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
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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.