Royal Standards Down

The House of Bourbon's golden fleur-de-lis dropped low last week. For days Generalissimo Francisco Franco's great yellow Mercedes-Benz, manned with chaffeur and aide, had waited in Lisbon to carry Don Juan to Spain. Juan had hesitated. Then suddenly, Franco's car was gone.

Inside Spain, ancient monarchist families painfully felt a new, hostile attitude. It was rumored that Jacobo Maria del Pilar Carlos Manuel Fitz-James Stuart Falco, Duke of Alba (Britain's Duke of Berwick), the Duchess of Medina Sidonia, the Duke of Medinaceli and others were fined a half million pesetas for signing a royalist manifesto. It was fact that Alba and five more "ceased" to be members of the Cortes, that royalist officials were fired, that royalist university professors were assaulted by Falangist students.

The Generalissimo's grip on the Army tightened. Royalist Lieut. General Alfredo Kindelan was ordered off to "confinement" in the Canaries, where once the Republic had tried to confine Franco. Franco's old friend Lieut. General Juan Vigon Suerodiaz moved into the Chief of Staff post. Command of the Valladolid region went to Don Juan's unfriendly cousin, Francisco Bourbon, Duke of Seville.

Almost insolently Franco drove home his point. For months he had hesitated to shoot ten Spanish "Communists because France and several Latin American countries had asked the Spanish Government to spare them. Now the ten died before firing squads. London reported that 2,500 Moorish troops were moving into Spain to dig other resisters out of mountain hideaways.

Inflation and food shortages were stinging the nation awake. Republican leaflets reappeared in Madrid. There were strikes and slowdowns in the industrial north.

France's Assembly angrily called the Government's attention to its demand that relations with Franco be broken. French postal, telegraph and telephone workers voted a 24-hour suspension of service to Spain in retaliation for the execution of the Communists.

But not since the Allied victory in Europe had Francisco Franco seemed so confident and cocky. The bitter Bevin-Vishinsky debate at UNO offered new life to his Government. British Laborites expressed sympathy for the Spanish Republic, looked with favor upon the monarchy. But Britain's Government preferred Franco to a renewal of civil war. Fighting might result in a radical republic, an extension of Russia's influence into the western Mediterranean.

If Britain stays quiet--and rains bring good spring crops--Franco might yet slide through. He turned his fat back on Don Juan of Bourbon.

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