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SPAIN FROM WITHIN
[Illustration: KING ALFONSO XIII. IN HIS STUDY IN MADRID.
[Frontispiece.]
SPAIN FROM WITHIN
BY
RAFAEL SHAW
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
1910
(_All rights reserved._)
“For behold! this monstrous twenty million class,
hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to
agree about the manner of shearing, is now also
arising with hopes.”
--CARLYLE, “French Revolution.”
PREFATORY NOTE
“Truth is an exile from our political world. Every faction and
every group tells only that part of the truth which reflects
discredit on its neighbour. Thus our political literature is
interesting only as an archive of monstrosities. The other part of
the truth--that which deals with the good qualities of the
neighbour--is so out of fashion that nobody believes in its
existence. To tell the truth to our politicians would be the
greatest proof of friendship that could be offered to them. But who
has sufficient courage to attempt it? No one in this world would
venture upon so difficult, so disagreeable, and so dangerous a
task. The result is that in Spain the only respect paid to the
truth is to leave it unspoken.”--NUEVO MUNDO, Madrid, Feb. 24,
1910.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to show what the people of
Spain believe to be the truth about those who exercise authority over
them, as gathered from conversation with Spaniards of all classes, but
principally working people, in town and country, and from my own reading
and observation. Whether my informants are right or wrong in their
opinions and beliefs I do not pretend to decide; all I can declare is
that I have faithfully reported what I have heard and seen. The
importance of the opinions I have collected lies in the fact that,
whether they are justified or not, _the people believe them to be true_,
and on that belief they will assuredly act as soon as circumstances
allow.
I have to acknowledge with thanks the courteous permission of the
Editors of the _Spectator_ and the _Standard_ to incorporate in this
volume the gist of various articles, notes, &c., which first appeared in
their pages. The author and publisher have also to express their thanks
to the Editors and Proprietors of the _Nuevo Mundo_ of Madrid for
permission to use the illustrations in this book, which are taken from
that periodical.
RAFAEL SHAW.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 13
I. RACIAL AND CLASS DISTINCTIONS 23
II. THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE 39
III. MORALITY AND CEREMONIAL 61
IV. THE CONFESSIONAL, AND CHURCH ABUSES 73
V. THE POOR AND THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 89
VI. THE MONARCHY AND THE PEOPLE 111
VII. THE REVIVAL OF CARLISM 133
VIII. THE CHURCH MILITANT 159
IX. BARCELONA AND THE LAY SCHOOLS 181
X. THE ARMY, PAST AND PRESENT 199
XI. THE POLICE 215
XII. POLITICS 227
XIII. POLITICAL PARTIES 251
XIV. EDUCATION 263
XV. TAXATION 285
XVI. THE PROCESS OF REGENERATION 303
APPENDIX. NOTES ON POLITICIANS AND PERIODICALS 319
INDEX 325
ILLUSTRATIONS
KING ALFONSO XIII. IN HIS STUDY IN MADRID _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
FACTORY GIRLS 14
PEASANT WOMEN 39
NEWSPAPER SELLERS AT THE OFFICES OF THE _NUEVO
MUNDO_ IN MADRID 61
THE QUEEN AND THE QUEEN-MOTHER OF SPAIN 111
SEÑOR MAURA, LEADER OF THE ULTRAMONTANES 149
DON JAIME OF BOURBON IN MOROCCO 153
A DEMONSTRATION OF REJOICING AT THE FALL OF THE
ULTRAMONTANE MINISTRY 174
A CONSCRIPT 199
THE WAR IN MELILLA. A FORT ON MOUNT GURUGU 203
A RESERVIST AT THE FRONT 208
DON SEGISMUNDO MORET, LEADER OF THE LIBERAL-MONARCHISTS 227
SEÑOR CANALEJAS, LEADER OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS,
AND GENERAL MARINA, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AT
MELILLA 244
A STREET HAWKER DESCRIBING BATTLE SCENES TO AN
ILLITERATE AUDIENCE 263
SAFFRON PICKERS SORTING THEIR CROP 285
A SELLER OF PALM-LEAF BRUSHES AND FANS 289
INTRODUCTION
While a good deal has been written of late years about Spain from the
point of view put forward by the governing classes, little or nothing
has been said about the people--the mass of the nation--who, unable, the
immense majority of them, to read or write, are more inarticulate than
their fellows in any country of Europe west of Russia, but who have,
nevertheless, very definite aspirations and ideals, entirely distinct
from those of their rulers, at whose hands, disheartened as they are by
long years of misgovernment, they have almost abandoned any hope of
amelioration of their lot.
Circumstances have afforded the writer opportunities of seeing a great
deal of the inner life of the people, and of learning what are the
grievances, the aspirations, and the desires of the Spanish working
classes, gathered from conversation with them, and from years of close
personal observation.
Generalisations about an entire nation are usually of doubtful value;
still, it is safe to say that the Spaniard of the working classes is not
the turbulent rascal he is so often depicted, who in the intervals of
_pronunciamentos_ and civil wars occupies his leisure moments in
“holding up” the wayfarer with a blunderbuss. On the contrary, he is a
quiet, industrious, law-abiding citizen, whose chief desire is to be
left to go about his business and make a living for himself and his
family. If he has to fight he fights well, for he does not lack courage,
and he has often been compelled to fight for causes in which he takes no
interest, as the alternative to losing the employment which stands
between him and starvation. But he does not want to fight, because he is
convinced that all Spain’s wars, whatever their ostensible object, are
arranged by his “betters” to put money into their own pockets,
regardless of the true interests of the nation. You may talk as you will
about the wealth, health, and happiness that might be obtained, say, in
Melilla, should it become a well-administered colony of Spain. The
Spanish working man has an invariable reply to all such suggestions. He
says: “That might be so under other Governments, but not under ours.
Look at Cuba!”
Emigration goes on to an extent which causes the gravest apprehension to
those who have
[Illustration: FACTORY GIRLS.
[To face page 14.]
their country’s good at heart, and the reason is that owing to the
continual increase in taxation, the Spanish labourer cannot make a
living at home. Of all the taxes which crush him, the most oppressive is
the _consumo_, or octroi. Little is heard of this outside Spain, because
those who profit by it have every reason to keep silence, while those
who suffer have not hitherto dared to raise their voice against the
powerful interests which profit by the system. Any statesman who could
abolish this iniquitous tax would gain thereby an amount of popular
support to which ministers of the Crown in Spain have long been
strangers. But he would have to contend with an organised opposition in
the monied classes which would be hard to overcome, and hitherto,
although the reform is constantly talked of, little or nothing has been
done to bring it about.
Next to bread the chief desire of the Spaniard is education for his
children. He is thoroughly conscious of the disadvantages of his own
ignorance, which he bitterly resents, and the blame for which he lays at
the door of the Church. The Inquisition is not forgotten, and if there
is no priest or “pious” person within sight, an interested listener may
hear strange tales told in explanation of the popular detestation of the
religious Orders. Some of these tales are no doubt traditional, handed
down from the time when the Holy Office was an ever-present terror. It
is not easy for more advanced nations to realise the influence of
tradition among a people necessarily dependent on oral teaching for
everything they know, or the extent to which it colours their thoughts
and affects their actions in every direction. Although the working
classes in Spain are of course aware that the Inquisition no longer
exists, the effects of the nightmare of three hundred years continue,
and the fear and hatred with which that tribunal was regarded are now
transferred to the priests, and especially the Religious Orders. The
Church has ruled in Spain, with one short interval, ever since Isabella
and Torquemada revived the Holy Office, and, like all autocracies, it
has come to look upon the nation over which it rules as a tool to be
used for its own ends, an insentient thing, a mere machine to be driven
hither and thither as the interests of the Church dictate.
And now the inevitable is happening. The machine has become sentient,
and instead of submitting to be driven it is beginning to take its own
course and carry its quondam drivers into regions unknown.
The crucial question to-day in Spain is the religious question. Not the
belief or disbelief of the people in their religion, but the relations
of the Church--_i.e._, that of the priests and, far more, of the
Religious Orders--to the nation.
From tradition and from the circumstances of their lives, the mass of
the people have come to look upon the Religious Orders as their evil
genius, and at every turn one meets with evidences of their distrust of
and hostility to those who should be their spiritual guides. Until July,
1909, this feeling, although for long past there have been clear
indications of it, was not openly expressed by the people in public
places. They not only hated the “good fathers,” as they satirically call
them, but dreaded their vengeance upon those who offended them. Since
the rising against the Religious Orders in Cataluña, however, the
attitude of the two parties towards each other has been reversed. It is
now the priests and the Religious Orders who are afraid. So little do
they understand the people whom they are supposed to teach, that they go
in fear of their lives lest the working classes should rise _en masse_
against them; whereas the working classes _en masse_ desire nothing
better than a peaceable solution which shall ensure their daily bread to
them and their children.
On every side the people see the baneful hand of the Church, interfering
or trying to interfere in their domestic life, ordering the conditions
of employment, draining them of their hard-won livelihood by trusts and
monopolies established and maintained in the interests of the Religious
Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children’s education,
hindering them in the exercise of their constitutional rights, and
deliberately ruining those of them who are bold enough to run counter to
priestly dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona: they are
instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in Morocco: it is
dragged into it solely in defence of the mines owned, actually if not
ostensibly, by the Jesuits. The _consumos_ cannot be abolished, because
the Jesuits are financially interested in their continuance, and so
forth. Rightly or wrongly, the people attribute all the ills under which
they suffer to the influence of the Church, and sooner or later, unless
measures are taken to restrain the interference of the Church in public
and private life, an explosion will come which will sweep the whole
institution away. Moreover, the steady and continuous efforts made by
the Church to upset the existing regime and bring back a reign of
absolutism with the proscribed branch of the House of Bourbon, though
not continually present in the minds of the people, are not unknown to
or ignored by them.
But with all this intensely anti-clerical feeling, the mass of the
people are untouched by modern scepticism, and are deeply and sincerely
religious. Their religion is simple in the extreme: many would call it
gross superstition, but such as it is, it suits their stage of
intellectual development and undoubtedly has a considerable effect on
their conduct. To represent the Spanish working man--as the Church
newspapers always do--as an atheist and an anarchist, only to be
restrained by force from overthrowing the social order, merely proves
how completely ignorant the Clericalists are of his real character.
RACIAL AND CLASS DIVISIONS
CHAPTER I
RACIAL AND CLASS DIVISIONS
The relations between rich and poor, between rulers and ruled, between
employers and employed, in Spain are peculiar and not easy to
understand.
The immediate dependents of a well-to-do family are allowed a freedom of
manner and intercourse which is incomprehensible to English
exclusiveness, and a sense of responsibility for their dependents, and
especially for those who have rendered long domestic service, is almost
universal among employers. Thus there is hardly a family of means that
does not, as a matter of course, support for the rest of their lives one
or more of the wet-nurses who brought up the children; and during the
famine in Andalusia a few years ago, most, if not all, of the landowners
continued to pay, to the limit of their means, the wages of their
permanent labourers, although owing to the drought no field work could
be done for months. But with all this very real generosity towards
those with whom they are brought in contact, the rich have no corporate
or class sense of responsibility for the working classes, and make no
effort to understand or provide for their needs as a whole. Spaniards
are liberal in alms-giving, and every good Catholic gives doles on one
day of the week to his or her regular pensioners; but there is no public
provision for the destitute, and it is not in the least realised that an
organised system of poor relief would be less costly, and certainly far
less demoralising, than the haphazard distribution of pence to all and
sundry. It is true that in some towns benevolent societies are carrying
on good work according to their means, but these, consisting only of
voluntary gifts, are not sufficient to do more than touch the fringe of
the poverty produced by the conditions of the country.
The original causes of this combination of an almost patriarchal
relation between the master and his immediate dependents, and complete
ignorance of and indifference to the lot of those outside of the home or
estate, lie deep, and must be sought in the relations between Christians
and Moslems when the Castilians re-conquered Spain. It must be
remembered that the Arabs had brought agriculture and many industries
to a high state of perfection, and after the conquest they continued to
cultivate the land and work at their manufactures for the benefit of
their conquerors. Thus for some hundreds of years the dominant was
living with the subject race, and the conquerors would feel for the
conquered the contempt of the fighting man for the labourer, of the
Western for the Oriental, of the victor for the vanquished, and of the
Christian for the infidel. It is easy to see that when the mass of the
industrial population was of alien race, any idea of responsibility on
the part of the employers for the employed as a class would be unlikely
to arise, while on the other hand the personal relation between master
and servant would become intimate, as it did in the Southern States of
America in the slave-holding days, and as it is in the East to-day. This
accounts for the relation between rich and poor already remarked on:
liberal protection of immediate dependents, coupled with indifference to
the general welfare of the working classes. The tradition, handed down
from the time when the bulk of the proletariat were aliens, has
persisted for two hundred years after the last of the Moslem inhabitants
was expelled.[1]
A right understanding both of the past history of Spain and of its
social and political condition to-day is made still more difficult by
the claim made by Castile, with Madrid as the capital, to speak for
Spain as a whole. Most histories of Spain are written from the Castilian
point of view, and foreign writers naturally go to the capital in search
of their material. But this procedure leaves out of sight the very
important distinctions between the different parts of Spain, and
especially those between the Castilian and the Aragonese of the centre
and north, and the Andalusian, Valencian, and Murcian of the south.
Setting aside Cataluña and the Basque Provinces, with a population in
round numbers of 2,500,000, the rest of Spain north of the Sierra Morena
has a population of 9,000,000, while the three ancient southern
kingdoms, Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia, have between them a
population of 6,000,000. The distinctive characteristics of these
provinces, which contain about a third of the total inhabitants of the
country, are left unnoticed by Castilian writers and those who follow
them, or, if the southerners are mentioned at all, it is usually with
some expression of contempt. This applies especially to the Andalusian,
who is always spoken of as lazy and incompetent, without ambition,
content to sit in the sun and smoke a cigarette, a windbag who talks
everlastingly and does nothing, and generally a negligible quantity in
Spanish politics, and a person unworthy of serious consideration in
Madrid.
The ingrained orientalism of the south is at the root of the hostility
with which it is regarded by Castile and the north. Andalusia and
Valencia were under Moslem rule for some 500 years--Granada for nearly
750--and this long occupation and colonisation has left an indelible
impress on the race, language, customs, and modes of thought of the
south. On the other hand, the Arab invasion of the north was soon driven
back beyond the Sierra de Guadarrama, and even in New Castile and
Estremadura, north of the Guadiana, their occupation was more in the
nature of a military tenure than a colonisation, and, such as it was,
came to an end 160 years before the Christians were able to win any
footing in the southern provinces. There is, therefore, comparatively
little Eastern blood in the veins of the Castilian, while in those of
the southerner the Arabic strain is at least as strong as the European.
How little sympathy exists between Castile and Andalusia may be judged
from the following facts: In 1904 the south-west of Spain was afflicted
by ten months of drought, causing the worst famine known for many
years. Men literally died of starvation by the roadside, and the
suffering among women and children was something terrible. No national
or combined effort was attempted for the relief of the distress, which,
indeed, the Clericalist organs of Madrid minimised and almost mocked at,
saying that “every one knew that the Andalusians were all farmers, and
farmers would grumble whatever the weather was.” On the other hand, when
comparatively small districts in Castile, Leon, and Galicia suffered
from floods in 1910, over 100,000 pesetas were collected by voluntary
subscription within a week.
It must be remembered that, while the reconquest of the whole of Spain
except the Kingdom of Granada was completed by the middle of the
thirteenth century, there was no large exodus of the Moslem inhabitants
until their expulsion in 1609,[2] and that, until Isabella’s religious
fervour made things unpleasant for them, they lived side by side with
their Spanish conquerors, and were, on the whole, not badly treated
until the persecution and expulsion ordered by Philip III. Indeed, all
the evidence goes to show that a steady amalgamation of the races went
on, with so much intermarriage, that in some parts of the country there
is hardly a family without Eastern blood in its veins. But necessarily
and naturally the conquered race gradually fell more and more into the
position of servants and slaves.
Although the great preponderance of the Arabs and Moriscos was in the
south, numbers of them were scattered over other parts of Spain, even so
late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, which accounts for the
position of the working classes elsewhere being much on a par, so far as
their employers’ view of them is concerned, with that of their fellows
in the south.
Thus Spain is now divided into two unconsciously hostile camps, with an
ingrained tradition of racial and religious hostility at the root of
their antagonism, which is a fatal obstacle to mutual understanding. The
Spanish labourer has replaced his predecessor of alien race, but the
tradition of contempt and indifference remains, and the employer--and
especially the employer who is “addicted to the priests”--still regards
him, as his predecessor regarded his Moslem servant, as a hewer of wood
and drawer of water, whose duty is to pay his taxes, and to use the
suffrage nominally bestowed on him by the Constitution in the interests
of his master. The working classes, if we are to believe the assertions
of their “superiors,” are a godless lot with anarchical leanings, whose
vandalistic tendencies have to be suppressed with a strong hand lest
they break out to the total subversion of society. But ask a peasant
about his politics, and he will say that all he wants is a sufficient
wage to provide for his family and a decent education for his children,
and he will add that he has no hope that any political party will help
him to realise this modest ambition, or do anything whatever for him,
because “all Governments, whatever they call themselves, are of one
kidney, and care for nothing but pocketing the public funds, and
pleasing the Religious Orders; the Conservatives because they love them,
and the Liberals because they fear them, and both because the Jesuits
are the richest people in Spain.”
The patient submission of the labourer to conditions which he believes
to be unalterable is partly the result of three hundred years of corrupt
government, during which he has been steadily squeezed to provide money
for the wars, luxuries, and amusements of the governing classes; partly
of the terror of the Inquisition and the tradition of silence that it
has left behind it; partly of Oriental fatalism; but is certainly not
due to the animal indifference and stupidity to which his “betters”
attribute it. The peasant refrains from open complaint, not because he
is contented and has nothing to complain of, but because long experience
has taught him the uselessness and the danger of protest. He may offend
his employer and lose his place, or, still worse, he may offend the
Church and the Jesuits, in which case he will be a marked man, and can
never hope to get permanent employment again.
Here is a paragraph which appeared in a leading Clericalist organ on
December 1, 1909:
“Canovas and Sagasta attracted to the Monarchy the most
aristocratic elements of the Carlist and Republican masses, through
the mediation of Pidal and Castelar. Señor Moret (leader of the
Liberal-Monarchist party) does not act in this way. Instead of
considering the honourable people he considers the masses, the
elements which bring about disturbances of the social order.”
This summarises in a few words the attitude which has always been
maintained by the Church, and the aristocracy attached to the Church,
towards the democracy. The people must be restrained from making their
voice heard in the counsels of the nation, although they have nominally
possessed the suffrage for some forty years, because, if the masses are
given the free use of the vote, they will disturb a social order
maintained exclusively in the interests of the classes. Such sentiments
were common in France before 1789, but one hardly expects to find them
so badly expressed in the twentieth century.
The upper classes in Spain are in the majority thoroughly materialised.
Their object in life is simple--wealth and power, with all that they
bring in their train, often without too nice a regard for the means
whereby those ambitions are realised. Their religion consists in a
diligent observance of the ordinances of the Church, and submission to
the dictates of the priesthood.[3] Of any higher ideals--of any
amelioration in the general lot of the poor, of any improvement in the
deplorably backward state of education, of any attempt to raise the low
moral tone which prevails in their own class, little or nothing is ever
heard. There is, however, an increasing number of educated young men who
are doing what lies in their power to promote a better state of things.
They have to contend, not only against the active hostility of the
clericals, but against the dead weight of middle-class apathy and
ignorance, and in consequence their labour is as that of Sisyphus. Yet
they patiently struggle on against all discouragements, and their circle
of influence is widening every year.
But while the upper-class Spaniard is intent on the pursuit of wealth
and indifferent to higher things, the peasant has an ideal which he has
set before him, and for which he makes every effort in his power,
against obstacles which anywhere but in Spain would be inconceivable.
And that ideal, as has been said, is some sort of education for his
children, whom he does not wish to be handicapped, as he has been, by
inability to read and write. If he can only pay for the schooling of one
child, that child has to share his knowledge with the rest of the
family, reading to them all he can get to read, and sometimes even
passing on the little instruction he has received, and teaching his
parents and brothers and sisters their letters at night, after the
day’s work is done.[4] And his chosen reading is not the republican, or
socialist, or anarchical stuff against which the Church inveighs with
theological fervour as the mental pabulum beloved of the masses, but
certain papers with moderate Liberal views, which preach education and
loyalty to existing institutions as the best hope for the country. These
papers point out that any upheaval of the social order, with its
necessarily attendant paralysis of trade and agriculture, can only
result in making the hard lot of the labourer harder still; and the
peasant, whom his masters take to be indifferent and half brutal, has
the sense to see the wisdom of this teaching and to be guided by it.
That the Ultramontane party should maintain, as they do, that every
disturbance that may occur in Spain is the fruit of the working man’s
attachment to seditious and anti-religious literature, is only another
proof of their determination to misrepresent or slander him. Had this
been the case, no measures of repression would have saved Spain, in July
1909, from an outburst of rage against the Religious Orders all over the
country. That the fires lighted in Barcelona did not spread was not due
to the suspension of the Constitution or to any terrorism exercised by
the priest-ridden Government of Señor Maura. The people were kept in
bounds by the influence of their chosen organ, the _Liberal_, which
costs less than a farthing and has the largest circulation of any paper
in Spain. And this paper, like the others of its party and all the best
of the Radical and Republican Press, throughout all the turmoil of the
three months before the Maura Ministry fell, steadily urged the people
to have patience, keep the peace, and show by their actions that they
were worthy of liberty.
THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE
[Illustration: PEASANT WOMEN.
[To face page 39.]