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<noinclude><pagequality level="1" user="" /></noinclude>SEPTEMBER

15, 1947

1ffieWATCHTOWER..

We were able to engage second-class reserved seats in
the train for Torralva de Calatrava, in the province of
Ciudad Real, to the south of Madrid. The following night
found us occupying these in a compartment together with
three of our brethren from Torralva who had been visiting
in Madrid, and with a soldier and a newspaper reporter.
Provided with an abundant lunch prepared by the brethren, we five friends shared it with the soldier and periodista. Our sister jokingly referred to the bread being eaten
as pan estraperlo, because of the full content of wheat it
contained. And then our periodista friend explained that
estraperlo was what they called the mercado negro or black
market, and that the name was derived from Straus, the
name of a Jew who, with bribery, tried to introduce a
money-making invention. According to regular routine the
government inspector went through the train and examined
our passports. Thus the time passed interestingly until our
train pulled into Ciudad Real station at 12: 92 a.m. of
Saturday, May 10.
Two brothers had cycled the 15 kilometers from Torralva
to meet us; and after getting acquainted we rode in a somewhat rickety, decrepit and ancient taxi to Torralva and
pulled up in front of the home of the brother who had come
with us from Madrid and who was to entertain us. It was
1: 35 a.m.. by now, but 10, a delegation of brethren at
the patio door to greet us! 'When we got into the small
dining room and living room we found 14 brethren had
stayed up to welcome us on our arrival. What else was there
to do but visit with everyone and complete our understanding and arrangements for meetings in Torralva that day
and on the morrow~ When we finally tucked ourselves in the
bed which our host and hostess had relinquished for our
use, the town clock struck three o'clock in the morning.
First thing in Torralva, we went to the quarters of the
Civil Guard to register our presence in town. As we walked
through this town of 7,000 in company with three friends
the villagers detected our being aliens and "gawked" at us
and spoke of us as "los protestantes". Many of the female
folk, old and young, were busy in the doorways and on the
sidewalks at weaving lace-trimmings with great speed and
dexterity, on little frames between their knees, studded
with pins and with threads from which dangled clinking
bobbins, the apparatus being almohadilla. A number
of our sisters produce such lace in this manner. They
earnestly wanted to shower large quantities of this fine
work upon us free, but we could not accept any on such
a basis. We paid an early afternoon visit of courtesy upon
the mayor of Torralva at his office at the town center. A
Roman Catholic, like 95 percent of Spain's population, he
treated us friendlily and wanted us to come over to his
wineshop to have a drink. In the early evening we began
collecting data from our brethren at the home of one of the
faithful brethren. At 6: 45 p.m. we called the meeting to
order, and Brother Covington addressed them for more than
an hour through his interpreter. The 24 Spanish brethren
in his audience felt greatly stirred and refreshed.
Early Sunday morning, May 1, the train on which we
had come to Torralva was wrecked, with some killed and
injured, and creating a further shortage of passenger
coaches. Could we get back to Madrid by train? At
5: 30 p.m. we held our final meeting with our brethren at
another home near the outskirts of the town. It was marvelous to see 38 of them jammed into the room. For the most
part they hl,ld been interested. How? Through the zealous
talking about the Kingdom on the part of an older and a
younger brother. The latter had once been in the fighting
forces of Francisco Franco. Now both of their American

287

brethren addressed this gathering. The literature and the
printed forms for carrying on a company organization were
displayed and explained and left with them, and three
brethren were appointed to places of organization service
in the company. The men had noticed that we did not smoke,
as did most of them, and they wanted to know what the
Bible had to say about the matter. At this gathering, therefore, one of us who had been a heavy smoker for years,
burning up as many as 52 cigarettes a day, told why and
how, after getting Kingdom truth, he had quit this slavish
habit, and of the benefits he had gotten from so doing.
(2 Cor. 7: 1) All appreciated this straightforward talk out
of one's own experience and from God's own Word, and
thereafter none of the men smoked in our presence. Prayer
closed our meeting at 8: 30 p.m. We then visited the
Capitan de Cortes at the quarters of the Civil Guard.
While at a late supper with brethren, we felt a bit of
dismay at the sudden news that the driver of our taxi, the
only one in town, had punctured a tire! How to get to
Ciudad Real 15 kilometers away for our train to Madrid?
Texan Covington suggested riding horseback or by cart. At
midnight we hit out for the home of a carter and roused
him. He hitched up a carrito with a round-top cover and
two large wheels, to a tired' horse with jingle-bells below his
neck. Bidding some of the friends there good-bye, four of us
got up into the cart with the driver. Then through the dark
hours we bumped and jingled along, westward. Betimes
Brother Covington, perched to the left of the cigarettesmoking driver, would lean forward to prod the weary
horse with a pencil to spur him a bit faster. At 3 a.m. we
reach the railroad station in Ciudad Real. Tickets for only
third-class passage are available. Our train, scheduled for
4 a.m., pulls in, crowded and over an hour late. With the
aid of a couple of energetic brethren we get seats right
behind a cattle car. Chugging northward to Madrid, our
train passes cars of the train wreck. We have a man on
stretcher aboard. At 9: 55 a.m. we reach Madrid in safety.
A visit to the Comisario de Hospices is needed to get new
tripticos from the International Police, at a charge of 50
centimos.
Our farewell meeting with the Madrilefios brethren took
place at 4: 30 p.m., and a brother was appointed as a temporary company servant and Watchtower study conductor,
from among the 12 brethren present. We learn our host has
received a copy of the February issue of The Watchtower in
Spanish, containing a report of the Cleveland Assembly of
August, 1946, from his son down in Bogota, Colombia, on
business. He encountered a Kingdom publisher offering
magazines on the street and thus got in touch with the
Bogota company of Jehovah's witnesses. He also sent his
father, our host, a copy of the 1947 Memorial week-end
program put on by the Society's missionaries at the assembly in Bogota. The Memorial was observed too in Madrid.
Next day a flight of 2: 20 hours in a bimotored Lineas
Aereas Iberia plane brings us to Barcelona's airport. We
are now in the province of Catalonia, which has quite a
spirit of independence. Not unusual, then, that someone
who had taken refuge here spoke of Spain as "a huge concentration camp". Since the movimiento of 1936 and its
eventual success, the clergy have come back into Spain with
a vengeance, more seminaries for producing priests have
been established, and more of the population have taken up
Catholic religion seriously because of abhorrence of the
communist threat. The pendulum has swung religion-ward.
In Spain the Catholic Hierarchy are now conducting a
Bible campaign. They have produced a remarkable modern
translation of the whole Bible by excellent clerical scholars,

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