Word: bilbao
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...from "Business as Usual" Spain-the only difference being that this year the British have had to pay cash. North of Madrid last week the Rightist offensive of General Mola against the Basques (TIME, April 12) won through Durango, but slightly behind schedule, and he had not yet taken Bilbao. A Mola objective had been to force Leftists to relax their siege of the Rightists in Oviedo who have held out stubbornly during the whole war, and this Mola accomplished, for thousands of Asturian besiegers had to be withdrawn from Oviedo, rushed to defend Bilbao...
Barcelona is the proletarian Pittsburgh of Spain, but violently Catholic Bilbao, capital of the Basques, is a sweating, sulphurous Spanish Youngstown, its skies red every night with the belch of blast furnaces. Up to last week the bouncing, battling Basques had been almost left to their own quarrels by the Rightist Spain of Generalissimo Francisco Franco this year, but suddenly he sent General Emilio Mola with a mixed force of Spaniards, Germans, Italians and Moors swarming north over the Cantabrian Mountains to get Bilbao or bust...
...coward is this Coughlin of beleaguered Bilbao. When he heard that General Mola's forces were advancing down the mountains, President de Aguirre hopped out of the luxurious hotel in which he has been living, ordered to the front every male in Bilbao capable of bearing arms, seized a rifle himself and rushed off to a brilliant, impromptu Basque counter- offensive which in latest dispatches was blocking Mola some 16 miles outside the city...
...fluttering down among the Basques against whom General Mola was driving. They urged everyone who disapproved of "sharing everything in Spain collectively" to hustle over to the Rightists and, according to dispatches from Rightist territory, these leaflets had considerable effect, numbers of devout Basques deserting their Radiorator. Advices from Bilbao reaching France were that many middle-class citizens favored joining the Rightist cause as the only alternative to "sharing everything" with Bilbao mobsters and blast furnace stalwarts...
Into the Bay of Biscay belligerently steamed six German warships, attempting by the menace of their guns to make the Spanish Reds release the Nazi freighter Palos which they had seized and interned at Bilbao. Amid much bluster on both sides, the Nazis made "unalterable demands," the Reds "unalterable refusals," and the little Palos became a bone over which could snarl the mightiest dogs of war. Meanwhile a fresh White offensive surged completely into Madrid from the west, occupying the north station near the onetime Royal Palace, then was swept completely out again by the Reds...