SPAIN: Honi Soit . . .

The summer season was in full, gay swing last week along the smooth, half-moon beach at swank San Sebastian, official summer playground of Spanish officials and Madrid’s diplomatic corps. But while some of Fascist Franco’s officials relaxed on the white sand, others renewed their vigilance over the nation’s morals:

¶ In Madrid, Government censors warned all newspapers not to publish any photographs of girls in bathing suits.

¶ At Bilbao, the Provincial Governor promised stern enforcement of the ban on bathing suits “so revealing as to be offensive to public modesty.” In particular, bathers must immediately robe themselves upon leaving the water. No sun bathing in damp, clinging suits.*

But there remained on Spain’s shores this week one small stretch of sand which Franco’s mandatory morality could not govern: the roped-off diplomatic section of the San Sebastian beach. On the edge of this exclusive area, Spaniards leered at diplomatically immune bathers, immodestly stretching out in their soggy suits.

*For Spanish politicians, sex has long been an unnerving problem. Ten years ago, even Spain’s rugged, hardheaded Anarchists found time at a moment of acute national crisis to grapple with the question of public nudity. Their last national convention, meeting in Saragossa’s bull ring a few days before Franco’s rebellion flared, hotly debated the question: in any Spanish village, should a majority favoring nudism be empowered to strip a minority that clung to their shirts and skirts? An appeal to the rights of individuals to choose for themselves was overruled. The triumphant argument: no community could long endure half clothed, half naked.