Fugitives from Franco

SMOULDERING FREEDOM -- Isabel de Palencia -- Longmans, Green ($3).

At half-past eleven on the wintry night of Feb. 1, 1939, the Spanish Republican Government of Premier Juan Negrin assembled in the basement of an ancient castle near the snowy Pyrenees. Their three-year struggle against Franco and his Nazi-Fascist allies was broken at last; under German and Italian bombardment, a half million starving, destitute Spaniards were straggling through the mountains toward the French border.

Last month in Mexico City, Juan Ne grin and a remnant of the Spanish Cortes met again. Of the 474 deputies elected to the Cortes in Spain's last general elections (1936), 127 have died -- mostly by execution. The Mexico City meeting, mustering 94 of the 98 deputies now living in Mexico, named Diego Martinez Barrio Provisional President of the Spanish Republic (TIME, Aug. 20).

Now that fat Francisco Franco's clock is close to striking twelve, on the nose of the news comes Isabel de Palencia's account of the men & women who ran away to fight another day for freedom. Smouldering Freedom, is partly an updating of her own earlier autobiography (I Must Have Liberty), partly a picture of Mexico's "Pilgrim Spain" of Republican exiles.

Mexican Refuge. Author de Palencia, born in Malaga of a Spanish father and a Scottish mother, has long interpreted Spain and its politics to the outside world. Madrid correspondent for several London papers and lecturer in both Britain and the U.S., author of two novels and a book on child psychology, she also served as Spanish delegate to the ILO and to the League of Nations.

When the civil war broke out in 1936, energetic Senora de Palencia was her country's Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden and Finland -- the first woman ever to represent Spain abroad. After the final, desperate retreat, she and her family went to Mexico, whose Government had extended an open-house invitation to all Spanish refugees.

In all, some 12,000 fugitives from Franco settled in Mexico, most of them in and around Mexico City. They found the language and customs congenial, relief for those who needed it efficient and openhanded. The Cardenas Government offered immediate free citizenship for the asking, set up a Casa de Espana through which scholars and other refugee intellectuals could carry on.

Living Spirit. In other Latin American countries -- Cuba, Chile, Colombia, and even Argentina -- smaller colonies worked hard "keeping alive the spirit of Republican Spain." And in Russia thousands of Spanish children were housed and educated. Socialist-minded Diplomat de Palencia does not dwell on the political activities of the Republic's refugees, does her best to lay the bogey of Communism that has so damaged the Loyalist cause in America. But her book leaves no doubt that doctrinal disputes mean far less to her than does a united front to carry the smouldering torch of freedom back to Spain.

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