Queen-Regent of Spain presided at her last Cabinet Council in the Palace
in Madrid. Sixteen and a-half years before she had been seated in the
same vast State hall waiting to receive all the Diplomatic Corps and the
message of condolence that they were bringing. Señor Zarco del Valle,
introducer of Ambassadors at the Spanish Court, describes her appearance
as she sat, crushed by grief and despondency, her face and eyes swollen
by the tears she had shed. Her hands lay loosely in her lap and
trembled. The sight of the forlorn widow was so heartrending that Señor
del Valle hesitated long before he pronounced the official words,
“Madam, may I announce to your Majesty His Eminence the Apostolic
Nuncio?” Scarcely had the words crossed his lips than Maria-Christina
started and stood upright before him, a Queen and a ruler from head to
foot, her forehead erect, a fire of resolution burning in the depths of
her brown eyes. The late Señor Sagasta, who was then Prime Minister of
Spain, was still her chief Minister when she received the official
farewells of the Councillors. Señor Sagasta, in the course of an
eloquent address, recalled the day when the Queen, who then barely knew
him, did honour to his loyalty, and, trembling and weeping at the loss
of her Consort, so fresh in her memory, she placed her confidence in
him. Sixteen years and a-half elapsed since that day, during which the
Queen was sacrificing her youth, a slave to duty and a jealous guardian
of her children. She had suffered so much, finding at last compensation
in the happiness of the King. He, a grateful and loving son to his
mother, on receiving the carefully-guarded deposit of Royal power, would
receive therewith a moral education which assuredly he would never
forget in all the trials of his life.
[Illustration: S. A. R. EL INFANTE DON CARLOS.]
The Queen listened to Señor Sagasta’s words with increasing emotion, and
finally was moved to weeping. But, recovering herself, she responded,
and, in thanking Señor Sagasta, said that she had ever had the earnest
desire to do right, even though she might not always have been right;
and she ever felt profound love for Spain in return for the kindnesses
that had always been heaped upon her. She hoped that the statesmen
before her assembled, and those who could and might become Councillors
of the Crown, would help her son as effectively as they had helped her.
[Illustration: THE CORONATION OF ALFONSO XIII., 1902.
THE KING’S CARRIAGE.]
[Illustration: ARRIVAL AT THE CONGRESS.]
[Illustration: PROCESSION OF THE CORONATION BULL-FIGHT.]
On the following day the formal enthronement of Alfonso XIII. as King of
Spain was accomplished; a chapter in the history of the Spanish Monarchy
was closed and a fresh epoch was begun. The young Monarch made his
appearance before his subjects under the happiest conditions. Madrid
looked its best beneath the bright sun and cloudless skies which
fortunately attended the whole course of the city’s festivities. The
procession was one of those picturesque and impressive displays in which
the Spanish as a people know how to excel. The young King’s demeanour
was an engaging mixture of boyish self-possession and boyish delight,
together with traces of a maturer air of resolution, which were
especially apparent when he recited the oath of enthronement before his
Congress. From that body he had a magnificent and remarkable reception.
The crowds in the streets vied with their Parliamentary representatives
in their acclamations as the King left the Congress, and these
unmistakable signs of a loyalty deep and true were received by the King
with manifest pleasure. The whole day of rejoicing was one which must
live long in the memory of both subjects and Sovereign.
So, amid sounds of universal rejoicing, the young King entered upon his
task with all the promise of youth and under fair auspices, and nowhere
than in this country was the hope more cordially felt that the unbounded
enthusiasm with which he had been proclaimed would be the prelude to a
long, ever-brightening record of loyal co-operation between the
Sovereign and his subjects, of re-awakened national energies, of solid
and enduring gains of domestic unity and progress, and of the attainment
of the indomitable aspiration of a noble people.
In every respect these high hopes are being realised. The King’s
popularity, based on the solid foundation of respect for wise authority
and administration, of his frank, generous, and engaging personality,
is growing daily. He has gained the confidence as he won the hearts of
his subjects, and it is safe to assert that at no period of recent
history has the throne of Spain been more secure, or the future of the
country more full of promise. The renaissance of the Spanish nation has
commenced; her commercial prosperity is steadily and surely increasing;
and with the ever-lessening evil of domestic friction, the expansion of
her trade, and the development of her natural and mineral resources, the
boundless possibilities before Spain are assuming definite and tangible
form.
[Illustration: RAILWAY MAP OF SPAIN.]
Mining.
The history of mining in Spain would fill a dozen books, each twelve
times as large as the present volume, and even then only the half, if so
much of the story, would be told. It would form a narrative that would
combine tragedy and romance, and present a moral as stern as humanity
has ever been asked to peruse. The mineral wealth of the Peninsula was
responsible for the origination of the African slave trade, for the
demolition of Carthage, for the decline of Rome, for the sacrifice of
lives innumerable, for tortures unspeakable, for crimes that are without
parallel in the annals of the world. In ancient times Spain was ravaged,
plundered, and depopulated to provide Carthage with the spoils that were
to make her the prey of the Romans, who, in their turn, were to be
lulled by wealth and luxury into the deadly sleep of degeneracy that
precedes decay.
It is probable that the beginning of the history of precious metals may
be traced back to India, although it is commonly assigned to Greece
about 900 B.C.; but the earliest specific mention of gold or silver
mining in European history is derived from the story of Cadmus, a
Phoenician, who mined for copper and gold in Thrace in 1594 B.C., or
thereabouts. Jason, another Phoenician, journeyed as far west as
Sardinia in search of precious metals in 1263 B.C.; and it is known that
the Phoenicians were working the gold placers of the Guadalquiver
previous to 1100 B.C. The means of winning the gold--the only mineral
that was exploited in those days--were both limited and arduous, and
some time between 1200 and 500 B.C. (it is impossible to compute the
period more exactly) the auriferous resources of Spain were thought to
be exhausted. The results of Phoenician mining enterprise must have been
considerable, for about B.C. 500 Darius, of Persia, undertook and
successfully executed a military expedition against Phoenicia for the
purpose of acquiring the metallic treasure, which its adventurers had
carried away from Spain. Some portion of this hardly-won stock of
bullion found its way back to Europe some two centuries later when
Alexander the Great plundered Persia.
[Illustration: THE UNION MINE, BILBAO.]
Spain did not benefit in the slightest degree by the earliest discovery
of her auriferous riches; and when her silver resources were disclosed,
they provided the Carthaginians with a further incentive to pillage and
plunder the country which was cursed by the possession of her coveted
mineral wealth. Between 480 and 206 B.C. the silver mines were worked by
the Carthaginians, who stored their spoil at Carthage against the
coming, in B.C. 146, of the plundering Romans who captured the city,
rifled its treasure houses, and either sold its myriad inhabitants in
the slave markets of Rome, or condemned them to the hideous labour of
the Spanish mines. Spain was to the Ancients what Mexico and Central and
South America became in later ages to Spain--El Dorado, the land of
gold, the richest mining country of the world; and the nearer history of
Mexico and Peru--the fate of its aborigines, the subsequent struggle
among leading nations for the mastery of its precious metals, the
destruction of its soil, the neglect of its agriculture, and the
resultant poverty and decay of its population--is no more than a
repetition of the ancient history of Spain. The aborigines were easily
brought into a state of subjection by the disciplined and well armed
soldiers of Carthage, who reduced them to slavery, and compelled them,
with every accompaniment of savage brutality, to explore and work the
mines.
[Illustration: TERMINUS OF THE MINE RAILWAY, RIO TINTO.]
“These people,” says Didorus, “though by their labour they enriched
their masters to an almost incredible extent, did it by toiling night
and day in their golden prisons. They were compelled, by the lash, to
work so incessantly that they died of their hardships in the caverns
they had dug. Such as by great vigour of body continued to live, were in
a state of misery which rendered death a preferable fate.” Again
Didorus, in describing the conditions under which mining was carried on
at this period, tells us that infinite numbers of slaves of both sexes
were thrust into the mines, kept at work night and day, and guarded so
strictly as to make escape an impossibility. Naked, maimed, and sick
they laboured on beneath the lash of the brutal overseers without rest
or remission. “Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmities of
females,” says this authority, “excuse any from the work, to which all
are driven by blows and cudgels, until borne down by the intolerable
weight of their misery many fell dead in the midst of their insufferable
labours. Deprived of all hope, these miserable creatures expect each day
to be worse than the last! and long for death to end their griefs.”
[Illustration: THE CANAL SYSTEM, RIO TINTO.]
The mortality among the workers in the mines of Spain at this period
must have been appalling, and the conditions were calculated to decimate
the entire race. Soon it became necessary to recruit the fast thinning
ranks of native labourers with imported workers, and these were brought
in thousands from Africa. Negro slaves had previously been introduced,
to a small extent, into Etruria; but the traffic had not hitherto
[Illustration: MINING MAP OF SPAIN.]
attained the gigantic proportion that it was then to assume. Jacob, in
his _History of the Precious Metals_, says: “This oppression and
exhaustion of the native labourers led to a trade in human beings which
was carried on by the Carthaginians with the interior of Africa, and
supplied to Andalusia the place of those native workmen who had been
destroyed by the excessive toil imposed on them by their Asiatic
intruders. This horrid traffic was extended and continued, and it
augmented the produce of the mines of Spain in such a degree as to have
an influence on the whole commerce of the world at that period. That
influence was continued for upwards of seven hundred years, until the
Government of the Romans, who succeeded the Carthaginians in the mastery
of Spain, had fallen into the hands of the Gothic monarchs.”
The spoils which Phoenicia had won from Spain led to her spoilation by
Darius of Persia, in the fifth century before the Christian era; three
hundred years later the silver hoards of Carthage excited the cupidity
and envy of Rome, and Spain, which provided the booty, was wrested from
the Carthaginians by the armies of the Commonwealth. Up to B.C. 400,
when mining in Spain was reduced to a regular system, and the output was
enormously increased, Carthage was able to utilise her silver in her
Indian trade; but with increasing returns the necessity arose for
establishing other markets for her precious metals. In Carthage and in
Rome the numerary money system still obtained, but about this date the
Carthaginians adopted silver currency and endeavoured, but with little
success, to dispose of their surplus supplies of silver by offering them
in the markets of Rome. But Rome still held to her copper tokens, and
was as yet free from the fatal influence of the mines. “Rome trusted to
itself and its sword,” says Heeren in his _Researches, African Nations_,
“Carthage to its gold and its mercenaries. The greatness of Rome was
founded upon a rock; that of Carthage upon sand and gold-dust.”
[Illustration: PORTION OF WORKS, AND SAN FERNANDO VILLAGE, HUELVA.]
But the increasing volume of the trade of Carthage with the Orient did
not keep pace with her ever-multiplying returns of silver. Carthaginian
silver made its appearance in Italy, and the jealous eye of Rome was led
from Carthaginian silver to Carthage and its hugely profitable Indian
trade. In B.C. 264 began the first Punic War, which cost Carthage the
islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica--all of them mining
countries--and an indemnity of 1,200 talents of silver. Three years
after Hamilcar Barca, on the plea that the extension of the
Carthaginians’ arms into the interior was necessary in order to make
good the loss of the mineral-producing islands ceded to Italy, conducted
a marauding expedition through Spain. This campaign of conquest and
slaughter culminated in B.C. 219 in the sacking of Saguntum (the modern
Murviedro), a Greek colonial city and furnished Rome with the pretext
for another war against Carthage. In B.C. 269, prior to the first Punic
War, Rome had formally adopted silver as a portion of her monetary
system; and the demand for the metal made it necessary for her to
devise some means for ensuring a larger and more regular supply than she
could obtain from her own mines or by purchase. Italy’s growing commerce
with the Orient, which consumed all the silver at her command, hastened
the means to the end. The capture of Saguntum by the unauthorised
commandoes of Hamilcar Barca was the excuse upon which Rome declared the
second Punic War which, in B.C. 207, ended in the conquest of Spain, and
the final evacuation of the coveted territory by the Carthaginian forces
five years later.
[Illustration: CEMENTATION VATS, HUELVA.]
Carthage built her greatness on the spoils wrung from the mines of
Spain, and her fall is directly traceable to the same cause. As
Alexander del Mar says: “They corrupted the Government of Carthage, and
led to the neglect of military discipline and precautions; they
introduced a mercenary and gambling spirit into all enterprises; they
created monopolies of wealth; they impoverished the masses; they
occasioned the abandonment of those industries which had built up the
State, and they eventually so crippled its power, that in the memorable
contests that ensued with Rome for the mastery of these same mines,
Carthage was unable to successfully cope with its more vigorous
adversary.”
[Illustration: ORCONERA IRON ORE COMPANY, BILBAO.]
There is abundant evidence to show that although the Carthaginians were
driven out by the all-conquering Romans, they left with the full
determination to return at some future time, and they took the most
careful precautions to hide their treasures from the eyes of the
invaders. The ancient workings that are attributed to Roman miners are,
in many cases, of Carthaginian origin; for it appears certain that
numbers of these well-developed mines were never discovered by the
Romans. The site of a mine at Córdova, for instance, was indicated by a
series of seven abandoned and rubbish-filled shafts, forming an
irregular row of workings. One or two of these shafts at either end of
the row had been tested without yielding any satisfactory results, and
when the property passed, at a nominal figure, into the hands of English
capitalists the manager received instructions to empty these shafts. He
started at one end and cleared three of the seven holes, only to find
that they stopped suddenly at a few yards from the surface. Then,
following the course that had been taken by the Romans and the more
recent Spanish proprietors, he began at the other end only to find that
the supposed shafts were no more than huge pot holes. Disappointed with
the fruitlessness of his efforts he wired to London, “Have cleared six
holes. No trace of lode.” The answer was instantly returned to the
despondent manager:--“Clear the seventh.” Acting on these instructions
the centre shaft was cleared, and at a little depth he came upon a
massive iron door which proved to be the entrance to the enormous
ancient workings which the Carthaginians had hidden for over two
thousand years by this ingenious device of digging dummy shafts, and so
giving succeeding generations the impression that the mine was a
worthless and abandoned prospect.
In the majority of these ancient workings in the copper mines that I
have inspected, tools of Carthaginian make had been found lying
scattered in the tunnels where the workmen had thrown them when they
made their hurried departure. One has only to glance from those enormous
catacombs to the implements with which the excavations were made to
realise the terrific difficulties of the task and the misery and almost
super-human labour that was involved in its accomplishment. Human blood
was spilt like water to gratify the mineral greed of the Carthaginian
conquerors. When the younger Scipio, carrying the war into the enemy’s
country, sacked and afterwards burned Carthage to the ground, 60,000 of
its citizens were sent to labour as slaves in the Spanish mines of which
they had so recently been the opulent masters.
Before the conclusion of the second Punic war Scipio returned to Rome
with so great a quantity of the precious metals captured by his forces,
that the Roman numerary system was finally abolished, and the complete
establishment of silver currency was effected. But the triumph of Rome
was the beginning of her end. She had crushed her great Carthaginian
rival, and gained her Indian trade; she had extended her possessions to
the Atlantic ocean, and made herself the owner of the greatest mineral
country of the world. But she had transferred to her own shoulders the
curse of Carthage’s decline when she assumed the Carthaginian mantle.
Public and private morality was demoralised by the accumulation of the
treasure in Rome; wealth was the precursor of corruption; and corruption
led to that gross luxury and social and political supineness which
sapped the greatness of the empire.
When the impairment of the stock of silver coins by export to India and
the surrounding countries necessitated larger and regular supplies of
the metal, Rome applied herself to the exploitation of her Spanish mines
with a vigour as great as it was pitiless. The native races and their
erstwhile Carthaginian masters worked side by side, and their ranks were
subsequently swelled by condemned criminals from Italy, and in later
times even by legionary soldiers. Jacob tells us that “the silver
procured by the Romans by these operations must have cost more than its
current worth; and, according to Polybius, the 40,000 workmen who were
constantly employed in the silver mines at New Carthage in Spain
produced only 25,000 drachmas (valued at under £1,000) per diem--a sum
that could scarcely have purchased more than sufficient to keep alive
the miserable beings who were immolated in them. Another reason why
these mines were worked at a loss at this time, if indeed they were, is
supplied by Del Mar, who points out that “when these mines were worked
by the Romans there already existed in their own markets a mass of the
precious metals that had been obtained at a cost which, reckoned in
blood and cruelty, was immeasurable; but which in mere pecuniary outlay
of labour, in killing and sacking, was as nothing. It was against the
competition of this mass of metals, which pecuniarily cost nothing,
that the mine owners had to measure their products in the Roman market;
and it is to be hardly wondered at that they found the industry
unprofitable. The Spaniards subsequently had the same experience in
America, and the Californians and Australians are repeating it at the
present time.
[Illustration: ORCONERA COMPANY’S WORKINGS, BILBAO.]
The Romans also worked for gold the sands of the Guadalquiver, Darro and
Duero rivers, but with what results is not known. They also mined for
copper on a large scale, with, it is evident, the most gratifying
success. The mechanical resources at their command were limited, and
there seems no doubt that many rich mines were abandoned for want of
knowledge and the proper appliances with which to treat the ores. In one
instance, that of the Escurial Mines at Escurial, a huge lode carrying
rich copper was broken by a fault, and the Romans made no effort to pick
up the lode again. The present English owners penetrated the fault, and
found the lode of the original dimensions on the other side.
During the eight hundred years that Spain was under Arab domination, the
mines of Sardinia are believed to have been worked by the conquerors,
and they prosecuted their explorations for the precious metals on the
main land with some vigour. Yeats, in his _History of Commerce_, tells
us that in the eighth century the old silver mines, thought by the
Romans to be exhausted, were made to yield afresh by skilful working;
and the Spanish mines then furnished to the world the chief supplies of
precious metals. The Arabs exported quicksilver to Constantinople, and
it is possible that they extended the industry by opening up new mines.
Spain is so full of metals that, after being explored for centuries, new
mines are constantly being discovered; and perhaps the richest of all
the silver mines--the Hiendelæncina--was opened up in 1843. But what the
Arabs did in the way of discovery we have no means of ascertaining. They
are believed by Jacob to have re-opened the Roman silver mines in the
present French division of the Pyrenees, and to have worked the gold
mines at Lares, the silver mine of Zalamea in Andalusia, and that of
Constantina, near Cazalla. The hills of Jaen, upon which they
principally concentrated their exertions, are pierced with over five
thousand shallow pits, which are estimated to have been the work of five
centuries. Even the approximate amount of the precious metals obtained
as the result of Arab mining in Spain is a matter of the merest
conjecture.
It is curious to note that when Spain was at the zenith of her greatness
the wealth in which she abounded was not the result of the exploitation
of her own vast stores of precious metals, but the fruits of conquest,
bloodshed, and cruelties, similar to those which she had herself
suffered at the hands successively of the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians,
the Romans, and the Arabs. She had seen each succeeding nation of her
despoilers crumble into decay, but she failed to learn the lesson that
their disastrous endings had for her.
In her turn Spain crushed Mexico and Peru, and grew rich and powerful by
tribute and plunder to the neglect of her own resources and her ultimate
temporary ruin and submersion among the nations of Europe. Her own
metallic hoards were passed over--the treasure for which Carthage, and
Rome, and Morroco had fought and bled was neglected; while the methods
of the Roman and the Carthaginian conquerors were being practised upon
the people of the New World. The result is, that while Spain is to-day
recognised as the richest mineral country in Europe, her mineral assets
are in a more backward state of development than those of any other
European country.
[Illustration: THE RAILWAY SYSTEM, BILBAO.]
In the production of copper ore, lead, and quicksilver Spain heads the
list; she is second only to Austria-Hungary in the production of salt
and silver; her tin mines are at present almost untouched; while among
the less important minerals distributed over the Peninsula are
manganese, antimony, cobalt, soda sulphate, sulphate of barium
(barytes), phosphorite, alum, magnesia sulphate, sulphur, kaolin,
lignite. Gold is also found there in payable quantities; coal and cement
of good quality and in enormous deposits are present in the province of
Lerida; while the richness and extent of her iron resources in the
districts round Santander and Bilbao have long been recognised. With all
this vast mineral wealth within her boundaries, Spain should be one of
the richest, rather than one of the poorest of European countries. The
natural conditions are all favourable to the development of the
industry. Labour is cheap and abundant, transport facilities are mostly
good, and the mines are within easy reach of all the important markets
of the world. The working of the mineral resources is carried on under
generous and encouraging State regulations. For this purpose the whole
kingdom is divided into three sections, and each of these into four
districts. Each section is under the charge of an inspector-general of
the first class, and each of the districts under an inspector of the
second class. There are no harassing restrictions to hamper the energies
of the mine owner, while the climatic conditions render it possible to
work the majority of the properties all the whole year round.
Yet with all this mineral wealth to hand, only waiting to be
systematically developed to yield immense returns, less than ten per
cent. of the population of Spain are engaged in its mining industries;
and between sixty and seventy per cent. are occupied in various branches
of agriculture, or in pastoral pursuits. The reason is not far to seek.
In many parts the country realises Mr. Stephen Phillips’s dream of that
fair land where