Spain from Within

by Rafael Shaw

The popular suspicion of Jesuit interference in these, as in almost all the other big commercial concerns in the Peninsula, may or may not be justified, but its effect on the attitude of the people towards the Religious Orders cannot be over-rated. Not the least extraordinary feature in the situation is that the Religious Orders profess to disregard the feeling that exists against them, although it is apparent on every hand to any one who goes about with eyes and ears open.

For years past I have noticed that no member of the working classes salutes a priest or friar in the streets. Day after day one summer I saw the same priests taking their afternoon walk along the same by-way, where the same artisans, to the number of twenty or thirty, watched the “long skirts” from the doors of their workshops. I never saw an artisan greet a priest or friar, or vice versa. The flowing robes of the ecclesiastics swept against the patched garments of the workmen, but no glance was exchanged. The priests kept their eyes bent on the ground, one hand grasping the skirts and the other pressed on the breast, a typical attitude, which is jeered at by the poor as “canting.” The workmen kept their eyes fixed on the work on which they were engaged. It is impossible to imagine anything more hostile than the silent defiance of the men, as they turned to watch the “long skirts” out of sight. I have seen single instances of the same thing elsewhere in many places, but here I had special facilities for observing the daily exhibition of armed neutrality, owing to the accident of my room at the back of the little country hotel looking out on the by-path. “I hate to see them,” one of the men said to me; “they are the ruin of us and our country.” What made it the more significant was that these same workmen had a pleasant word of greeting for every lay person, man or woman, acquaintance or stranger, who passed by them.

The economic question bulks largely among the causes of the popular hostility to the Religious Orders, and if only half the complaints generally made are based on fact, the people have reason on their side.

Formerly, say the women, it was easy to obtain a day’s wage by washing in well-to-do houses, and a laundress could make a decent living. Now in every town of any importance there are one or more convents called “Domestic Colleges,” where orphans or servants out of place are received, and these girls repay the nuns for their board and lodging by doing laundry-work for rich Catholic families. If the girls were allowed to keep even a portion of what they earn, the women say that they would not feel the system to be so unjust. But they declare that this is not the case. Whatever is paid goes to the nuns, and as they, having no taxes or wages to pay, can undersell the laundresses, who are called upon to provide both charges, the lay laundry trade is steadily declining, although the quality of the work is on a par with that done in the convents.

The nuns teach their protégées every class of needlework, lace-making, and a kind of embroidery or net-work which is largely used for priests’ vestments, altar-cloths, &c. This competition, which was one of the reasons given for the presence of women (if, indeed, they were present) in the attack on the convents in Barcelona, is felt in every part of Spain, but perhaps especially in the south and south-west, where skilled needlework, which is almost the only employment of women above the domestic servant class, is exceedingly common and badly paid at best. Nowadays, say such women, it is increasingly difficult to obtain employment of this kind at any price, owing to the quantity done in the convents and the reduced prices at which the nuns undertake it.

And finally, although this does not so directly affect women, the nuns do a large trade in the sweetmeats and patisserie already referred to.

The grievances against the nuns, then, are chiefly related to their interference with the industrial market, and this, although a very real source of hardship, has not yet, except in a few isolated instances, given birth to anything like the active hostility that is expressed against the male Religious Orders. The closed Orders of nuns are regarded with aversion and contempt, as living at the expense of the nation and leading lives which, to the working classes, seem purely idle and self-indulgent—“doing nothing all day but pray for their own souls, or worse,” as they describe the life of contemplation. I have never heard working women express any desire to injure the nuns, much though they dislike them as a class. But when we come to the Jesuits, Maristas, Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, and all the long list of Orders lumped together in one condemnation by both men and women under the derisive name of “long skirts” (sayones), we find a much worse state of affairs.

The people declare that in many places the leading industries have been completely ruined by the competition of persons in the employ of the Jesuits—for they call all the friars indiscriminately Jesuits, although they are perfectly aware of the distinctions between the various Orders. And they will point out to you one family after another who have been reduced to penury by the “good Fathers,” and will relate innumerable instances of the methods they believe to have been employed to this end. Perhaps the best way to explain these will be to give a literal translation of one or two of the stories I have heard from the people, which, told as they are with an absolute conviction of their truth, show what ground the working classes have for distrusting and detesting those who ought to set an example of virtue and self-abnegation.

“A man I know saved 5,000 duros [about £1,000], and he lent it all to the Jesuits for a building they were putting up, a building attached to the monastery, so that he looked upon it as a work for God. Some years went by, and my friend was growing old and wished to retire from his little business and live on his capital. So he asked the Jesuits to repay his loan. ‘Oh, no!’ they said, ‘do you not know, my son, that he who lends to God must expect no return? A loan to God is a gift for the salvation of thy soul.’ As I say, he was an old man, and he found himself ruined, without hope of earning more money. He left the good Fathers and went and cut his throat.”