The Spanish alternating party system has prevailed as a national
institution since the restoration of the monarchy under Alfonso XII.
Ostensibly it is based upon manhood suffrage, and in the cities this is
the fact, but in the more remote districts the balloting plays but small
part in the returns. Upon the dissolution of the Cortes and the
resignation of a ministry, one of the two great parties--the liberal
party and the conservative party--automatically retires from power, and
the other succeeds it, always carrying the ensuing elections by
convenient working majorities.
Spain is a poor country. During the half century previous to the
restoration of the Bourbons, she was a victim of internecine strife and
factional warfare. She is not poor naturally, but her energy has been
drawn off; she has been bled white, and needs time to recuperate. The
Spaniards are a practical people. They realize this condition. Even the
lower classes are tired of fine talking. No people have heard more, and
none have profited less by it. The country is not like Russia, a fertile
field for the agitator; it looks coldly upon reform. Such response as
has been obtained by the radical has come from the labour centres under
the stimulus of foreign influences, and more particularly from
Barcelona, where the problem is political even before it is an
individual one.
For this reason the Spanish Republicans are in large part theorists. The
land has been disturbed sufficiently. They would hesitate to inaugurate
radical reforms, if power were to be placed in their hands, while the
possession of power itself might prove not a little embarrassing. Behind
the monarchy lies the republic of 1873, behind Cánovas and Castelar, Pí
y Margall; the republic has merged into and was, in a sense, the
foundation of the constitutional system of today. Even popular leaders
such as Lerroux are quick to recognize this fact, and govern themselves
accordingly. The lack of general education today, would render any
attempt at the establishment of a thorough-going democracy insecure.
Francisco Ferrer, although idealized abroad, has been no more than a
symptom in Spain. Such men even as Angel Guimerá, the dramatist, a
Catalan separatist who has been under surveillance for years, or Pere
Aldavert, who has suffered imprisonment in Barcelona because of his
opinions, while they speak for the proletariat, nevertheless have had
scant sympathy for Ferrer's ideas. It would be interesting to know just
to what extent these commend themselves to Pablo and Emiliano Iglesias
and the professed political Socialists.
Of the existing parties, the Liberal, being more or less an association
of groups tending to the left, is the least homogeneous. Its most
prominent leader of late years has been the Conde de Romanones, who may
scarcely be said to represent a new era. He has shared responsibility
with Eduardo Dato.
Among Conservatives, the chief figure has long been Antonio Maura. He is
not a young man. Politically, he represents very much what the cordially
detested Weyler did in the military sphere. But Maurism today is a very
different thing from the Maurism of fifteen years ago, or of the moat of
Montjuich. The name of Maura casts a spell over the Conservative
imagination. It is the rallying point of innumerable associations of
young men of reactionary, aristocratic and clerical tendencies
throughout the country, while to progressives it symbolizes the
oppressiveness of the old régime.