Big industrial Barcelona, the proletarian "Pittsburgh of Spain" and the country's only modern metropolis, last week took for its Region of Catalonia the autonomous rank of a semi-collectivist State by proclamation, acclaim and much frenzied carousing and shooting in the streets. The great city's exultant Communists. Anarchists and Socialists still were friendly to Spain's Madrid regime in theory but in practice they had carried Catalonia off by herself on the political loose. Zealots plastered up everywhere manifestoes reading PRIVATE PROPERTY IS CONFISCATED AND COLLECTIVIZED! This meant that doors of wealthy and middle class homes were burst in by plundering Barcelona crowds. Ahead of them fled such terrified Spaniards as famed Guitarist Andres Segovia and his wife who were obliged to leave behind her jewels and his children by a previous marriage.
Another fugitive, the French holder of the Chair of Jurisprudence at Barcelona Uni-versity for the past 15 years, returned to the University of Paris declaring that Barcelona was split into four hostile factions. "The hordes now in charge in Catalonia," he said, "resamble sewer rats come up for air, and I fear it is going to be difficult to get them down into the sewers again, whatever happens. Thousands of convicts liberated from prison roam the streets and some of them have been made 'officials.' In the midst of all this the, authorities are devoting plenty of time to campaigns against religion. The word adios [good-by] is banned as it evokes the name of God. and instead everyone has to say salnd [greetings]. A party of laborers from the Workers' General Union even tried to open the doors of the Barcelona insane asylum which would have set free 2,000 lunatics. They made this attempt in an effort to embarrass the rival Anarchists.
Happily they were caught before they could set free the dangerously insane and were shot." Killer Gangs. In corroboration U. S.