SPAIN: Bread and Heat

Only one last road from Madrid to the sea was open last week, the 294-mile railway to Valencia.Having cut off the Capital from all other avenues of succor or escape, the White Armies ofGeneralissimo Francisco Franco were advancing with such vigor that Premier Largo Caballero and his Cabinet were daily rumored, via Rebel sources, on the point of flight. Disciplined effectiveness suddenly appeared in the roving mobs of Premier Largo Caballero’s proletarian militiamen. These have fought bravely enough time and again, but too often only in their own good time and place. This week they hurled themselves into a savage counterattack, and the Madrid radio broadcast that they had recaptured the important Maqueda junction on the Toledo road.

Meanwhile White Generalissimo Franco arrived at the Alcazar Fortress which his Whites relieved after 71 days of heroic siege (TIME, Oct. 5). Haggard, tattered and bearded, the cadets and soldiers of Spain’s West Point garrison, who have written one of the most exciting pages in their country’s modern history, lined up in front of the Generalissimo, a dumpy little chief in a tasseled forage cap. Down the line he went, kissing each man and clasping him hard. Then out stepped the Alcázar’s heroic Commandant, bearded, emaciated Colonel José Moscardó. The circles under his eyes were greenish black and he trembled as he walked. “Colonel José Moscardó,” said the White Generalissimo, “I confer upon you the Cross of San Fernando, and I confer this same cross collectively upon the whole company of Spain’s greatest heroes.” He then raised Colonel Moscardó to the rank of General and appointed him Commander of the Eastern Army.

Getting into an airplane, the Generalissimo then flew over Madrid and on to Burgos, the North headquarters of the Whites. With the Capital almost encircled, it was time for White “Provisional President” General Miguel Cabanellas to hand over his trappings of authority to the prospective White Dictator. Drawing a sword and flourishing it over Generalissimo Franco as though knighting him, the snowy-bearded “Provisional President” exclaimed: “General Franco, in the name of the Lord, and by the will of the Spanish People, I hand over to you full power over The Spanish State.”

After this bit of White pageantry, Spain’s civil chaos remained in status quo, except that White Franco established his so-called Government as a Triumvirate, the two lesser prongs of this political trident being White North General Emilio Mola and White South General Queipo de Llano. “I promise cordial relations with every nation except Soviet Russia,” cried White Franco, “and bread and heat for every Spanish home this winter.”