Guillotine

To the vast surprise of Premier Manuel Azana and his Socialist coalition government, municipal elections in 2,500 Spanish towns and villages last month rolled up impressive Conservative and Royalist majorities. It was the first nationwide chance women have ever had to vote in Spain, the first nationwide chance Spaniards have had to express themselves on the Republic.

As soon as returns reached the Cortes, Conservative deputies were up in their seats yelling for power. Oppositionists gathered under the spokesmanship of a fiery Sevillian, Martinez Barrios. Premier Azana, fighting not only for the Socialist coalition but for the Republic, called on each of the opposition leaders personally to beg for a truce. In his peppery, nasal Andalusian voice Senor Barrios snapped:

"The government's offer is flatly refused. Spain is not with you. We demand that you get out. and we will continue our tactics if you do not."

To the mounting Conservative opposition in the Cortes, the Socialist government has always stated that it would never resign until the law of religious congregations was passed, breaking the power of the Church, and a general program for the Republic established. Conservatives have kept the Church bill, passed piecemeal, from becoming law by festooning its articles with hundreds of amendments, talking for days. Premier Azana last fortnight drummed up the votes of every Cabinet Minister, even of deputies out on diplomatic missions, to jam through by one vote what Spanish deputies call the "Guillotine," a cloture rule which the government can invoke with a simple majority. Then off went all the amendments to the remaining articles, and the Church bill was "guillotined" through last week, 278 to 50, few minority members bothering to register their opposition.

Most immediate result will be that parochial schools--which today educate nearly 50% of all Spanish children--must close Sept. 30 for the secondary, Dec. 31 for the primary establishments.

Secondary effect was that $500,000,000 worth of churches and church property were nationalized--to be left in the clergy's trusteeship for the time being but free to be seized or sold at the first hint of anti-government activity. Only the more conservative realized the tremendous task that the Government was undertaking: training and placing in schools nearly 80,000 lay teachers before Jan. 1, to take the places of the monks and nuns who for centuries have taught Spaniards all that they thought necessary.*

No friend of dictatorships, the "guillotine" (which must be voted anew for each of the government's "fundamental laws") made Premier Azana first cousin to a dictator. Dictators breed revolution. Manuel Azana well realized that fact and moved to forestall it by ordering the arrest of all army officers whose loyalty to the Republic is in doubt. Chief prisoner was General Manuel Goded. After the fall of the monarchy two years ago General Goded was in high Republican favor for having started a plot to oust Dictator Primo de Rivera in 1929, for having told King Alfonso that his troops would no longer fight for him. Later General Goded changed his mind, was placed on the retired list. Just to be sure, he was exiled last week to the Canary Islands.

*Fifty percent of all Spaniards are illiterate. Outside of the big cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Bilbao, Cadiz) the proportion is nearly 80%.

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