Spaniards jailed for belonging to union

DUE to world pressure and the presence of many foreign observers, the Spanish authorities last week passed lenient sentences on four trade unionists alleged to have been illegally associated with the Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) and to have attended the Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in 1965.

Similar charges against three others, now living outside of Spain, were dropped on August 3 by the Tribunal of Public Order in Madrid. The public prosecutor had been asking for 13 years' jail for the three, José Buiria, Hermes Piquer and José Pallach.

The prosecutor had asked for five years for 34-year-old lawyer Manuel Fernández Montesinos, who donned his legal gown before stepping from the dock to defend himself. When arrested Montesinos—nephew of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca, shot by Franco in Granada during the Spanish Civil War—went on hunger strike.

He was jailed for six months.

The other three, metalworkers Mariano Nuero and Antonio Nogués, and bus mechanic Jesus López Quesada, were each jailed for four months—the prosecution had asked for three years each. Meetings of fellow workers were held soon after the men were arrested last September demanding their release. The men were released on bail and had to report to the police twice a week.

Conformed

On August 3, the court heard evidence from Herr Hans Matthofer, leader of the German Metalworkers' Union, and a social democratic member of the Bündestag.

He told the court that the Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) conformed with the West German conception of a legitimate free trade union.

Also present at the trial were Labour MP Francis Noel-Baker and Belgian lawyer M. Marc de Kock.

In a preliminary report on his impressions of the court Kock says that the rights of defendents were respected at all the trials he attended. But the Tribunal of Public Order continued to be bound by laws which denied workers all freedom to organise in defence of their rights and the improvement of their position.

Sentences were also announced last weekend of others tried in Madrid last week.

Three Basques accused of distributing leaflets calling on workers to take part in the May Day demonstration in Bilbao were jailed for between four and six months. The prosecutor had asked for two years for each man.

A six-month jail sentence was also passed on a young Catalan for painting slogans on a wall in Barcelona for which the prosecutor had asked three years.

As well as soft-peddling in the courts, the Spanish authorities have also been forced by the strength of the student movement to grant pupils and professors more say in university affairs.

The order for this has been made during the summer vacation in an attempt to prevent, when the universities resume, the militant riots and action by students demanding their own union—earlier this year students in Barcelona staged a sit-down in protest against the university authorities.