Voter No. 41 Does His Duty

"Franco or the street cleaner," boasted an official of Spain's Ministry of the Interior, "every voter is entitled to the same treatment." Well, not exactly.

Some 8,000,000 Spanish "heads of families" went to the polls last week in municipal elections to cast their ballots for a list of government-approved candidates. Voter No. 41 in Section 9, Quarter 5 of Madrid's Revised University District stepped into a Cadillac for the brief ride from El Pardo Palace to a tiny yellow schoolhouse. There, under the gaze of his own official portrait, El Caudillo greeted members of the municipal election board, who graciously waived the usual identification procedure. Franco reached into an inside pocket of his double-breasted dark grey suit, removed an already filled-in ballot. He handed it to the board president, who solemnly announced, "His Excellency Francisco Franco Bahamonde, profession--Chief of State, married and with residence in the Palace of El Pardo, votes," and dropped the folded paper in a lantern-shaped glass ballot box. It was the first time that Dictator Franco had cast a ballot since the Civil War began in 1936.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.