Rising Temper

In a Madrid bull ring one afternoon last week, the torero was as clumsy as Sancho Panza, and the bull as listless as Rosinante. The aficionados booed, hissed, threw programs and cushions into the ring. Police tried in vain to quell the uproar. No one had seen anything like it in Spain for twelve years--since Franco came to power and banned bullring demonstrations, a beloved Spanish custom. Howled one spectator: "We want bulls for our money."

What Madrilenos really wanted for their money was not bulls, but beef. The ruckus at the ring, in defiance of Franco's rule, was another symptom of Spain's rising anger with the Franco administration. Its chief causes: high prices, black marketeers and official corruption. The strike wave began in Barcelona (TIME, March 19) and Pamplona (TIME, May 21). Last week Madrid followed with a mass demonstration, its first since the civil war. Chain letters and clandestine pamphlets touched off 300,000 to 400,000 workers on a buyers' strike. They stayed away from buses, subways, shops, bars and cafes, did without newspapers. Like long lines of ants the workers patiently walked to plant and factory in silence so that police would not be able to call them demonstrators. They avoided subway entries and streetcar stations where blue-shirted Falange strong-arm men were waiting to shove them aboard the empty cars. Shops were empty all day. In the evening the same antlike processions marched silently homewards. Thousands of police patrolled the streets in trucks, cars and on horseback.

A government spokesman blamed "foreign-directed leftist organizations . . . which are exploiting internal economic difficulties and the naivete of the Spanish working masses." But there is no evidence that the demonstrations were organized by any political party. Spaniards, like the aficionados in the bull ring, were simply relearning how to be angry.

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