Cortes' Day

Speaker Santiago Alba entered the semicircular hall of the Cortes in Madrid one afternoon last week. It was time for the session to begin. The Government was proposing to extend Spain's handy "state of alarm" another month to scare off a general farm-labor strike. A trade treaty with the U. S. was in the making. But as Speaker Santiago Alba's eye swept the benches, he goggled. The benches were nearly deserted, Government and Opposition. "Where are they all?'' he asked. A page boy told him they had all gone to a bull fight in honor of the contestants in the "Miss Spain" beauty contest. The Speaker telephoned the bull ring to ask when the party would be over. Late that night the Deputies straggled into the Cortes, rapidly voted a 15% increase in freight rates, annulled an old law forbidding farm workers to leave their home districts.

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