Appeal Committee to Help Spanish Intellectuals

On the 9th March last, there was held at Sarria in the suburbs of Barcelona a Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Union of Students of the University of Barcelona. The meeting, which was attended by upwards of 500 students, some 35 university teachers, and by representatives of the International Confederation of Students, and the National Union of Students of the United States of America, was the result of many efforts by the Spanish students to obtain permission to organise a free students' union of their own, A month after the Sarria meeting it was announced in the Spanish Press that fines, ranging from 25,000 to 200,000 pesetas, were being imposed on many of the professional people who had taken part in it, and whose names had been taken when the police forcibly entered the monastery where the meeting had been held. Amongst those fined are several young university teachers whose inability to pay would result, under Spanish law, in the confiscation of their property. Sponsors of the Appeal include R.B. Tate, Professor of Spanish, Nottingham; John Berger, Art Critic and Novelist; Bob Edwards MP; Iris Murdoch, Novelist, and Konnie Zilliacus MP, Cheques/P.0. should be sent to A.C.H.S.I., c/o Frishman Slyer Associates, 49 Goodge Street, W.1l.