Word: serrano
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Thin, nervous, ambitious Don Ramón Serrano Suñer found the road to success was comparatively easy. While his fat-bottomed brother-in-law, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, was crushing Spanish Loyalists, Serrano skulked behind the lines, building up the Falange Espanola Tradicionalista. As head Falangista, Serrano controlled Spain's sole political party with a claimed membership of some 2,500,000. As head of the Ministry of Press and Propaganda he controlled what all Spaniards (supposedly) read and thought. As Minister of the Interior he controlled what they ate and when they went to prison. When...
Disease. From a family standpoint, Don Francisco Franco had plenty of reason to smack down his upstart inlaw. Serrano had dutifully fathered the six children of Señora Zita, handsome sister of Franco's wife. But a few months ago, Spaniards reported with bitter humor, Serrano had presented his wife with a social disease. His name was linked in Madrid café jingles to at least three women: the wife of a South American diplomat, the sister of a Spanish writer and a comely actress...
...these extramarital relaxations were not enough, then there were two other good reasons for dropping Serrano into the political ashcan. Three months ago in Rome, Pope Pius XII dressed him down for his sparsity of morals and his abundance of pro-Axis sympathies. Leaving the audience in a white rage, Serrano reportedly cracked: "This fellow is impossible!" In Catholic Spain the slur was intolerable. Even worse was Serrano's bumble of Aug. 15 when his Falangist thugs tossed a grenade into a crowd coming out of Bilbao Cathedral...
...Falangistas intended to kill War Minister General José Varela, twice winner of Spain's Grand Laureled Cross of St. Ferdinand, who relieved the siege of the Alcazar in Spain's preview of World War II. The grenade killed four people, but not General Varela. He demanded Serrano's scalp and the execution of the Falangistas involved. (A Madrid dispatch broadcast from Germany last week reported that one Juan José Dominguez was executed "for throwing hand grenades...
Disaster. A previously inept politico, Franco demonstrated that the stress & strain of being dictator of a gaunt, proud land still in a state of civil war had taught him a few lessons. He canned both General Varela and Serrano in a Cabinet shakeup that became an international sensation...