Reunion In Madrid

Madrid society was all aflutter over the gala season that lay just ahead. Balenciaga, Rodriguez and other select dressmakers had fallen two months behind in deliveries. Printers had run short of cards for engraved invitations. Property owners had jammed the classified ads with offers of "apartments suitable for diplomats." After four years of boycott, some Western nations had sent ambassadors to the government of Dictator Francisco Franco.

Belgium's Prince de Ligne, in a gilded coach flanked by Moorish lancers, was the first to ride to the royal palace and present credentials. The stocky, mustachioed, gold-laced envoy had hurried from his former post in New Delhi: "Though I come from farthest away," he crowed, "I wanted to be first, and I made it." Hard on his heels trailed The Netherlands' Count Willem van Rechteren Limpurg. Then followed the U.S.'s Stanton Griffis, riding to his audience with Franco in the old horse-drawn coach used by Minister Washington Irving more than a century ago.

Official welcome for these three envoys seemed cordial; the press gave them all headlines and front-page portraits. The attitude was distinctly frosty toward the British and French ambassadors. Not a line appeared about French Ambassador Bernard Hardion; Spanish Falangists have no love for his government. No paper printed the British Information Services' detailed biography of Ambassador Sir John Balfour ("He can quote classic Spanish plays at great length"). One reason for this was evident in reports from London; there, in Parliament, a government spokesman opposed Spain's entry into the North Atlantic alliance because it would weaken democratic collaboration. Franco's press pecked back by raising an old cry for the return of Gibraltar.

The diplomatic complications were added spice for society's new season in Madrid. Plain Madrilenos kept their eyes on the main course. "All this gilt and polish is very fine," observed one citizen. "But let's hope that something more substantial and necessary will come afterwards : good green American dollars."

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