Foreign News: A State of Mind

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In the busy provincial town of Vitoria in the heart of the Basque country, a horse-drawn police van clattered down the cobblestoned Street of the Founder of the Handmaidens of Jesus and stopped at the decaying old courthouse. Two prisoners stepped out. From the watching crowd a woman and a small girl darted forward, crying, "Felix! . . . Papa!" The woman tried to kiss the husband she had not seen for almost three years; the child threw herself into his arms. Grey-clad police intervened. "In with you!" they said gruffly, and the two prisoners disappeared into the courthouse, to join 15 others for trial.

The 17 were charged with a plot "to overthrow the government [and] incite seditious strikes," but actually the heart of their offense was that they were Basques. In May 1951, when labor unrest broke out in Spain, Vitoria's 5,000 workers stayed quietly at home for five days. They did not riot in the streets or break windows, as some in other places had done. The trouble had not even started in Basque country, but in Catalan Barcelona. But when the Madrid authorities began looking for scapegoats, their angry eyes fell on Vitoria, where there are plenty of men with records as Basque separatists, and members of the outlawed Catholic labor organization. So Francisco Franco's cops arrested the 17.

"Now, Before God . . ." There was no evidence. The case made little progress. Fifteen of the accused were released on parole. Madrid tried to get the army to court-martial the men, but the military shied away. "Basque separatism," said one officer, "is not a tangible, clandestine organization. It is a state of mind. You cannot court-martial a state of mind."

Finally, the government thought it had an airtight, tamperproof case. The 17 went on trial in a bleak, whitewashed room where the only ornament was a faded portrait of Franco on one wall and the only touch of color was the red plush of the judges' chairs. The accused had six defense attorneys, headed by an able lawyer named Augustin Lacort. The prosecutor read his charges and introduced 17 confessions. Then the presiding judge turned to the first defendant, a worker named Juan Grajales.

"Guilty?" intoned the judge.

"Not guilty!" Grajales said. "When the strike took place, I was still bedridden after months of illness."

"But," said the judge, "I have your confession." Grajales answered: "I signed that paper because I had seen three weeks of solitary confinement with frequent beatings. I had to sign it. Now, before God, I swear that there is not one word of truth in my so-called confession." Silence hung in the courtroom, thick as pitch. The prosecutor squirmed.

"This Tormented Land." One after another, the remaining defendants pleaded not guilty and told almost identical stories of solitary confinements, night interrogations, beatings, hunger, thirst—always with only one way out: signing a confession. Defense Counsel Lacort passionately denounced the police methods. "Here," he said, "are methods unknown to any civilized nation this side of the Iron Curtain . . . absolutely illegal. These men are not criminals. They are victims.This is a mockery."