The Lawyers' Martyr

"We have lost the rights of man."

The Madrid lawyer who spoke those harsh words about his own country is an influential Roman Catholic layman with good friends in the top echelons of the Spanish Establishment. He is, moreover, a hero of the Spanish Civil War, and the sole survivor of four brothers who held the railway tunnel at Somosierra Pass north of Madrid for six days against heavy Republican odds.

But Jaime Miralles Alvarez, 51, is also a maverick reformer whose libertarian convictions frequently get him in trouble. In 1962, for instance, he was exiled to Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, for eleven months. Miralles had made the mistake of attending a meeting in Munich of an organization that advocated European unity, and was therefore considered dangerous by Spanish authorities. In 1970 he was one of 120 prominent Spaniards who were fined between $500 and $3,000 for signing a letter that urged U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers to hear their case against renewing the agreements for U.S. military bases in Spain.

In recent months, Miralles has led a campaign to streamline Spain's archaic and cumbersome judicial system, which has no fewer than eight kinds of courts. Among these are military tribunals and "public order" courts run by political functionaries who have almost unlimited power. Under the law of public order, for instance, a man can be sentenced to a long jail term--with or without trial--merely for knowing a homosexual or a marijuana smoker.

The government responded to Miralles' call for judicial reform by clapping him in jail last month on charges of contempt. His offense was having defended the widow of a construction worker who had been killed during leftist strikes last year. Miralles argued that the widow was entitled to state compensation because her husband had been shot in the back by the Guardia Civil, Franco's paramilitary police force. A military court ruled that Miralles' defense had insulted the Guardia Civil and constituted "illegal propaganda."

Almost overnight, Miralles became a martyr-hero to the lawyers of Spain, who have never been noted for their radicalism. The powerful 8,500-member Madrid bar took up Miralles' cause. Risking contempt sentences of their own, 200 lawyers issued a joint statement protesting Miralles' punishment. When influential church leaders joined the protest, he was released on Franco's personal orders.

"Someone must act," Miralles said last week, "to secure what, in other countries, can come through the courts or through legislation." His actions have already had a noticeable effect. Last week two bar associations adopted resolutions supporting Miralles and his fight for legal reform. Moreover, the government has announced plans to reduce the number of judicial systems from eight to three--and to eliminate the dreaded public order courts altogether. In the finest tradition of Spanish obscurantism, however, the announcement was made in the Canary Islands and was briefly mentioned by only one newspaper in Madrid.

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