Letter: 'Spain'

              INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS
9, AVENUE D'ORSAY. PARIS-VIIe
TELEGRAMS : INTER FED-PARIS
TELEPHONE : INVALIDES 45-88

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: President: W. M. Citrine, Great Britain; Vice-Chairmen: H. Jacobsen, Denmark; L. Jouhaux, France; Corn. Mertens, Belgium; R. Tayerle, Czechoslovakia; General Secretary: W. Schevenels
J.Schorsch, Austria.

PERSONAL:
14th February 1935.
Mr. Walter M. Citrine,
London.

Dear Comrade Citrine,
Spain
After an absence of nearly three weeks, travelling straight from Geneva to take part in the delegation to Spain (decided on at the last Executive meeting and consisting of Vincent Auriol, of the LSI, and myself), I find I have a great deal of correspondence and documents to deal with, and I hope that you will therefore excuse my not writing to you at once in regard to your letter of the 6th February about the Co-ordination Committee.
But I want to communicate with you in a very urgent matter directly connected with our delegation to Spain. You may be aware that the aim of our delegation, apart from the desire to make an enquiry into the situation of the Labour Movement, Trade Union conditions and prospects of a return to normal, was mainly to make representations to the government with a view to obtaining more humane treatment of prisoners and comrades on trial,  and in particular greater clemency towards those condemned to death. We were told that after the two executions in Oviedo on the 1st February, of the civilian, Jesus Iglesias Arguelles and a sergeant, Diego Vazquez,  twenty further sentences of death had been promulgated - eighteen in Oviedo, between the 29th January and the 2nd February, one in Valladolid on the 4th February and one in Medina del Riocco on the 4th February.      To give you some idea of the state of affairs in Spain, I may mention that, in addition to the hundreds summarily executed during the reprisals, there were five other executions,  two soldiers condemned to death in Catalonia were pardoned and six civilians, who had been condemned to death in 1932, were also recently pardoned.