Spain from Within

by Rafael Shaw

“Get up, my sons,” he said, “and go and vote, and there will be a dollar apiece for you when you leave the polling-booth.”

“They said they would go and vote,” said my informant, “and they got their dollars. But the Republicans came out at the head of the poll, and the Liberals next, and the Cacique and his Conservatives were nowhere.”

I happen to be aware that the Cacique in this instance is a man of great wealth and high social position, whose clericalist leanings are well known. If, indeed, it be the fact that the working classes have gained courage to defy men like him, the rising in Cataluña, the Maura regime of repression, and the campaign led against Spain by Ultramontanes and Socialists abroad will have borne fruit.

There is, however, one political leader in Spain who stands for purity of election and is the lifelong foe of the “caciquism” and corruption which paralyse any and every effort at political regeneration. Don Segismundo Moret has thrice been Premier of Spain. Each time he could have retained office had he consented to purchase the favour of the place-hunters by giving posts in the Ministry, not to those best qualified for the work, but to those who could command the largest following among the “Liberal mercenaries” who, as long as the system of “caciquism” continues, can make or mar electoral majorities. This he has never consented to do. So it has happened that each time that he has been in office he has had to sacrifice place and power rather than pander to an evil system.

The story of his late short tenure of the Premiership, and of the intrigues by which he was ousted is worth telling at some little length, because it throws light on the workings of the political machine, and on some of the difficulties with which a reformer has to contend in Spain.

Moret took office in 1909 against his own better judgment, for he would have preferred that the Conservatives should bear the responsibility of their own misdeeds, and solve the many difficulties resulting from Maura’s “policy of repression.” But the country had been brought to such a pitch of irritation and unrest by the reactionaries that the situation was becoming dangerous. The Riff question was attracting the unfriendly attention of foreign diplomatists; Barcelona was impatient under a rigid application of martial law, and the Ferrer incident had called forth a storm of condemnation from all the countries where the assumption that a prisoner is innocent until he has been proved guilty is an axiom of criminal law, while the advanced parties in the State were getting out of hand and had begun to defy the Government, as, e.g., in the matter of the demonstrations already referred to.

From the moment that Moret accepted office he was assailed by a stream of the most virulent abuse, not only by the Carlist but also by the Conservative and Ultramontane newspapers. He was “the destruction of Spain,” “the ruin of the nation,” “the arch-priest of irreligion and immorality,” and not only was his policy attacked in terms of unmeasured vilification, but the editors of these papers, which are owned and supported by some of the best born and wealthiest men in the country, did not hesitate to descend to vulgar personal abuse. His “grey hair,” for instance, was a favourite subject of their ridicule, and his “vacillation,” “infirmity of purpose,” and “inability to keep his party together” were accounted for by jeers at his “senile decay,” his “failing intellect,” his “body bent double by the weight of years,” and so forth, while the party led by him are usually spoken of in the clericalist organs as canaille.

But on his acceptance of the Premiership the aspect of affairs underwent a complete and immediate change. The political horizon began to clear. Terms of peace were arrived at in Morocco. Foreign susceptibilities were soothed. Cataluña was immediately relieved from the burden of martial law, and the constitutional rights were restored in Barcelona. The troops began to return from the war and were received with the greatest enthusiasm; the trials of persons arrested in connection with the disorders in Cataluña, who had been kept in prison on suspicion for four or five months, were pushed forward, and numbers of them were released for want of any evidence against them. Most of the lay schools were reopened, on showing that nothing seditious had been taught in them. The depleted treasury was replenished, and means were found to provide three months’ pay for the Melilla forces, which the outgoing Ministry had left out of account. A great project of irrigation was vigorously promoted by Moret’s Minister of Public Works, Gasset, who has devoted practically the whole of his political life to this subject, and has produced a scheme which would convert vast tracts, now arid waste, into fertile land. And the municipal elections, which took place about six weeks after the change of Government, were conducted, so far as time had permitted any modification of existing conditions, according to law, with the result that the Liberal-Monarchists swept the board all over the country. The official figures were as follows: Liberal-Monarchists, 2,961; Conservatives, 1,213; Carlists, 185; Republicans, 193; Socialists, 4. Thus Moret’s party nearly doubled the Conservatives, Carlists, and Republicans put together. The smallness of the Socialist vote should be noticed.

In any other country it would have been certain that a leader who could so well and so quickly convert popular indignation into contentment and hope was in for a long term of office. Not so in Spain.

During his four months of office, from October, 1909, to February, 1910, Moret tried hard to obtain the decree of dissolution of the Conservative Cortes, in order that the nation might have an opportunity of expressing its opinion on recent events. At first it almost seemed as if he would obtain the King’s consent to dissolve. But the place-hunters were afraid, and the Ultramontanes were more afraid. They played so successfully into each other’s hands that the decree of dissolution was postponed day after day, while all his enemies proclaimed the incapacity of a Premier who was “afraid” to go to the country.