Spain: Franco’s Headache (Contd.)

The strikes in Spain were still spreading. They followed a curious random pattern, made all the more confusing by Dictator Francisco Franco’s tight internal censorship, which permitted virtually no mention in the press of the little upheavals, except for optimistic predictions that they would soon end. Minor walkouts were now occurring even in the Madrid area; a brief uprising among inmates of El Puerto prison on the south coast was quelled peacefully. There was lingering talk of a back-to-work movement among the Asturias miners, but the government’s increase in coal prices to provide more cash for the workers made little or no impression. In all, some 60,000 Spanish workers and miners were off the job.

Heartened by Roman Catholic Church support for their demands, some 1,000 striking workers in Barcelona gathered around the palace of Archbishop Gregorio Modrego y Casáus, seeking more aid in their dispute with employers. When police pushed to the scene, priests mingled with the protesting mob to restrain both workers and police from violence. Finally the archbishop himself appeared, to urge calm and send the workers on their way.

In Madrid, Franco met secretly with Catholic Primate Enrique Cardinal Play Deniel for some heated debate over the regime’s power to arrest and try priests.

It was, after all, the Workers’ Brotherhoods of Catholic Action—the closest thing to a free labor movement in Spain —that encouraged many of the strikers in the first place. Three priests connected with the brotherhoods have been arrested and fined, and Franco’s police apparently plan to deal harshly with other churchmen who show excessive sympathy with the strikers. To avoid trouble, Ya, Madrid’s Roman Catholic daily, printed an editorial asking solidarity with the government, and the three troublesome priests were disciplined by their superior.

Dealing with his most worrisome political problem in 15 years. Dictator Franco once again postponed his much-delayed fishing trip to Asturias, canceled a trip to Barcelona, where he was to have opened an international trade fair.