SPAIN: All Gone

For months hard-pressed Dictator Francisco Franco has been feeding on the hope that he could somehow persuade Russia to return the $500 million in gold which the Spanish Republican government shipped off to Moscow in the early days of the civil war. When onetime Republican Finance Minister Juan Negrín died last winter in Paris, Franco came into possession of the Soviet receipts for the gold (TIME, Jan. 14), and Russia could no longer deny having got the money. But Radio Moscow last week dashed all of Franco’s hopes. After depositing the money, said Radio Moscow, the Spanish Republicans “frequently asked the Soviet Central State Bank to make payments abroad from it. The money was soon all gone.”