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THE MASQUERADE IN SPAIN by Charles Jr. Foltz

THE MASQUERADE IN SPAIN

By

Pub Date: June 1st, 1948
Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

A new slant on Spain's troubled strife, as Foltz, A.P. correspondent, charges the Spanish nobility, through the Army, the Church, Big Business, as being the real rulers of Spain. He claims that they perverted the revolutionary Falangists to their purpose; that they rule the Church of Toledo in defiance of the Vatican's liberalizing influence; that they use Franco as a figurehead. The obligarchy, having bet on the wrong team in the war, is now ready to placate the democracies with restoration of the monarchy, again as a front for oligarchical power. The author sees the Republican revolt as a genuine people's move, later besmirched by rabid anti-clerical legislation, and the Civil War as deliberately fostered by the Axis, with Communism scarcely even a factor. He believes the people want Democracy untainted by Communism, and that economic restrictions on the part of the U.S.A. and Britain could bring this about. Both Hayes and Hoare are discredited here, while the closest analogy is Emmet Hughes' Report from Spain.