GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Reportage on Spain throws light
on present upsurge of struggle

THE RECENT general strike
in Barcelona and the continuing
strikes and demonstrations in
other cities have served notice
upon the world that the Spanish
people, betrayed into the bondage
of fascism twelve years ago, are
gathering their strength to des-
troy the prison the Franco regime
has made of their country.

A vivid picture of the conditions
out of which these new struggles
are growing is drawn by Gerald
Brenan in his The Face of. Spain,
($3.75), recently published in Lon-
don by the Turnstile Press and
obtainable here at the People’s
Cooperative Bookstore, 337 West
Pender.

As reportage Brenan’s account
of his return visit to Spain, where
he livedg before during the Civil
War and, by his own story, fav-
ored the Republican cause, has all
the clarity and convincing detail
of a fine documentary. But it is
a documentary clouded and ob-
scured by his own commentary.

Reading his account of life in
Spain under the fascist dictator-
ship of Generalissimo Francisco
Franco, “where the sole thriving
industry is the estraperlo or Black
Market”, and incredible corrup-
tion and poverty are evident
everywhere, one is astounded that
Brenan, deceived as he is by the
Atlantic Pact, should conclude
that an American loan to any re-

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gime acceptable to the U.S. State
Department would find its way
past the greedy hands of the
Black Marketeers — even if the
Americans themselves were not
as corrupt and greedy.

7
Brenan, whose particular inter-

est is the literature, the archi-
tecture and the rich cultural
heritage of Spain, all of which is
woven into his account, is a lib-
eral.

He is the victim of his fears —

.of Russia, of Communism; of his

class prejudices — how else could
he conclude that the Black Market,
which condemns the working peo-
ple to near-starvation, has its
“better side’, that like “the In-
dustrial Movement in Victorian
it offers facilities to
hardworking and enterprising per-
sons of all classes to rise in the
social scale?”

His illusions are|many: “. . ..I
would think well of any govern-
ment which, while leaving the so-
cial pattern much as it is, made a
real and sustained effort to in-
crease production. This would at
least distract the ~attention of
Spaniards from their usual futile
struggles. . . .” and, “Some day
Spaniards will realize that in the
long run more is lost by the strug-
gle than by a compromise, seeing
that in their affairs the greater
the victory today the greater will
be the defeat tomorrow.”

These are the conclusions of a
man who is appalled by what he
has seen and, shying away from
struggle himself, fears the conse-
quences of the struggle forced

upon the people, in whom he has
no: faith. ‘ ot

* * *

THE DISCERNING reader, pre-
pared to discount Brenan’s con-
clusions, can nevertheless extract
a great deal from The Face of
Spain, for Brenan is both a sen-
sitive reporter and a fine writer.
From paragraphs such as these
there emerges a picture of life in
Spain from which others, if not~
Brenan himself, can draw the true
conclusions:

“One cannot walk the streets of
Cordova without being horrified
by the poverty. The standard of
life has always been low among
the agricultural workers of this
part of Spain, but this is worse,
far, far worse than anything
known within living memory. One
sees men and women whose faces
and bodies are coated with dirt
because they are too weak or too
sunk in despair to wash in water.
One sees ‘children of ten with
wizened faces, women of thirty
who are already hags, wearing '
that frown of anxiety which per-
petual hunger and uncertainty
about the future give...”

“Sitting down to drink a lemon-
ade in a small cafe by the station,
a number ‘of wretched children
walked past us, somé covered with
sores ,another with only one ‘eye,
another with an enormous growth
behind her ear, another crippled.
Such is the generation of Span-
iards which the Franco regime is

bringing into the world!”

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‘

No wonder Brenan’s American
friends of the days before the
Civil War, the Washbrooks, to
whom “anything tinged however
lightly with Red was anathema,”
remarked to him when he return-
ed to Churriana, “The people in
power here seem to have no idea
of what they are doing. We are
living on a volcano. Everything
is headed for a tremendous erup-
tion.”

Brenan has other stories to tell
that enable his readers to gather
their own impressions of the fac-
tors contributing to this
mendous eruption.”

He writes of the “Reds” in the
Sierra — “the country people pro-
tect them” — and their exploits

and organization. His acéounts of

the operations of the Black Mar-
ket convey an authentic picture .of
the corruption surrounding every
department of the fascist regime.

“Look at that house,’ our friend
exclaimed, pointing at a very or-
dinary looking villa. ‘It belongs
to the director of a bank and cost
1,500,000 pesetas (approximately
$45,000) because it is built of steel
and concrete, which can only be
obtained at fantastic prices on the
Black Market. Flats at controlled
rents have been put up for the
lower middle classes, but, would
you believe me, not a single work-

ing-class house has been built:

either here or at Malaga. These
people are living in a fool’s :para-
dise’.”

: *

* *

FINALLY, out of one of his fre-
quent excursions into Spanish his-
tory, Brenan extracts a pointed
lesson for liberals in these latter
days of witch-hunts, inquisitions
and star chamber trials—although
there is little to indicate that he
has drawn the lesson for himself.

Telling of the proceedings of the
Inquisition at Cordova, which
were “particularly revolting,” he
writes:

“In 1499 a Canon of Cadiz Cath-
edral called Roderiquez Lucero
was appointed-Inquisitor of the
Tribunal at Cordova, and at once
set to work to arrest and burn all
persons of Jewish descent against
whom allegations of doubtful faith
could, rightly or wrongly, be
made. (When evidence was lack-
ing, he employed professional per-
jurers. No objections were raised

, to this by the\people at large, for
such acts were in the ordinary

line of inquisitorial business, and
the Conversos were unpopular

“But finding that the thorough-
ness of his operations *was_ ex-
hausting this field, he began to
extend them to persons of Old
Christian descent, obtaining the
evidence he needed by torturing
their dependants. i

ei 8

' “Soon the reign of terror he set

up was such that no one in the.

South of Spain was safe, Eminent
ecclesiastics were

tacked . ... and a moment came

when even the saintly Archbishop .

of Granada,,who had beoa Queen
Isabella’s confessor and was now
eighty years old, was on the point
of being arrested.”

Sandwiched between Brenan’s
own conclusions, in which most
progressive readers will see the
confusion and contradictions, is a
wealth of fine reportage, high-
lighted by a chapter on the auth-
or’s search for the grave of
Federico Garcia Lorca, the famous
Spanish poet murdered by the
Falangists, which makes The Face
of Spain a book well worth read-
ing.—HAL GRIFFIN,

“tre-

cespegially at--

Arts for peace

This new painting; entitled “Current Suspense”, is the work of
Frederick Taylor, outstanding Montreal painter. A reproduction of
the canvas was on display at the recent National Assembly to Save
Peace in Toronto where Taylor ‘himself spoke on “The Arts for

Peace”. °
x.

THEATRE OF ACTION PLAY © |

“Stoolpigeon’ to receive
premiere at Royal City

JACQUES SINGER

Returns to City

JACQUES SINGER, under
_ Whose direction Vancouver Sym-
phony .became one’ of the best
orchestras on the continent and
termination of whose contract
last year provoked a storm of
public protest, returned to. the
city last weekend to conduct two
concerts here with the B.C, Phil-
harmonic Orchestra.

' His first concert will be at the
Auditorium this coming Monday,
May 7, 3.30 p.m., when he will
conduct the B.C. Philharmonic
Orchestra and B.C. Philharmonic
Chorus in Beethoven’s Ninth Sym-
phony, This coming Wednesday,

May. 9, he will conduct a special
“pop” concert.

. ZENITH CAFE
105 E. Hastings -Street
VANCOUVER, B.C.
UNION HOUSE

4

STOOLPIGEON, Vancouver
Theatre of Action’s new three-act
play, will be given its first per-
formance in New Westminster, it
was announced by the theatre
group this week.

The play will be staged at Tatra
Hall, Queensboro, on Sunday, May
12,8 p.m. Tickets may be obtain-
ed at the door or in advance by
phoning New Westminster 2282-L.

A week later, Sunday, May 20,
8:30 p.m., the play will be pro-
duced in Vancouver at Clinton
Hall, 2605 East Pender. Limited
tickets—seating. capacity is only
800—may be obtained in advance
at the People’s Cooperative Book-
store, 337 West Pender, here.

A more ambitious effort than
But Ye Are The People, the peac¢
play presented by the theatre
group last fall, Stoolpigeon is 2
psychological study of a renegade -
set against a background of union-
raiding. Its author and director
is Hal Griffin ,associate editor of
the Pacific Tribune. 2

a

CANADA’S FINEST MORTUARY
~

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 4, 1951 — PAGE 19 _