Voices of Europe; The Carmen story

Voices of Europe Milton mair American author and broadcaster lecturer and professor in the Institute of Social Research from Frankfurt University has been recording the voices of Europeans who can help us to understand the views they hold of their own problems. Here is Milton Mayer. France is the land of exiles and refugees and these days if one wants to speak to a Spaniard he goes to France. Yes one is likely to meet the nicest people in France because France is not only the most welcoming and charming place in the world but it is also the nation that has the oldest and most privileged civilization conman. They got it by the mark A's they Gandi up of Spain lives in France. She is the granddaughter of a

fisherman who could neither read nor write but who asked an immense fortune. And then her family. Married into the nobility of Spain. Her mother was the Duchess of our thay her only first cousin married the Duke of Samarra one of the oldest families in Spain and descended directly from the Stuarts of England. The life of them are K's de Gandhi is being written by one gone thout and will be published under the title car manes STARI don't you know a car man is a socialist.

Go in your car man. Why did you become a socialist. Well I the story is a quite an old story in my early youth. I saw the tragic differences between the poor and the rich. I always had in mind the great valor of my grandfather who had amassed this fortune and who had been simple and good. And of my family where I was born who had all become grandees due to my grandfather's money. These people that is to say the family in which I was born had become so oppressed by their riches and their titles that they never thought that at their doorstep. Poverty lay when I went to the park and the poor children were not

let in because they were badly clothed. That made me very very sad. As a child later in my step father's property. Where men were made dragged pantries for three positons a day. So as the property you would be could become more beautiful. Those men sweated and it was a little like the Volga Boltzmann. Later still when I saw that workman had barely enough to eat. That in our properties in andalucía. The children of the poor had rickets. I saw that there was no doctors. I saw that misery reigned everywhere. In contrast to our home the home of my mother and my stepfather where there were 40 horses and 47 servants.

The grooms and lads got three and five percent of the day the horses ate the worth of 15 percent as of 0 0 0 votes. This all made me shocked. I also went to high school with a porter says son. I insisted on going to high school when I was a child. And there I saw the differences of people the black everything and we that had too much. I saw that it had to be to give something so as to create anatomist fear of well and of good. This was just a plain thinking. I read and I understood I understood the dough I had everything. I also understood that I had to give something so as not to belittle myself in my eyes and that of my grandfather

and that my mother US people were really in a certain we need to speak but don't your karma and other rich little girls of the nobility have seen the contrast between rich and poor and have not become socialists. Why did it happen to you. Well maybe I thought there are a lot of people that go through life taking things as they come. I just thought and suffered when I saw my surroundings. What was the what were the decisive events of your political career. When I was finishing my baccalaureate. And later on I decided to join the Socialist Youth Movement. Here they intrusted me with a mission. And then as far as my family came

as far as my family was concerned troubled the king began. As far as I was concerned I did my duty and the great decisive events of your political career where I will give you a few. One of them was that I landed in Lee Noddy's. Me not is a mining town. Just before the Republic. And I was very young then I was only 19 and I was a student in the mental ghetto college and I had to speak to a lot of minus because there was a radical socialist meeting meeting. It is a very a word of extremes. The predicate I'm talking about

was a very conservative old gentleman and the young Socialist was also conservative but they were against the king. They were for higher salaries. They were for all the EC Sure vital. Necessities that miners are entitled to and which the Prince of Wales might have known quite well demanded when he visited the mining towns in waves. I feel really not is not because I was going to give this meeting but because I was asked by the socialist movement to go at the last minute. And the situation was very grave as the government of the King had the situation under control and I was asked to watch the miners to get whole to go home to wait to have their homes bettered and their salaries bettered and their conditions better.

I was only a kid and after having these three politicians professional politicians. Week I spoke to them and asked them to go home. There were no police around. I just asked them to go home. They went home. I was just 19 with a blue sweater and sandals. I told them who I was. I told them my father had been a worthless young man nice and gay. My grandfather had been a fisherman. I told them that my mother was one of the aristocrats. But I told them that I thought like they did. I told them that I was with them. They believed me and every one of them. They all went oh well there were six thousand miners with wives and children. They went home. This made me believe not only a little bit in myself but it made me give me a sort of faith in my country and in the

ideals that these people wanted. A true and decisive feat truly in the sense that they wanted to have a liberal standard of living and that was all. When was that don't you. Herman that was in the movement of How about two months before the Republic was declared in spades. In what year. That was in December. I think it is quite a long time ago I beg your pardon but I think it was in December of 98. Yes it was in December of 9 no in February of 1931. And then and then I got back to Madrid and an episode of comical if you want the tragical in certain sense happened to me. I went to the golf club where I had given some cups very nice gilt cups.

I had lunch with the Duchess of LES HIDDINS and two other ladies I had been eliminated from the cups. I was a good golfer but my handicap was low. And after lunch we had all had many cocktails and the Duchess was a very very pro Monica just she knew of my socialist tendencies. Instead of abiding by them like anyone doesn't a democratic country. Probably she had a little too much to drink. Probably my try my youthfulness and my insistency about liberties annoyed her. She came at me with a little badge which said Long live the king and she said you know your socialist you're going to put us on. I caught her playfully and I said no. For goodness sake. Then she slapped me. I saw red and I threw her knocked her down. It was a part of him sight. Naturally everybody

got to know about this. The Queen who came into the club a few minutes later and everybody else the Duke of Armada who was the president then was my first cousin made me. Mick asked me to give in my resignation. I did I must say. But the other two ladies behaved very decent and it was only due to the Duchess of the Duchess of what I can see I had wanted to treat me as if I were a boy with a little baggage. That the incident occurred. More trouble is ahead lay ahead. That was when Dawn you're coming. That was a month after the. That was in March 31. That was before the establishment of the republic. Yes. A month before the sad incident of my

shall we call it political Korea because when I got involved in the killing of three people. The incident was this. Student strike and I was one of the students political leaders. We did not want to kill any policemen not to do anything. But unfortunately the rain that Alan Moore not who died afterwards in the Civil War made a siege of the Faculty of Medicine which was also a hospital. Then my cheap the president of the foully foodways Federation of university. We got up there. I learnt as many guns as we had. We all had lent some kind of arms. The police attacked the hospital. We fired back. I fired back

also. I killed a policeman on horseback. They saw me with a red sweater. I had to run from it. I got out of the faculty through a little door but my red sweater and got to my aunt who was my father's sister the duchess also. She was a great sport a great post and told her that I had had next and with the police and that she had to Aladin me she did. The police arrived and she and her husband said that I had been there the whole room for three hours before that. Later that three days later the police got on my track again. The Queen called my mother and said the chief of police version around Lorna was going to have me arrest to take me out of the country so my mother took me to a psychoanalyst in Germany and asked him to make a good Monica. This was when that clause on the 1st of April 1931

15 days before the government the king had to abdicate. Fifteen days before the king had to abdicate and the Republic was established in 1931. That's it. Now did the psychoanalyst make a good monarchist out of you. He couldn't. He only had 15 days and he was a communist and an atheist. So he just laughed at my mother's suggestion. He was a clever man a very clever man indeed. I got back to Spain and didn't take an active part in politics because my private life seemed to fit. I fell in love. And got mad there for all my public life was given up. I don't get that idea especially knowing where

things have got ahead. But destiny is destiny. 1936 Civil War was proclaimed in 1936. I was between two files. I loved a man who fought for Franco. I myself was a staunch ally and just so the only thing I could do the only decent thing I could do was to work in the way that I thought more. Chad was he decent again. And how was that. Well I went and offered myself to law checked what thought chiclet who had been governor and in New Delhi and who I had known very well. He had been severely chip wood and I had known him in my youth I had met him in India. He was a charming man. He exchanged prisoners and something very curious happened during my stay with him.

As his secretary and interpreter. I got to know that pretty mother leave it at that discussion Thorn was not exchanged. Thought somebody completely uninteresting. That is a lot of talk about a year lost son due to Franco Franco did not want the exchange of the mother leaving because pre mother leave it I would have become the dictator of Spain. Therefore he boycotted this chain and he didn't let it pass through there for the murder of pretty motherly Verda can be laid to flank. Not to the Reds. As has actually been said. I have historical proof of this in letters exchanged by Franco to launch and during the

Civil War. Where were you working for Lord triplet in Toulouse and after that when the Civil War ended giving trying to help the influx of refugees that came into Toulouse and into and into by your own that is the refugees from Franco Spain. No that is the refugees from the war that came in when Franco's armies came into Catalonia. Have you been to Spain since I have been to Spain but never officially. And tell me don't your car man. What does Spain look like to you the first time I saw Spain after all these episodes was in 1942. The difference between being young which is a thriving little village with no

poverty or told and few get us where only misery reigned made me cry and I don't cry easily that is Peppino on one side of the border and Figueroa San the other being out in France and get us. Hey is this an indication of the spectacle of these two towns is this to be taken as an indication that the conditions of the people of Spain have deteriorated under Franco or was it always like this. Spain was always very poor that is why the I became a socialist because I couldn't tolerate the conditions between the upper class and the lower classes. But. The difference actually stands in two ways. The klal FT that exists in the people that serve us day and up handle Franco's

regime that is to say the Army and the founders. It's the army which have everything they want. There is even anecdotes about the cars any people in the army from the left and up has his private car and it is all paid by the state. Even those cars are called P P and in Spain they call them for my wife. Another amusing thing. If it can be called amusing is the state in which the dictator Franco heads all of. Measuring he's poor he's poor and the real poor. But it is a thing that is called

out. See yourself. That means social aid. But that is only given to the famine justs. Now maybe we'd better identify the felon felon just a people that are inscribed in the fair and just party. That is the only party that is tolerated in Spain and in the Vertigo syndicates. The vertical syndicate is the only syndicate the dist tolerated by the state. Well these people are treated in quite a different way. To the layman that means the man that works. You know simple office. How much does this man who works in a simple office. How much does he earn today on three hundred fifty percent just a five hundred three hundred fifty as a minimum would

be let me see about $7. Yes on the black market a week or a month a month $7 a month how much does a pair of shoes cost about the same things. That is a pair of shoes cost a month's wages. Yes. Now don't you Carmen. How much did this same man earn before Frankel and how much did a pair of shoes cost the same man. Get got about a 25 percent less but a pair of shoes cost from 35 to 50 possess. Now let me see in other words the same way and instead of getting the three hundred fifty to five hundred pesetas that he gets now I would have got about 300 a month. That's it. But a pair of shoes would have cost thirty five to fifty per se. That's it said which now costs three hundred fifty

pesetas for his whole month's salary that's it since then. Has the actual condition done your karma and has the actual condition of the people of Spain deteriorated of course. How do you expect them to live. They were never on dry ice and they live on air. You think that's nice. How stable is the Franco regime and what is the solution in Spain where a Franco regime will last as long as Franco live. It's all right as long as the United States a roni Asli wants to help the man that only thinks of himself as a tin god. As long as they don't understand that Franco is willing not only to do what he did when he sold

out on Hitler he made a treaty to help Hitler and he sold them out. You think it is not going to sell a lot. The United States if it is good for him he didn't make a trade. Do with spelling tomorrow or does the United States not understand that Mr. Franco thinks of himself and of nobody else. He doesn't think of the misery he's going to leave behind him. He doesn't think of the economy that is going for worse and worse. He doesn't think that the people don't eat and that the budget of the country is being dug into in such a way that the day he will die he will be like a man that has eaten up his old fortune and will leave nothing to his children. He doesn't care. Why do the people of Spain support him or do they wear him.

It's very difficult to overthrow a man when there are about. Well I don't want to exaggerate but there is one soldier or one policeman to every city inhabitants that is to every city grown up inhabitants. If there were freedom a free election in Spain Franco would not last one minutes. And he knows it. Why doesn't he lessen the regime. Why doesn't he even do what they're doing. Yugoslavia that means so I am very anti-Communist 9 JUL. I don't approve of Tito I don't approve of any dictated to ship. Personally I think dictatorships are rotten. I believe of the freedom of the people by the people and through the people is am I right or did I mismanage it. You know all of your English is excellent. All right. How are you comparing the Yugoslavian dictatorship with the Spanish.

At least the Yugoslavs have made a little bit of a gesture. Franco can't. How do you expect him to do it. He can't. Why. Because directly his army and his police go out he goes out with them. What don't you know Carmen is the solution for Spain. I'm not a prophet sir but I would like to see my country having either a public bike that is in Italy or a monarchy aided with socialists. With a man like that he found Gomez at their head and with Christian Democrats with a man like this at their head. And then they could truth whether there is a republic Autum on a key if the country wants a monarchy they can have to pretend a back he would be a good constitutional monarch. If they preferred a republic they could have a republic.

As I said before like exists in France and Italy. But the thing that is certain is that we need a democratic government and we don't need a dictatorship which is wearing us down and which will or will us down to such a point that one day it might be too difficult to survive. May I add only one thing that the more time passes the more people in Spain making themselves communists because they don't know where to go. And that is the thing that communist Russia wants Franco to go on there full stop doesn't do a propaganda against Franco because every day he has more and more addicts in the country. And this is truly limit. Don't your karma and what. In one final word. Should be done about Spain and by whom and how

the United States ought to leave Franco out of their command and. Completely given the cultural of the United States and England and France if they help him they're playing into Russia's hands. They're making a lot of communists in Spain. They're making a very strong fifth column in the country and they are doing themselves a lot of harm and it does a very great spit. There's a great shame not only for Spain but for democracy. Thank you Dawn you're carving the program you have just heard has been made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation. These programs are prepared and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This program was introduced by Norman Mekhi and this is the tape network.