SPAIN: Mischief Unto Mother Church

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Three Things Happened: 1) The National Assembly rammed into the Constitution by a vote of 178 to 59 Article XXIV expelling the Jesuits and barring education under Catholic auspices;* 2) President Alcala Zamora resigned in protest and 50 pious Basque and Navarra Deputies marched out of the National Assembly shouting "Long live Christ the King!"; 3) Parliamentary leaders gathered jabbering in the lobby, decided that War Minister Azana ought to be President, told Speaker Julian ("Bell Smasher") Besteiro of their decision.

Pealing his bell, which he pounds on his desk and smashes when annoyed, Speaker Besteiro called the exhausted Assembly to order. Had anyone any objection, he asked, to the party leader's choice of War Minister Manuel Azana to be Provisional President and Premier? No one had the slightest objection. Dead tired Deputies rested their raw throats, their heaving lungs. Amid utter silence Spain's new Chief Executive was chosen unanimously (the 50 pious clericals remaining absent). Up the steps of the Assembly Tribune at once climbed President Azana, brisk and stern. Jerking a paper from his waistcoat pocket he read out his new Cabinet:

Provisional President, Premier and Minister of War—Manuel Azana.

Foreign Affairs—Alejandro Lerroux.

Finance—Indalecio Prieto.

Marine—Jose Giral.

Interior—Casares Quiroga.

Justice—Fernando de los Rios.

This new Cabinet is almost the same as the old, except that Jose Giral succeeds, as Minister of Marine, Casares Quiroga who is advanced to Minister of Interior, the key post in any European cabinet since its.holder holds the elections. First Cabinet Minister to pipe up for publication was Fernando de los Rios. Piped he:

"We do not intend to persecute the church. We merely wish to place it in the same position as in America. That will make Spain a modern State."

Vatican Reaction. With Italy in the hands of none-too-pious Benito Mussolini, Spain was until her Revolution (TIME, April 20 et seq.) the chief stronghold of the Catholic Church. In Vatican City last week Pope Pius XI chiefly sat and lay, being cautioned by his physicians against physical exercise in any form. The Vatican announced "the Holy Father was not surprised." A reaction, noted by correspondents in most Vatican clerics with whom they talked, was news: unofficially and without permitting quotation, Vatican authorities expressed the opinion that the act of disestablishment will lead to the restoration of His Most Catholic Majesty Alfonso XIII who, as the Vatican recalled, never abdicated but only fled from Spain (TIME, April 27).

"The Spanish Government has taken a position of the greatest danger that could be taken by a new regime," declared L'Osservatore Romano, Papal daily, "namely, that of offering the conscience, dividing the spirit and opening a religious conflict."

Spanish Reaction. The peseta held steady on news of disestablishment, rising fractionally from 11.06 to 11.12 to the dollar in Madrid. Riots between Catholics and anti-Catholics occurred at Barcelona and Valladolid but Spain as a whole remained calm. "In my opinion," declared President Azana immediately after taking office, "Spain has ceased to be a Roman Catholic country."