The Duchess & the Caballero

"Times are slowly changing in Spain," observed a Madrid physician last week. "To be a monarchist is no longer such a great crime, but the police do not realize it yet."

Dictator Francisco Franco's insensitive police had, for the fourth time in three years, arrested Dona Luisa Maria Narvaez y Macias, Duchess of Valencia, the handsome, strong-willed first lady of Spain's monarchist movement. Before a military tribunal in Madrid last week, she faced charges of sending an anti-Franco letter to President Truman and distributing copies of it in Spain, using the mails for subversive propaganda and attempts to form a monarchist underground.

But the courtroom atmosphere was festive rather than grim. In marked contrast with the duchess' last trial (at which she was sentenced to a year in jail--TIME, Jan. 10, 1949), there were no Tommy-gun-toting guards, no uniformed cops. The presiding judge was affable, dapper Major General Miguel Rodrigo, 54-year-old commander of Spain's one & only armored division. General Rodrigo had tried to persuade Madrid's military governor that there were no legal grounds for a trial.

"Let's call it off," he had urged. "Luisa Maria has suffered enough. She is far too lovely to waste her life in that horrible prison." But the governor had insisted that trial take place. In the anteroom, before the proceedings started, General Rodrigo had kissed the duchess' hand, murmuring, "Good luck, Luisa Maria."

In court, behind the duchess, sat her codefendants: a lawyer, a printshop owner, a printer and Don Bernardo Bernardez, an elderly monarchist leader and onetime banker. Having been fired from his post at the Banco Iberico, Don Bernardo deemed himself a ruined man. But as a Spanish caballero, there was one thing more he could do for Luisa Maria. He could, in spite of his wife and ten children, take the rap for the duchess. Don Bernardo stoutly denied that she had any connection with his political activities. Said he: "If the facts are criminal, I myself am the only criminal."

It took the court a few hours to acquit the duchess, sentence Don Bernardo to 18 months in jail (two other defendants got shorter prison terms). After the trial, the duchess, chic and cool in a tailored grey suit and gunmetal-colored nylons, appeared on a balcony to greet the crowds waiting in the street 'below. Then she went home. She immediately sent a message to Don Juan, exiled pretender to the Spanish throne. Said she: "I have cabled my King that I am free."

Later, friends admitted to her boudoir found the duchess in bed (her doctor had ordered a complete rest), thoughtfully fingering a bouquet sent her by her gallant judge.

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