July 1, 1977
MADRID--The people of Spain streamed to the polls on June 15 and delivered a vote of massive repudiation to the system of fascist terror through which the capitalist class of Spain has ruled for the past forty years.

Participation was estimated at more than 80 percent of eligible voters. For everyone under sixty-two years of age, this was the first opportunity in their lives to participate in general elections, since the last ones were held in 1936.

The Alianza Popular (AP–Popular Alliance), an electoral formation openly based on adherence to Francoism, trailed behind the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD–Union of the Democratic Center ) and the Socialist and Communist parties, taking only 8.3 percent of the vote.

The defeat of the AP was also a defeat for the Catholic hierarchy, which has been among the strongest backers of Francoism. The day before the elections, a church commission came out with a declaration advising Catholics that the AP’s program was most "in accord with the thinking of the church and thus consistent with the Catholic faith of the majority of the Spanish people."

The question of the right of the oppressed nations in Spain to self-determination came forth as a major issue confronting all parties in the elections.

Only three days before the elections, an estimated 400,000 Catalonians attended a mass meeting demanding autonomy for Catalonia, which was sponsored by an electoral formation dominated by a right-wing Maoist organization, the Partido del Trabajo (Labor Party). The Madrid daily El País called it "the largest mass event celebrated in Catalonia since the end of the civil war."  
 
June 30, 1952
The power of the steelworkers continued to hold sway in the mill towns of the nation as the great steel strike approached the one-month mark. Pickets played cards, ball, or drowsed on cots in picket shanties outside steel mills throughout the nation. Management officials inside the plants struggled with the problems of keeping damage to the minimum as brick lining crumbled in open hearth furnaces. Steel town residents got a breath of clean air for the first time since the last steel strike.

Everything pointed to the truth of Philip Murray’s statement to a rally of Gary steelworkers: "Taft-Hartley can’t make steel." The steelworkers were once again proving that nothing can make steel except steelworkers.

And they are determined not to make any steel until they win their demands. Murray, speaking to the June 22 union rally in Gary, confronted a crowd of steelworkers many of whom carried signs reading "WE AS FREE AMERICANS WILL NOT WORK UNDER A TAFT-HARTLEY INJUNCTION."

Steelworkers’ wives in Braddock, Pa., home of the Edgar Thompson workers of U.S. Steel, told a reporter: "The men are out now and they should stay out until it’s settled. That’s the only way to win," and "Let ‘em strike. I’m just sorry we don’t have John L. Lewis at the head of the union. When the coal miners go out, they make sure they get what they want," and "Nobody’s looking out for the working class." But the cold furnaces and hushed mills were mute testimony to the fact that the working class is looking out for itself.  
 
 
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