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Planes of the Revolution bombed it nonetheless, and refugees said the Government forces promptly carried out the atrocity they had threatened, not wasting bullets, but hacking their victims and burning them on pyres. These were still smoking when Badajoz was finally stormed and breached by troops of the Revolution, who took vengeance by executing 1,500 Government adherents, most of whom asked for and received last rites administered by priests who had entered Badajoz with the Revolution.
Meanwhile the siege of Oviedo, which bloodthirsty Asturian coal miners had been trying to take ever since the Revolution began, proceeded last week with famed Colonel Miguel Aranda desperately at bay. It was he who under Government orders two years ago suppressed the Asturian miners' own attempt at a Marxian uprising, and they were out to get Colonel Aranda even though in so doing they imperiled the lives of their own families in the city he was defending. With the siege at its hottest, the Colonel abandoned the usual tactic of trying to defend a central stronghold, distributed the forces of the Revolution in various parts of the city and dared the Asturian miners to come on. On came the miners, chiefly armed with homemade dynamite bombs. On cheap cigars clenched in their teeth, they lighted the fuses of their dynamite bombs and flung them into every house they suspected of containing soldiers of the Revolution. Meanwhile the soldiers of the Revolution sniped skillfully, picked off many a miner and still held part of Oviedo after a whole month of savage siege.
Generalissimo Franco this week paid a return call by air on General Mola at Burgos where both appeared on a balcony with the snowy-bearded, inconsequential figurehead of the Revolution, Provisional President Miguel Cabanellas, later prayed in the Cathedral at the shrine of heroic El Cid, Eleventh Century Savior of Spain. Said Mola: "We do not want Spain split by class hatreds. We will stop exploitation of the workers who today are suffering misery born of discontent and stockmarket manipulation. Spain's national economy was ruined by greed."
Alcazar and Alhambra. In broiling summer Madrid were scarcely any Ambassadors or Ministers when the Revolution broke. Of the diplomatic underlings left to run things none has hung on more tenaciously in Madrid than U. S. Third Secretary Eric Wendelin, buttressed by his spunky wife. Last week even the brave diplomatic pups of the Great Powers were about to be whistled home. To 156 U. S. citizens still in Madrid, most of whom have commercial interests there, gallant Mr. Wendelin gave notice that at any moment he might be obliged to close the U. S. Embassy and that every U. S. citizen who had not left the Capital before then would remain at his own risk.