Word: bilbao
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Christian Mission. Worst hit of all were the drab industrial towns of northern Spain, where factory shutdowns meant less daily bread for the workers. In Bilbao (pop. 230,000), factories and steel plants were rationed to 15 hours of power a week; unemployment soared, wages fell below subsistence. To alleviate the misery and to encourage the workers, Bilbao's energetic young Bishop Casimiro Morcillo González set up a mission whose motto was "Towards a Better Life." All week long, 300 priests used 2,000 loudspeakers to urge "Christian solidarity" for the workers, "social justice" from the employers...
Then came new work cuts. The men sent a deputation to talk things over with Elisardo Bilbao, the tough, despotic manager of the Euskalduna steel plant. Don Elisardo drove them off with this fierce warning: "Men, you make one move and I'll have you all in jail. Now go and complain to your priests...
This week Dictator Franco's sindicatos, state-appointed bosses of the state-run "trade unions," were converging on Bilbao to halt the spreading unrest. "These poor fellows are not to blame," said one of the bosses. "There are some very delicate angles. The French say cherchez la femme. Here in Spain we might say cherchez...
...Spain's state-controlled press, no word was printed about the Bilbao strike...
Braaten writes from Madrid, "I couldn't figure out any other way to get an egghead, a figurehead, and a hardheaded fund-raiser into the same cartoon. If this looks as though it were done between trains in a dingy Bilbao hotel room lit by a single naked bulb, it's because it was. Of course, it would have looked the same if it had been done in a north-lighted studio overlooking the Seine, but a guy has to have some excuse...