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The Novelti. On the arcaded Plaza Mayor in the centre of the city there is no silence, but plenty of listeners. Here are four large sidewalk cafes with back-room restaurants, all equally greasy and flyspecked. Fashion has chosen just one, the Cafe Novelti, to be the official saloon of Rightist Spain. Here daily gather whatever foreign correspondents are in town, staff officers, German and Italian aviators (always at separate tables), secret agents and such wounded soldiers as are in funds (see p. 21). Probably no one spot in all Rightist Spain contains as much actual news and incredible gossip as the terrace tables and back dining room of the Novelti.
Shelled was Salamanca, but that was in 1812, by Wellington. Today most obvious local indications that a war is going on are the signs above bombproof Reiugios on many street corners, and the fact that all street lights are extinguished at 12. Since not even a war can break the Spanish habit of dining at 10:30 p.m., the old-time profession of linkboys has been revived by newsboys with flashlights who light the Novelti's patrons home.
The Future. For a year all Europe has been handling the Spanish crisis with hand-to-mouth diplomacy. The issue is plain enough: Does Italy (and Germany) fear a collectivist state on the Mediterranean more than France (and Russia) fear a fascist state on her southern border? Britain, which always is fertile of ideas about governing other countries, has batted out a number of notions on the Spanish problem. The latest school of thought is that the best possible solution is partition, the historical model presumably being Panama, which revolted (with U. S. help) and split off from Colombia.
The Left is training militia as fast as it can, hopes to have 1,000,000 fresh men in the field next spring. The Right, however, has had the advantage since Bilbao fell in June. Its chief source of manpower must, in future, be Italy. This is not entirely a blessing. There are already 60,000 Italians fighting in Spain and thoughtful Rightists agree that it will never do for II Duce. who told some of them they were going to Italian East Africa, to bring them home. Settled in Spain, even half the Italian expeditionary force would create a grave agronomic problem. But whether that problem would ever arise: whether the Right will, as its spokesmen declare, achieve the fall of Madrid and a military victory by the end of 1937: whether that would really end the fighting—nobody last week had a crystal ball clear enough to tell.
*Rightist Spain's stamps, which are simply labeled CORREOS (MAIL), some of which bear the portrait of Queen Isabella, were declared invalid by little Costa Rica this week, but are accepted in the rest of the postal union. *Besides the standard, pre-Revolution red-barred yellow flag of Spain and the flags of sympathetic Germany, Italy and Portugal, hotel? and public squares in Rightist Spain punctiliously display, to the astonishment of most patrons, the blue and white banner with the parrotlike bird of Guatemala.