Mes: marzo 1936

  • Tras las elecciones, huida burguesa, amenazas de secesión, caos social y guerra civil

    What began last fortnight as Spain’s least bloody election in years was swelling last week into horrid crescendos of threatened social upheaval, secession and civil war. Overnight 30,000 political prisoners came bustling out of jail. They included the furious Catalonian secessionist, «President» Luis Companys, who had just begun to serve a 30-year stretch in a grim Andalusian prison for having proclaimed the industrial northeast of Spain the independent Republic of Catalonia (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934). Out of jail popped most of this suppressed Republic’s Parliament and met in Barcelona, their capital. In Madrid more or less delirious Spanish mobsters and political ex-convicts paraded around, brandishing plain red flags, singing the Internationale and shouting vaguely «Long Live Russia!»

    Every train to the French frontier was jammed with taut-faced people. «Who are they?» a correspondent asked a station official at the frontier. «Dukes, marquises and millionaires!» replied the station official correctly.

  • La Vanguardia niega que vivan gitanos auténticos en Barcelona

    De vez en vez cruza por Barcelona una tribu gitana. De gitanos auténticos, de esos que llevan su pueblo a cuestas, sus tiendas, su calderería y su horizonte. Las ordenanzas municipales favorecen su temperamento andariego. Porque, claro, se instalan en las faldas de Montjuich, por ejemplo, y al cabo de unas horas se ven obligados a plantar sus reales en San Martín. En alguna parte han de reposar. Y como casi siempre coincide el paso de una de estas tribus con el de un cronista extranjero, al cabo de unos días puede leerse en cualquier periódico del mundo, que, como Granada, corno Sevilla, Barcelona también tiene su barrio gitano.

  • «Companys consigue la autonomía para Cataluña»

    The hotheaded, toothbrush-mustached Spanish Catalan, Luis Companys, became a rebel when he added to the chaos of Spain’s October 1934 revolution by declaring his native province, rich, industrial Catalonia, an independent republic. He became a martyr when the Government sent him to jail for 30 years. He became a hero when the Left victory in the Spanish general election last month sent him and 30,000 other rebels of 1934 rollicking out of Spain’s jails. This week he became a liberator when he wangled from Spain’s Republican Premier Manuel Azaña «local autonomy» for Catalonia. In Spain old issues never die, and States’ Rights is the deathless battle cry of Catalonia & Companys.