SPAIN: Coup Recouped

Spain's mid-August heat is dry, oppressive. Business, traffic and government move slowly. Public officials leave Madrid for a rest, as did President Niceto Alcala Zamora last week. But heat meant nothing to a veteran of Moroccan campaigns, swart General Jose Sanjurjo,* good friend of the late Dictator Primo De Rivera and of exiled King Alfonso, whom he faintly, fatly resembles. "Just the time for a coup d'état," he chuckled to himself as he sped south from Madrid one torrid night. Next day Sevillanos on their way to lunch heard the clatter of hoofs, the tramp of feet, much blowing of bugles in the broad Plaza de Espana. There they found General Sanjurjo on horseback before the city hall. Behind him was a column of Civil Guards, infantry and medical corps. From his pocket the general withdrew a piece of paper, unfolded it, read: "I, Jose Sanjurjo, general in the Spanish Army, constitute myself captain-general of Andalusia and order all previous dispositions concerning the public order superseded. I also declare the present local authorities without jurisdiction. Viva Espana!" An hour later Seville was in General Sanjurjo's hands. Arrested and clapped into the military barracks were Governor Valera Valverde, the mayor, the chief of police and seven councilmen. Lieut.-Colonel Marquis de Sauceda was named Governor of Seville. From Algeciras and from Jerez de la Frontera, where all Spain's sherry is made, came mutinying troops to join the rebels. At Cartagena a naval garrison mutinied. In Granada and Malaga revolutionary fervor ran high. General Sanjurjo cut all telegraph & telephone wires north of Seville. The general, who had escorted Queen Victoria from Spain after last year's revolution, announced that his coup was "purely republican." Few believed him.

Meanwhile in Madrid a crowd of mutinous soldiers set out from their barracks for the post office and war office. When they neared the war office from all sides appeared truckloads of police, shooting as they came. The rebel lines wavered, broke. The soldiers ran for cover, shooting as they ran. Seven fell. Police took 200 prisoners, including eight men found in a room near the war office where they said they had met to play poker. A doctor, passing in a taxicab, was drilled through the head. Within four hours the uprising was over, Madrid was quiet under martial law.