Word: telefonica
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Favorite target of General Franco's Rebel gunners in the Spanish civil war was Telefonica, International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.'s 17-story skyscraper, tallest building in Madrid. Bruised but unbowed by some 186 shells which struck it during the two-and-a-half-year siege, the big steel and reinforced concrete structure served as a home for I. T. & T.'s skeleton staff and their families, occasionally as a bomb shelter for harassed Loyalists. Even heavy bombardments failed to faze its automatic dial system...
...spent $220,000 to repair Telefonica and got ready to resume operations over Spain's 346,000-telephone circuit. But Dictator Franco had other ideas. Paying lip service to eventual restoration of foreign property rights, he kept the system and its 8,000 employes under Government management, quibbled with I. T. & T. over rehiring some of its 20 American executives. I. T. & T., with a $67,372,241 investment (nearly one-seventh of its total assets) in the Spanish subsidiary, was troubled. Fortnight ago Franco put an end to the utility's anxiety by returning the management...
...dickering with Franco that led to last fortnight's settlement was done by lanky Sosthenes Behn. I. T. & T.'s closemouthed, much-traveling president, who lived under fire in Telefonica during part of the Spanish war. Three weeks ago Internationalist Behn saw another hole blasted in his war-scarred income account when the Nazis took over a big I. T. & T. manufacturing plant , in Antwerp, which had exported telephone equipment to Latin America and other I. T. & T. customers abroad. But having made peace with Franco, Phoneman Benn planned to transfer some of the Antwerp business...
From the 15-story La Prensa (Press) Building, a great white flag was hoisted.From the 16-story Telefonica, Madrid's tallest building, the red-&-gold banner of the old Monarchy, now the Franco flag, invited the conquerors in. The weary Loyalist defenders backed out of their trenches, leaving their arms behind. From scattered balconies draped old Monarchist flags, mantillas with Bourbon emblems...
Such skyscrapers as Manhattan's are nearly ideal in resisting bombs and shellfire but the low brick buildings of most European capitals are comparative death traps, according to Madrid dispatches last week. The city's only real skyscraper, the Telefonica, had not only taken the punishment of 43 shells and bombs but its automatic Spanish-built switchboards continued efficiently to serve most of the 53,000 telephone subscribers in Madrid and, despite the horrors of a siege now entering its sixth month, the great majority of these Madrid subscribers have continued to pay their telephone bills. When...