WAR IN SPAIN: Franco to the Sea

French truck drivers, drawing triple pay, were going out of Leftist Spain last week sporting gold wrist watches, silk socks & shirts, smoking the best cigars. At restaurants just inside the French border they could be seen swizzling champagne, ordering such delicacies as speckled trout, fresh asparagus, vieux cognac. These lusty lads have been driving an average of 200 heavy trucks per day from Republican France over the officially closed frontier into Leftist Spain. The 2,000 tons they took in daily were mostly passed as “agricultural implements” or “foodstuffs.” A truck careening down the road at Montauban overturned last week, the French driver was killed, four large cases of “foodstuffs” broke open, and out rolled war plane motors. At Honfleur, France, an overloaded winch, lifting huge cases out of a steamer flying the flag of Panama which had arrived with “agricultural machinery” for Leftist Spain, broke down. This accident smashed against the side of the dock cases which broke open, spilled out six-inch gun carriages and a submachine gun.

Meanwhile, in groups large & small, many Leftist Spanish soldiers came half-famished through the crags of thePyrenees, stumbling over crests white with eternal snow (see cut). They straggled down the valleys, handed their guns to French frontier guards, entered refugee camps where there was no champagne or speckled trout, only spring water and stew dipped steaming from a bucket. Unsympathetic with these soldiers who had stopped fighting, pugnacious Novelist Ernest Hemingway filed a hard-boiled dispatch from Leftist Spain’s sunny seacoast: “In the far north, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, General Franco’s troops have advanced steadily north and eastward in a country where positions could be held by determined graduates of any good girls’ finishing school!”

Aranda to the Sea! If the Leftist flight in the Pyrenees sector continues, the Rightists will soon have detached Leftist Spain from France, cut off the flood of French and Soviet munitions through France. This is Rightist Objective No. 1, would almost certainly decide the war. Last week Rightist Objective No. 2 was to complete the drive to the sea and definitely cut Leftist Spain in twain, although to all intents & purposes Generalissimo Francisco Franco accomplished this when Italian Fascist Militia fought down the Ebro River Valley, besieged the town of Tortosa (TIME, April 18).

The Italian “Black Arrow” contingent advanced fortnight ago, broadcasting their achievement directly to Rome, whence it was rebroadcast to all Italy. Then at the gates of Tortosa they ceased broadcasting. Generalissimo Franco, after the Black Arrows had failed for eleven days to take Tortosa, last week politely left them to continue their efforts, sent a smashing 100% Rightist Spanish offensive under General Miguel Aranda driving down to the sea a few miles south of Tortosa. Viñaroz was the first seaside town to be occupied. There General Aranda’s Galician troops went down to the shore and jubilantly planted their red & gold banners in the sands. Not a few hands made the ceremony complete by going in for a swim. The populace under Leftist rule for the past 21 months changed politics quickly. Shouting the Franco shibboleth, “Viva España!”, they lined the streets as the troops marched in, singing “For God, Fatherland and King did our ancestors battle! For God, Fatherland and King also battle we!”

This most professional drive was executed by having Rightist General Garcia Escamez hotly engage a large Leftist defending force in frontal attack, while Rightist Generals Garcia Valino and Aranda swept around the Leftists’ wings, met behind them and then swept on toward the Mediterranean in a 16-mile-wide offensive. Twenty miles of coast, from the outskirts of San Carlos de la Rápita to Peñiscola were in Rightist hands by week’s end.

Holy Week. The church at Viñaroz, transformed by the Peoples Army of the Spanish Leftist into a market, was hastily cleaned out, reconsecrated in time for Easter services last week. In Seville the traditional ceremonies of Holy Week, celebrated before the civil war with greater popular participation and solemn pomp than anywhere else in the world, were back to normal last week, with His Eminence Pedro Cardinal Segura officiating. Once again all Seville turned out, cigaret workers from the factory of Carmen in Bizet’s famed opera shouldering their gorgeous, gold, bejeweled Madonna of Victory.

Penitents, marching barefoot over the cobbles, were more numerous than usual, many kept going until their feet were bruised and bleeding. On the eve of Good Friday the stately Madonna, Our Lady of Solitude, was carried into Seville Cathedral amid absolute, prayerful silence by the vast throng. Present on Palm Sunday as the Generalissimo’s representative, was usually loud “Radio General” Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, silent for once. He had walked for five hours in one of the mystic Holy Week processions.

Three Regimes. In Barcelona determined Leftist Premier Juan Negrin clarioned “Fight on!,” telephoned to Madrid’s famed old General José Miaja appointing him military dictator of Southern Leftist Spain. Its area this week was 60,975 square miles; that of Premier Negrin’s own Northern Leftist Spain 9,725 square miles; while the area of Rightist Spain was 125,900 square miles.