Foreign News: Bumper Year

No European premier faces 1933 with more confidence and aplomb than thickset, bag-jowled Don Manuel Azana who put down two Spanish revolutions in 1932 : the January Communist-Syndicalist uprisings in Catalonia and the August coup during which, for 12 hours, fiery Monarchist General Jose Sanjurjo was master of Seville.

In Madrid last week the Cortes celebrated 1932’s apparent consolidation of the Spanish Republic by giving the Church a resounding thwack for Christmas. This Premier Azana had not intended. The Cortes was asked to vote a comparatively mild bill, reducing by only 20% salaries paid by the State to 40,000 Spanish priests who have, officially, no other income. Indignant at this bill, the Cortes rewrote and passed it by overwhelming majority in a form which provides that after Nov. 1, 1933 all State emoluments or subsidies to the Spanish clergy shall completely cease.

In most years Spain is forced to import wheat from Argentina. This year bumper Spanish cereal crops of all sorts have given the people plenty to eat at low prices. Officially Spain’s unemployment situation is among the most satisfactory in the world—only 300,000 jobless out of a population of 23,000,000.