Alba Quits

When Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba, was dying, the priest asked him if he had forgiven his enemies. The 16th-Century tyrant answered: "I have no enemies; I have hanged them all."

The present (17th) Duke of Alba has tried all his life to make friends instead of enemies, has largely succeeded. His name is Jacobo Maria del Pilar Carlos Manuel Fitz-James Stuart, and he is distantly related to Winston Churchill.* Last week the thin-faced, scholarly, impassive Duke made some more friends by resigning his post in London as Francisco Franco's Ambassador. The Franco regime, he said, was "harmful to the best interests of Spain."

Alba's disgruntlement with things at home had long been known, his move long expected. But Alba, an ardent monarchist, might have been expected to stick at his post so long as he could do anything to help Pretender Don Juan de Bourbon, who has been waiting in Switzerland for the call to the throne. Apparently negotiations between Spain's moderate, non-Falangist faction and the Don Juanists had broken down. And Britain's Labor Government had shown no disposition to back a monarchist restoration in Spain.

* One of his ancestors was Arabella Churchill, sister of the first Duke of Marlborough.

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