A character from Cervantes is illiterate Juan March, "richest man in Spain." He rolled up to the yellow stucco Rock Hotel at Gibraltar last week with his jailer and a carload of friends, thumbed his nose at the Government of Spain and went to bed. Sallow Castilians slapped their thighs and swore that Por Dios, Juan had done it again!
Every packet of rank, loose-rolled Canarias that Spaniards smoke puts a few centesimos in the pockets of Juan March. Never able to read or write, he laid the foundation of his fortune by selling bootlegged cigarets made from smuggled tobacco. In an effort to collect a little money from him Dictator Primo de Rivera gave him the Morocco tobacco monopoly. Juan March bribed Morocco officials right & left, continued to use smuggled tobacco brought to his factories by Moorish tribesmen whom he is supposed to have supplied with arms.
Before the rage of Primo de Rivera and King Alfonso, he fled to France in a monk's cassock. Later he made peace with the crown and nearly won himself a title through elaborate gifts to charity. Juan March bulwarked his tobacco fortune with banks, newspapers, a steamship line, and after the revolution won himself immunity from arrest by a seat in the Cortes.
Last year the Socialist Government of Manual Azana finally banished him from the Cortes and clapped him into jail, held him there without trial. From his cell Juan March pulled every wire in sight, got himself elected to the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees to judge the work of the Republic and was more than any other man responsible for the downfall of the Azana Cabinet (TIME, Sept. 18).
Last week he decided that he had been in jail long enough, walked out the front door, climbed into a car full of friends and drove off, taking one of the lesser wardens with him. Pressed for an explanation, Chief Night Jailer Martinez Hernaiz said he had let his prominent prisoner escape because he said he did not feel well. Behind him Juan March left a letter for his lawyer, Tomas Perie:
"I left prison because I felt my health would collapse. I have not received justice in a year and a half. I am returning after the election when I believe Spain will be a livable country."