SPAIN: Outside, Inside

When Miguel Primo de Rivera was dictator of Spain from 1923 to 1930 many Spanish Leftist leaders cooperated with the dictatorship even though they fundamentally opposed it. Last week those opposed to Generalissimo Francisco Franco's regime felt safest outside the country.

Former Republican Premier Dr. Juan Negrin, Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez del Vayo, onetime Defense Minister Indalecio Prieto, General Jose Miaja and a whole host of lesser fry were in Mexico arranging for transfers of refugees. Communist Deputy Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria") and Colonel Juan Modesto were in the Soviet Union. Famed Colonel Enrique Lister, onetime stonemason, leader of Madrid's famed Communist Fifth Regiment, was thought to be in hiding in France; openly there were President Manuel Azana, onetime Premier Jose Giral, General Vicente Rojo, onetime Premier Francisco Largo Caballero, Catalonian President Luis Companys, Basque President Jose Antonio de Aguirre.

Whittling. Also in France still were 350,000 ordinary Spanish refugees encamped en the beaches in southern France. About 90,000 of the original 500,000 refugees who crossed over the border last February have returned to Spain, and last week about 400 daily were going back to their homes. Some 9,000 former soldiers of the Spanish Republican Army have joined the French Foreign Legion and have been sent to Morocco; aviators, antiaircraft gunners, mechanics, technicians and chauffeurs are being taken into French military organizations. French arms factories have been examining daily about 250 Spanish munitions workers, and giving employment to an average of 75. Two shiploads of 1,000 refugees apiece have gone from France to Mexico, and a third ship carrying several thousand is scheduled to leave this week. Mexico expects to take about 20,000 Spanish refugees this summer. The Basques have also chartered a ship to take their refugees to Mexico, Colombia and Chile.

Little by little the number of refugees was being whittled down, but not fast enough to suit the French Government, which last week announced that it had spent $20,000,000 so far on the care and feeding of the Spanish refugees. In that expense lies, incidentally, the reason why France has been reluctant to return to Generalissimo Franco the $200,000,000 in gold which the former Republican Government left in French banks. The French have let it be known that they expect the Spanish refugee problem to be solved by September in one way or another.

Justice. While France made every effort to persuade the former Loyalists to go back home, much of the news that filtered through the tightly censored French-Spanish frontier was not calculated to encourage mass reentry. Eighteen permanent tribunals were said to be working in Madrid trying Loyalists; there were said to be 500 arrests in Barcelona and Madrid daily; 2,000 awaited trials in Madrid alone; 688 have been executed; 20,-ooo were in a concentration camp near Alicante. Although there were accusations still outstanding against 1,000,000 persons in former Loyalist territory, the police appealed to the public for more denunciations of those guilty of crimes against Rightists. It was calculated it would take another year before the dockets were cleared and Spain could do without her military tribunals.