Don't Ask for Love

Like any smart dictator, Spain's Francisco Franco keeps a parliament on hand to rubberstamp his acts and to acclaim his glory. The opening of his well-trained Cortes is one of Spain's gaudiest state affairs; for schoolchildren and factory workers, it is a holiday. Obligingly, Franco likes to spice the annual occasion with holiday cheer, in the form of some piece of good news.

Last week Franco had hoped to announce that the U.N. had lifted its diplomatic sanctions against Spain, that the West was extending a friendly hand. Twice Franco had postponed the opening, and rewritten his speech, waiting for U.N. to act. When U.N. voted to leave the anti-Franco resolution on the books (TIME, May 23), Franco's holiday wine turned to vinegar.

"So Old & So Divided." One day last week, escorted by 400 Moorish guards mounted on gold-shod Arabian steeds, Franco rode to the Cortes. No less resplendent than his escorts, whose azure, red & orange capes flowed in the wind, the Caudillo wore the yellow, red & gold dress uniform of a Field Marshal of Spain. Briskly he entered the Cortes chamber through a special door which had been ripped open for him the night before, was bricked up again after the ceremony. Bobbing up & down, Franco acknowledged the cheers of the white-jacketed Procuradores (Cortes members) and the blue-uniformed Falangists. On hand to hear the Caudillo was a fine array of foreign diplomats, but conspicuously absent were the charges d'affaires of France, Britain and the U.S.

Franco tried to show that he was really a good democrat. In buttering up the U.S. and Latin America, he turned angrily on his fellow Europeans. "The European nations are so incapable, so old and so divided, and their politics so full of Marxism, passions and rancors," he said, "that it is natural for us to look toward America. The sea is no longer a barrier but a road to be traveled over ... In foreign politics . . . what counts [is] mutual understanding . . . and clean friendship on all sides, and so I will say, in the words of the song: 'He who does not feel this way should not ask us for love.' "*

"We Have More Guts." While asking America's love, Franco turned his heaviest fire on Britain. At a luncheon in 1941, he claimed, Winston Churchill had promised the Spanish Ambassador, in the presence of Anthony Eden and Sir Samuel Hoare (now Viscount Templewood), that after the war Britain would help Spain to become a dominant power in the Mediterranean. But Britain had betrayed that promise. After his hour-and-a-half speech, Franco returned to Madrid's royal palace, through streets loud with posters proclaiming: "Down with England!" and "We have more guts than all U.N. put together." From, his balcony, Franco accepted the madrilenos' dutiful homage.

In London, pressed for an explanation about that 1941 luncheon, the Foreign Office declared, with a slight frog in its throat, that its "research had produced no record of any such meeting." Winston

Churchill preserved a dignified silence. Although more & more people felt that it was time for the West to establish some sort of clear-cut relationship with Franco Spain, the Caudillo's invective had won him no friends in Britain, and his coos had moved Washington not a whit. Said one madrileno last week: "We are alone, and always will be--until," he added hopefully, "something happens."

* From a popular 19th Century zarzuela (a form of musical comedy).

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