SPAIN: Basque

Almost six months have fled since the Spanish Dictator, Captain-General Primo Rivera, exiled for criticizing his august régime the venerated littérateur, Don Miguel de Unamuno. And so, willy-nilly, off went the poet-philosopher, erstwhile Rector of Salamanca University to Godforsaken Puerto Cabras in the isle of Fuerteventura in the horrid, torrid zone.

From this barren isle, which lies off the north-west coast of Africa and forms a unit of the Canary Isles, Don Miguel was in the habit of sending forth to the outside world violent protests against the cavalier manner in which Primo had treated him and also against the arbitrary rule of him that is called Primo.

In Britain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, growls of protest swelled to a swirling roar of indignation. Even in the U. S. voices were not silent. A Unamuno letter was recently sent to the press, accompanied by a hot letter from Judge Peter J. Hamilton of Porto Rico. Don Unamuno’s letter, in part: “I have been exiled here, having-been given twenty-four hours to abandon my house, without judicial writ, not even of a military judge ; without any proceeding and without telling me why.”

Then came a royal pronunciamento of amnesty (TIME, July 14). Don Miguel was free, free to go back to Spain.

Last week, however, news came from Paris that Unamuno had been rescued by Le Quotidien, Paris Radical journal, which had fitted up a ship to goto Fuerteventura. After an adventurous voyage the ship, under command of M. Henri Dumay, directeur of the Progrès Civique, arrived at its destination and effected, under terrible risks, the rescue.

The question rose as to whether Don Miguel escaped before the amnesty was granted or whether he left after being notified of his liberty, as the Spanish Government declared he was. Le Quotidien declared, however, that the exiled man was rescued before the glad news was conveyed to him. The argument seems puerile: the poet-philosopher* is free, is going to Paris; there to work “among the free men of France for light and liberty.”

* Don Miguel de Unamuno was born nearly 60 years ago, and is a scion of an old Basque family. The Basques speak a language foreign to Spaniards; they are passionately fond of freedom and independence−as witness their history; in battle, whether of deeds or words, they are brave and tenacious.

Don Miquel is neither a great student nor a great critic of philosophy, but is himself a philosopher dealing with his own material−”naked humanity and its secret passions and hidden dreams, its obscure gropings and faltering hopes” Probably his greatest work is Del Sentimento Tragico de la Vida. In 1912, even the King spoke of him as “my friend Unamuno.”