Revolt at Madrid University

A crucial battle of the Spanish civil war was fought in Madrid's University City. On the ruins of the historic university buildings Dictator Franco built a new seat of learning. To guard against the revival of the old liberal traditions, he set up the Sindicato Espanol Universitario (called the S.E.U.), an arm of the Falange Party to which every student was obliged to belong. Last week, 17 years after the battle of University City, a serious open revolt against the Franco regime was sparked in University City, and spread across Madrid in three days of violent street rioting.

A vague but growing discontent has swept a generation of students who, unlike their elders, have no personal experience of Spain's harsh 1936-39 civil war (TIME, Jan. 16). More than 3,000 students signed a petition asking for free election of delegates to a student congress. Because such a student congress would rival the S.E.U., the proposal drew Falange fire; but University Rector Dr. Pedro Lain Entralgo thought it wise to allow the students to blow off steam, agreed to free elections, class by class, in the downtown law school. Last fortnight first-year law students, voting for 20 congress delegates, elected only one man from a full slate of candidates put up by the S.E.U. Two days later the second-year men voted, and the S.E.U. got only 2 of 20 places.

Before the third-year men could vote, the law-school bulletin board blazed with an announcement from S.E.U. headquarters : the elections were off. To back up its decision, the S.E.U. called in a squad of blue-shirted bullyboys from the Falange's Centuria de la Guardia de Franco (Centurions of Franco's Guard). When indignant students tried to march on Law Dean Manuel Torres Lopez' office, Falange sticks and clubs swung. The centurions were chased from the law school. Students tore down the bulletin-board notice and destroyed the Falangist arrows above a commemorative plaque to student war dead.

Water for Both. Next morning the law-school quadrangle was filled with some 500 blue-shirted centurions armed with truncheons, tire chains and pistols. They greeted arriving students with shouts of "A par los senoritos!" (Let's get the little sissies). In the battle that followed, students dropped tables and desks from classrooms on Falange heads, tore up furniture to make weapons. The S.E.U. offices in the law school were attacked, files were burned and Falangist symbols destroyed.

By noon the battle flowed into the center of Madrid. Students and Falangists, charging through the crowded Puerta del 501 and into the Calle de Alcala, where Falange headquarters and the Education Ministry stand almost side by side, were sprayed by police with water-pumping jeeps. By that time some 2,000 law-school students had been joined by 1,000 allies from the medical school. Between bloody, skull-busting fights, Falangists chanted, "Down with capitalism!" and "Down with the monarchy!" (assuming the students to be supporters of both), and sang an antimonarchist hymn which begins: "We don't want an idiot king who doesn't know how to govern." The anti-Falangist students countered with chants of "S.E.U. no! Falange no!"

In the quiet Calle Miguel Angel, a mob of blue-shirted Falange bullies broke into the International Institute for girls, an American-owned building which also houses a progressive Spanish school. While police calmly looked on, ignoring the screams of women, the Falangists pinned down School Director Phyllis Turnbull of Binghamton, N.Y. and her staff, began smashing windows, lights, chairs, blackboards.

Shoot If Necessary. Despite many injured, no word of the rioting appeared in the Madrid press. The university was closed down, but next day Falangists and anti-Falangists clashed again. This time the Falangists pulled their pistols, but in the confused fighting managed only to wound one of their own sympathizers. At this point Franco stepped in, ordered all Falangists confined to barracks, and sent 1,400 heavily armed plainclothesmen into the streets with orders to break up disturbances by "shooting, if necessary."

Franco also gave the government-controlled newspapers and radio their line. The Falangist Arriba editorialized: "Blood is running again among the youth of Spain," blamed "armed liberalism motivated by Communism." But Spaniards were not deceived. The government announced that Dean Torres Lopez had been fired, while Rector Lain Entralgo was reported ousted. Seven student ringleaders were reportedly exiled to places 200 miles from Madrid. The names of the youths, all respectfully referred to by the title of Don, showed them to include the son of one of the founders of the Falange, the nephew of the Falange's third in command, and the son of one of Franco's closest personal friends.

At week's end Franco abrogated the "right" of Spaniards to move freely about Spain, and suspended the law protecting them from summary arrest and imprisonment. Both rights are largely theoretical in Spain, but their abrogation was a warning by Franco that he has decided to reverse his policy of "easing up," and to re-establish his old, ironfisted rule. The country responded with a sense of tension not known since the dark days following the fall of University City.

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