor country where the average take-home pay of an urban worker is $21 a month.

Behind the Mountains. Spain’s topography is a formidable military asset. Franco has built a defense in depth in the Pyrenees. Mountain passes are studded with pillboxes. Airfields have been built against the day when they might be used by bombers the air force does not possess. Although some have good to excellent concrete runways (Barcelona and Seville: 5,000 ft.; Madrid: 10,000 ft.), they do not yet add up to enough landing room for a big air force. But Spain has also many natural airfields, such as “La Mancha” plateau, legendary home of Don Quixote, a barren tableland south of Madrid, 120 miles long and 60 miles wide. And in the northwest port of El Ferrol, one of the best natural naval bases in Europe, Spanish engineers are hewing submarine shelters out of solid rock, building a 1,090-ft. drydock which can float an Essex-class carrier.

Just as its soldiers are deficient in modern weapons, so Spain’s terrain lacks efficient communications. Spain’s railway system is a sad tangle of lumpy roadbeds and worn-out rolling stock. The country needs at least $300 million for rail repairs. Realistically, it has little hope of a general military agreement with the Atlantic powers; Spain resents Great Britain for Gibraltar, regards France as Communist-ridden and degenerate, though these nationalist sentiments might fade if its West European neighbors were to accept it as an ally. Spanish military men have more hope of swinging a deal for direct aid from the U.S. Asked last week whether Spain would welcome U.S. military aid, a Spanish colonel answered: “Welcome? We are hungry for it!”