SPAIN: Zhooee

The ex-jailbird Labor Minister of the Spanish Republic, His Excellency Juan Lluhi (pronounced Zhooee), who has been settling strikes by jailing the employers until they yielded (TIME, July 13), last week had something new and hard on his hands. Highly excitable Spanish syndicalists fell to quarreling with the Socialist building trade-unions, decided that the only thing to do was to blow up water mains. With a will, syndicalists fell to this work and soon had blown up so many mains that half the residential buildings in Madrid were without water.

Regarded as the smartest man in Spain today is obese and blotchy onetime Premier Manuel Azana. When he saw things slipping beyond his control as Premier, he got himself elected President of Spain with a salary of 1,000,000 pesetas yearly and another 1,000,000 for the expenses of his frog-faced self and young wife.

Shocking to all Europe this week and fraught with danger of fresh revolution in Spain was news that men uniformed as Government Assault Guards had atrociously murdered Royalist Leader Jose Calvo Sotelo. onetime Finance Minister to the late Dictator Primo de Rivera. Bursting into his home, they kidnapped Senor Calvo Sotelo in an Assault Guard’s truck, butchered him with clubs, knives, bullets and dumped his mangled carcass in the Madrid Municipal Cemetery.