4000 B.C.-1936 A.D.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SPANISH TOWN -- Elliot Paul -- Random House ($2.50).

Discovered by U. S. escapists in the late great Depression, the Balearics seemed almost too good to be true. Escapist Elliot Paul found on Iviza, smaller and less-known than Majorca, just the place he was looking for. In a village called Santa Eulalia he spent five years off & on, went back for his last visit in July 1936, few days before civil war cut Iviza off from the world. In The Life and Death of a Spanish Town, Author Paul says hail & farewell to Santa Eulalia with heartfelt emotion, little knowing that Iviza would be on all front pages when his book came out as the scene of the bombing of the Deutschland (TIME, June 7).

First part of his book shows Santa Eulalia as it was: a pleasant little town of 3,000 individuals, most of whom Paul knew, most of whom he liked. In Spanish politics, Paul's sympathies were all to the Left, but he had good friends on the Right as well. He mourns equally over them all: "In all Iviza's 6,000 years the watchers on her hills saw no stranger sights than I did, nothing more unreal, more unexpected. . . . Nineteen thirty-six, take your place in the corridor of bloody years! Be proud, if you can, of what you have evoked and produced and spilt. . . ."

First thing that happened was martial law, declared by Iviza's fascist military commandant. Then there were raids, arrests of those who owned radios; then no more news from anywhere. As suspense deepened, rumors spread, money stopped circulating, two old people killed themselves. A plane appeared, flew over Santa Eulalia, was shot at by fascist soldiers. Few days later, another plane flew over. This one dropped leaflets which said that Government forces were coming to retake the island.

One day, sure enough, a Government fleet rounded the headland, briefly bombarded the town of Iviza, then landed 4,000 men on Iviza. A few (not many, says Paul) of the leading fascists were shot. Soon the Government army left, to retake Majorca. When the papers told of the Majorca expedition being withdrawn, mentioned Italian bombing planes, people in Iviza knew what was coming. One Sunday noon it came--four planes dropping bombs. Fifty-five (42 of them women and children, says Paul) were killed. In a rage of revenge, Government guards massacred their rebel prisoners. Paul went into Iviza next day to find out what was going on, saw scores of dead bodies on the floor of the prison. He recognized many of the faces. By that time he was ready to go. When a German destroyer came to evacuate foreigners he took his family and an Ivicenco friend aboard. What was going to happen to the friends who could not get away he knew all too well.

The Author, Elliot Harold Paul, 46, looks like a Frenchman but was Massachusetts-born & bred, left his job as newshawk to go to France with the A.E.F. as a private, came out as a sergeant. In 1925 he went back to France, worked on the Paris editions of the Chicago Tribune, New York Herald, with Eugene Jolas founded the literary left-wing review transition (TIME, July 13). An accomplished musician, Author Paul is an authority on the clavichord and harpsichord, is now working on a "musical novel" (his eighth) in Manhattan. He hopes to get back to Iviza "some day."

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