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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 17, 24 April 1950, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
This report on Franco Spain is by a special correspondent of the London Socialist Leader, published March 11 – translated by John McNair.
BARCELONA, February – During this season nearly 50,000 tourists, mostly British and French, have visited Barcelona, bringing the precious foreign currency of which Franco has such an urgent need.
However, in spite of real effort made in their favor by the municipality, the best hotels de luxe were not able to offer to their customers the most modest hot bath “No lux, no agua.” Neither light nor water in this great Catalonian city. The greatest city on the whole Mediterranean.
Many other things, too, are missing, but the tourists do not notice this much. After they have filled in, among other police formalities, a voluminous file of information, they will be given a special number and a special “dossier,” which will accompany them during the whole of their stay in Spain. They will then be able to leisurely stroll along the wide and spacious avenues of Barcelona, admire the shop windows which, both for clothing and food, are better supplied than those of London.
If the tourists are on pleasure bent there is a very wide choice. Cinemas with a double program lasting four or five hours; night clubs where exotic dancers perform until the dawn during which one may enjoy an excellent champagne from Xeres, in the presence of complacent ladies – all at a modest price – to say nothing of the traditional and bloody bullfights staged two or three times a week.
The tourists will finally have thrust upon them the misery which underlies all this luxury. Besieged by countless beggars, blind and deformed, by hungry gypsies and innumerable street hawkers, living on the verge of famine, they may be inclined to put this all down to the local picturesque color, or even to impute the misery of Spain, the eternal misery of Spain, to the “Spanish character.”
It is symptomatic to note how often this argument is used by those here who support the present regime. This evidently dispenses with any further explanation and often receives the approval of the tourists, most of whom are not conspicuous for political acumen.
For instance, I met a couple of Swedes, vaguely liberal, in the hotel. They affirmed, Baedeker in hand and without speaking a word of the language, that although Franco was not a very pleasant gentleman, it was, nevertheless, necessary to have in Spain a “strong” man, otherwise the famous “Spanish character” would reduce the country to anarchy. We shall come back to this ...
Situated between the mountains and the sea, with its high quarters climbing the famous mountain of Tibidado and its popular quarters running along the port side, Barcelona, the heart of Catalonia and the lungs of Spain, is indeed the “Pearl of the Mediterranean,” with a fabled past as a great maritime metropolis. It is at once the largest city and the first port in Spain. It is the greatest industrial center and an important university city.
“He who has drunk the water of the Canaletas (the fountain in the Ramblas, the most celebrated artery of the city) will never leave Barcelona.” So runs a local proverb.
An attractive and generous city, with a population which is active, tolerant, witty and broadminded, with a tinge of skepticism and reserve which one finds nowheTe else in Spain, Barcelona after the feverish hours of the Civil War has fallen into a heavy sleep.
With three hours of electricity per day, the material impossibility of obtaining raw materials, and defective communication, the flourishing Catalonian industry is only the shadow of what it has been.
There are more than 100,000 industrial workers unemployed in Catalonia. Unemployment which, during the last ten years, has existed in Spain, attained last year its highest figure. During my brief stay in Barcelona several factories closed down, including tire great firms -of “Asland" arid “Fradera” who supply cement to the whole of Catalonia.
From these facts the hostility against the regime is stranger and mote unanimous than ever in. ALL sections of the population. Never has the great Catalonian city been nearer to an economic catastrophe without precedent in all its history.
Having irrevocably against him the working classes, who reject with scorn the demagogy of the Falangist trades unions, Franco attempted to gain the sympathies of the commercial and industrial sections who were sickened by the corruption and the increasing difficulties of the regime.
This was the reason for his journeys to Catalonia and the Biscay provinces, the only two regions of any industrial importance in Spain. One can say now that Franco suffered one of the greatest checks in his career. It is true that his task was not easy. To give satisfaction, at the same time, to his ministers and the Falangists, partisans of a controlled economy from which they draw considerable personal profits, and to the industrialists who desired to free themselves from the dead hand of the totalitarian state, was in fact an impossible thing.
The Catalonian industry is divided principally into three sections: textile, metallurgy and building. In taking the index figure of 100 in 1936 (before the Civil War) one sees that while production has remained about the same for textiles, it has fallen for metallurgy to 57 and for building to 50.
In order that Catalonian industry can function if must pass through the blind alley of the most hidebound and corrupted administration in Spain. First there is the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which grants the import and export licenses; then there is the National Institute of Foreign Currencies, charged with the distribution of currencies, the Service for the Control of Electric Energy, of which the big boss is Senor Mariano de las Penas, a Bal-zacian personality, and finally the omnipresent and plethoric Fiscalia de Tasas, the organism controlling the prices.
Let us speak first of Senor de las Penas, the electricity king of Catalonia. His department was founded five years ago when electricity restrictions began to become serious. The drought, lack of coal, caused a drop in production in Spain from 35 million kilowatt hours per day to 14 millions in 1948 and to 9 millions last year. Catalonian industry was the first and most seriously affected. Senor de las Penas, since he had obtained control over the Electricity Department, distributed the small supplies of electricity in accordance with a personal profit system known as the “pots of wine.” This system of de las Penas has become, as it were, officialized. It costs the mere bagatelle of 10,000 pesetas to a textile manufacturer who wants simply to install a new weaving machine.
A modest artisan of Barcelona had the good fortune to enjoy the favors of Senor de las Penas. He was the favorite hairdresser of Senora de las Penas and lived in an elegant quarter of the city. When the senora wants to have a permanent, the Electric Central distributes current to the whole of the quarter. This is the only free distribution of current given by Senor de las Penas!
Very often in wandering about the streets at night I heard behind the closed shutters the noise of machines working. To utilize the night supply for industrial purposes is a serious offense, but the inspectors of the senor follow the example coming from on high and willingly close their eyes if it has been made worth their while to do so.
Let us glance now at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which is at present directed by the honorable Senor Juan Fernandez Suanzes. His predecessor, Senor Carcellas, retired in 1945 and now enjoys a snug little fortune valued at 600 million pesetas. Carcelles, a little Catalonian engineer, commenced his career in the offices of the Falangists at Barcelona with the modest salary of 1,500 pesetas per month ...
Let us give the following example. A friend of mine is one of the principal exporters of raw or semi-finished cork, a typically Spanish product. He purchased several hundred tons of cork in its natural state from an important person, a marquis, one of the courtiers hanging around Franco, who is the owner of immense estates in the south of Spain, Andalusia.
In order to transport this cork to Barcelona my friend needed 400 trucks. Very naively he went to the Spanish railways to ask for them. Naturally the thing was not possible. My friend got excited. He showed his letters of credit from the marquis, from high personalities of the Falange and from the government. Nothing happened.
It was necessary to come to terms with an official of the Spanish railways who demanded, without beating about the bush, the sum of 100 pesetas per truck, viz., 40,000 pesetas in all. Once this sum was paid the trucks were produced in five minutes! This was the first operation.
The second consisted in obtaining-from Madrid the export license. The first attempt met with a complete check. It was. only after having had the necessary psychological intuition that my friend, distributing freely 100-peseta notes from the porter to the elevator boy, who, this time, did not make a mistake in the floor, managed to reach the door-of the sanctuary of the office of the secretary charged With the distribution of licenses. This gentleman proved to be quite reasonable and contented himself with 15,000 pesetas only. Thus it was that the cork for export to Britain and France was subject to an increase in price of 55 per cent.
Another example, not less edifying. The laboratories Alter of Madrid asked for import licenses for certain pharmaceutical products urgently needed. The note which Was sent them by the ministry was stupefying in its cynicism. The laboratories must
One coud multiply the examples. Never has any government, even the pro-consuls of the Roman decadence, been guilty of such wholesale corruption. Never has any country been bled so white by its, legal government.
The Fiscalia de Tasas (organization controlling prices) is an even more corrupt institution. It is certainly the most hated of all the fascist bureaucracies. This organism only, which supervises all the Spanish economy, has a stac of 50,000 employees, who. from the first to the last have a double function of bureaucrats and ... spies. Charged with the control of prices, the inspectors allow any increase desired, provided they receive a substantial retribution.
It is thus that the black market, after having paid the bribe to the Fiscalia, has become the “free market.” Sugar, the controlled price of which is 4 pesetas per kilo (24 pounds), is sold at 15 to 20 pesetas. Milk, without added water (for there exists in Spain a variety of milk called “popular milk” with 40 per cent water added), reached 15 pesetas a liter (1½ pints), etc.
The Fiscalia de Tasas, which works hand in glove with the Food Office, employs an infinite ingenuity.
Let us remember that the Food Office distributes to the heavy workers (category III) the following rations: 160 grams (6 ounces) black bread per day, a hunk of nauseous, sticky bread, ½ liter (about pint) of oil per week, and from time to time a handful of dry vegetables. The Western European markets being at present closed to Spanish agricultural products, owing to the development of their own agriculture, the few big bosses of the regime – who monopolize the exportation of food supplies – have found themselves in possession of considerable stocks, notably of sugar and rice.
There was evidently no question of making a present to the famished popidation by increasing the slender official rations, nor even of throwing them on the free market, which would have caused a dangerous fall in prices. The tandem price-food controllers thought out the following combination:
At the beginning of January, this happened at Madrid. The workers learned that unlimited' quantities of rice and sugar would be sold to them at 3, 5 and 7 pesetas per kilo. It was necessary for them previously to sign subscription bonds. Naturally there was a rush. At the end of the month, the moment for taking delivery, these precious food supplies had increased in price to 8% and 12 pesetas per kilo. The price-food controllers had simply added 5 pesetas per kilo for the transport, and the prices then became equivalent with those of the black market. The workers were compelled to take the quantities for which they had subscribed. Those who refused had the money “docked” off their wjges. Thus the protesters had neither money nor dinner.
Do not imagine, however, that the Fiscalia goes for the workers only. When its interests demand, it operates no social discrimination. The textile industrialists of Barcelona know something about this. These buy raw cotton, indispensable in their production, from the Fiscalia at the price of 18 pesetas per kilo. The Fiscalia before disposing of it bought it at 30 pesetas, but this deficit is . largely covered by the fraudulent profits obtained elsewhere. Because of this the textile industry was recently flourishing in Barcelona. Although of poor quality Spanish textiles were one of the cheapest on the European market.
A mouth ago, the Fiscalia decided, ipso facto, to put cotton on the “free” market – through its own intermediary – at the price of 50 pesetas. They had not long to wait for the result and today there is a formidable increase of 150 to 200 per cent on the finished products. Pharmaceutical cotton wool has gone up from 50 centimes (14 peseta) to 190 pesetas!
Apart from these bureaucratic frauds the Spanish industrialist has to support very heavy taxation. In building this amounts to 140 per cent of the cost price. Thus we find that Catalonian factories are closing one after the other; most of them have only a “symbolic” activity and are running one or two days per week. The industrialist is called upon, however, to pay his taxes as if he were working full time.
Preceding its political downfall the economic failure tolls the bell of the Spanish fascist regime.
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