Imprisoned Spanish Writer

To the Editors:

The Spanish writer Luciano Rincon is being held without trial in a Bilbao prison on charges of having published in the magazine Cuadernos de Ruedo Iberico, in Paris, several articles on the Franco regime under the pseudonym Luis Ramirez.

The editors and writers connected with Ruedo Iberico—including Francisco Fernández-Santos, Juan Goytisolo, Jorge Semprún, Carlos Semprún, José Martínez, Xavier Domingo, and José Miguel Ullán—have testified to the Spanish Ministry that all articles in the magazine appearing under the pseudonym Luis Ramirez have been written by them. They have informed the Spanish Government that Luciano Rincon, who lives in Spain and has often been molested by the Spanish police, has had no connection with the writing of these pieces.

The following French and Spanish intellectuals in Paris are among the many who have protested the arrest as a flagrant violation of human and legal justice—a return to a more repressive Spain where arrests can be made without evidence and people held without trial, and they are demanding the immediate release of Rincon. No notice of this has appeared in the American press.

Isabel Alvarez de Toledo

Arrabal

Simone de Beauvoir

Italo Calvino

Jean Cassou

Julio Cortázar

Jean Genet

Juan Goytisolo

J. R. Grousset

Gisèle Halimi

Michel Leiris

Artur London

Claude Roy

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jorge Semprún

Mario Vargas Llosa

Vásquez de Sola

Barbara Probst Solomon

New York City