SPAIN: Saint’s Day

Nothing of significance disturbed the fratricidal Spanish war last week, as the cold weather further congealed the stalemate. It was of passing interest that on the Saint’s Day of Alfonso XIII, which fell last week, observances were celebrated all over the White half of Spain. “He was made to walk the Via Dolorosa carrying the burden of all of us,” sentimentally observed San Sebastian’s typical Dvario Vasco. “He cannot walk back along this thorny path; but, a Spaniard before a Monarch, he will be the first to rejoice in a free, strong Spain.” As the Saint’s Day was also that of all Spaniards who happen to be named Alfonso, plenty of Reds also celebrated in Red territory—for to many a Spaniard things superficially religious are basically just Spanish. Thus last spring, during Holy week in Seville, a group of particularly resolute Communists, wearing Red arm bands with the hammer & sickle, with the holsters of pistols peeping from their pockets, escorted through the streets the life-size figure of the Virgin Mary belonging to their district. “We don’t trust those Fascist swine!” explained one of these Reds. “They pretend to be good Catholics but we are sure they don’t harm the Holy Mother of our part of Seville. Somebody fired at her last time, and you can be sure it was one of those psalm-singing Fascists, the stinking dogs!” As each of these Communists was supposed to believe with the late Great Lenin that “Religion is the opium of the people,” observers could only repeat the old saw, “Most Catholics in Spain are pagan, but not all of them know it.”