Spain from Within

by Rafael Shaw

Perhaps one ought to explain that the only influence that England could exert in their favour is that of public opinion, and that England is too busy with her own affairs to have time to form an opinion about those of Spain, far less to express it in a convincing manner. But it would be cruel to deprive these people of the gleam of hope which has come to them through the King’s marriage, so perhaps I say, “In the meantime here are a few little reals for teaching,” and get the reply: “May God repay you! My second boy can go to the night school for a month for seven reals.”

A movement which has in it great promise for the future was started a few years ago by certain able young university professors, who fully realise how much of the backwardness of their country is due to lack of education, with its resultant narrowness of mind and outlook, and ignorance of the modes of life and thought of other nations.

The fundamental idea of this movement, as described to me by its originator, is to create an organic body, independent of political changes, which shall endeavour little by little to promote contact between the teachers of all grades in Spain and their foreign colleagues, and to form within the country small nuclei of workers to diffuse in Spain the ideas brought from abroad, and to create an atmosphere of sympathy and enthusiasm, without which scientific work cannot flourish. On these lines two Committees were formed by Royal Decree in January, 1907. One of these was charged with reforms in elementary teaching, to be carried out by the establishment of classes for teachers, by school inspection on modern lines, by sending selected teachers abroad (the Government gives a grant for this purpose, the administration of which was entrusted to the committee) and by grouping and grading the schools, and encouraging and supervising holiday resorts for teachers, school games, &c.—the whole of the reforms to be introduced gradually, as circumstances might permit. To the other body then created, a “Committee for the development of studies and scientific research,” was entrusted the gradual formation of a staff of competent teachers and professors for higher education generally and for scientific studies.

But the work of these Committees, which, if steadily pursued, offers the best hope for the intellectual regeneration of Spain, was paralysed in the first year by Government interference. Between the formation of the Committees and the issue of their first Annual Report a change of Government took place, and the Ministry of Señor Maura, true to the traditions of Clericalism, did their best to bring all effective work to an end. They suppressed altogether the Committee charged with reforms in elementary education, and set up in its place a mere official bureau, powerless and useless. And though they did not actually abolish the Committee for Higher Education, they succeeded in putting an end to all effective work, by overriding its statutory constitution and curtailing its freedom of action, by stopping supplies, and by delaying or refusing the necessary official consent to measures proposed by the Committee. For instance, whereas the Committee had made arrangements with the French Ministry of Public Instruction for the disposal of the teachers who held grants for study abroad, the Government refused to recognise these arrangements unless they were made officially through the ambassadors, with the result that in the year 1908 none of these teachers were sent abroad. In the Budget for that year the sum set aside for foreign study was reduced by 110,000 pesetas (about £4,400), although in the previous year a quite exceptional number of applicants for these grants had come forward. These instances are sufficient to show the attitude of the Clericalists towards education, but the whole Report of the Committee shows how at every turn their work was checked and hampered after Señor Maura took office. With the return of a Liberal Ministry to power it is hoped that the work will be once more effectively taken up.

Since the above chapter was written a Report on the present condition of education, addressed to the Cortes, has been prepared by the Minister of Education, and summarised in the Spanish Press. The following quotations from this summary throw a lurid light on the actual state of affairs.

“More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with slaughterhouses, with stables. One school forms the entrance to a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the master’s table while the last responses are being said. There is a school into which the children cannot enter until the animals have been taken out and sent to pasture. Some are so small that as soon as the warm weather begins the boys faint for want of air and ventilation. One school is a manure-heap in process of fermentation, (sic) and one of the local authorities has said that in this way the children are warmer in the winter. One school in Cataluña adjoins the prison. Another, in Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when there is a bullfight in the town.

“The school premises are bad, but most of the Town Councils do not pay the rent, for which reason the proprietors refuse to let their houses. Ninety per cent. of the buildings in which the schools are held are the worst dwellings in the town.

“In Lucena the salary of a mistress is held back because she guaranteed the school rent. The Municipality did not pay it, the school was going to be evicted and the teaching to be interrupted, and that mistress, in order to prevent this, pledged her miserable pay.”

Comment is needless: the facts, vouched for by the Minister of Education, speak for themselves.