SPAIN: Cats & Seagulls

The sixth anniversary of the founding of the Spanish Republic was celebrated by Leftist Spain last week with many a fervent vow “to redouble labor for victory.” To Spanish President Manuel Azaña came a cable of good wishes from Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, indicating that Japan has no intention of recognizing the Insurgent regime of General Francisco Franco. Unperturbed, General Franco wiped the anniversary from the Rightist calendar, decreed a fiesta for May 2 to mark “the first triumphal year” of his revolt which began last July. The discrepancy of two months he overlooked in order to offset the “Red” May Day events which will be observed elsewhere in Europe.

Though the Leftists had the best of last week’s fighting, the Rightists showed no sign of cracking and the end of the war seemed as far off as ever. Most critical battle of the week was to the southeast of Bilbao, the Basque capital which Rightist General Emilio Mola was determined to storm or starve out. Backward and forward swung the bloody struggle for the heights of Saibi Peak guarding the plains five miles from the key city of Durango. Besieged by land, blockaded by sea Bilbao’s war-swollen population of 350,000 was reported eating cats and seagulls. Gritting his teeth, Basque President José Antonio de Aguirre y Lecube declared: “We are in good shape.”

In southern Spain, 80 miles from the Portuguese frontier, 1,500 Rightists who eight months ago shut themselves up in the Sanctuary of the Virgin, a convent atop Mount Cabeza, last week scaled the granite walls of their fortress to escape. They were fleeing not from the Leftist siege but from two officers of their own side, Captain Cortes and Lieutenant Ruano, who had set up a rule of military terror in the convent, throwing into musty cells the starved and sick who wanted to surrender. During the siege, 21 children were born in the Virgin’s Sanctuary.

On Madrid’s siege-front 3,000 Rightists, bottled up amid the wreckage of University City, were in bad shape. With little or no drinking water, crouching in shell holes, they waited day after day for General Franco’s main body on the other side of the Manzanares River to come to their aid. General José Miaja, Leftist commander in central Spain, by loudspeakers ordered the trapped Rightists to surrender or be annihilated. They received the ultimatum with grim defiance, and by week’s end were still holding their ground, besieged within a siege.

One spark of humanity relieved the savage horror of the civil war last week. With Rightist corpses strewn over the El Pardo sector, just northwest of Madrid, General Franco passed word from trench to trench to ask the Leftists for a brief truce during which he might bury his dead. The Leftists gave the cease-fire order and Franco’s stretcher-bearers gathered up crumpled bodies while guns in other sectors boomed a gruesome requiem.

Next day the Leftists alleged that they had uncovered “the largest spy ring found in the capital since the war started”: 55 spys, including “a number of monks paid by Italian religious organizations” and twelve women ostensibly fighting for the Leftists, were charged with plotting to turn Madrid over to General Franco.

This week as the war’s ninth month slid into the past, the Leftists hastily mobilized peasants and city workers to push the fierce drive few miles to the northwest of Teruel, General Franco’s powerful garrison in eastern Spain, 150 miles from Madrid. Again and again the Leftists, backed by war planes, thrust forward in an effort to weaken General Franco’s hold in that critical sector lest he succeed in wrecking their communications between Valencia and Barcelona.