SPAIN: Reign of Reason

Reign of Reason

There was dancing in the streets in Barcelona last week, such a fiesta as not even the oldest Catalan could remember. By oxcart and on burro the peasants came in their red stockinet caps and baggy breeches. Leather-faced fishermen came up from Tarragona. All night long shouting crowds surged up & down under the huge plane trees of the ramblas to rigadoon round the statue of Christopher Columbus and back up the hill again. From a thousand staffs fluttered the five-barred red-&-yellow Catalonian flag. Trucks of Shell Oil Co. were hailed with delight.

All this was caused when quiet, bespectacled Premier Manuel Azana of Spain came to town to hand white-toothed "President" Francisco Macia of Catalonia a copy of the statute granting home rule to Catalonia.

"Everything depends upon how you use this liberty," warned Premier Azana. "For the sake of Catalonia and Spain, be careful!"

Pink with pleasure, Colonel Macia waved his hands excitedly and shouted:

"The Catalans can feel now they are true sons of a country rich in glorious tradition. I interpret the sentiments of all of them, when I say that Sept. 25, 1932 will be recorded on the pages of history as ushering in a reign of reason and justice on Iberian soil."

Crowds standing in the square before the high porticoed Generalidad burst into El Segredores, the once proscribed Catalonian anthem, roared loudest at the verse about cutting off the heads of the proud Castilians. Manuel Azana grinned good naturedly. Even the white geese in the Cathedral cloister honked their loudest.