Spain from Within

by Rafael Shaw

Materially, moreover, the bullring operates in a manner prejudicial to the country. All the best land has to be given up to the bulls, which require immense space to keep them from fighting each other. Thus great estates, which, if cultivated, would employ numerous labourers and produce a rich return, are lost to the nation.

In this matter, too, the Church might exercise a good influence and does not. On the contrary, the Clericalist newspapers give at least as much space to reports of the bullfights as do any others, and one of the reproaches levelled against the clergy by the working classes is that they attend these shows disguised in lay dress, and associate with bullfighters, regardless of the prohibition of the Church. In the parish leaflet already quoted, one of the cases of conscience put is “whether it is a sin to attend a bullfight”: to which the answer returned is, “No, it is not.”

Setting aside the question of a moral reform, without which legislative and administrative changes can produce little or no fruit, it may be useful to consider what measures are urgently needed to contribute to the intellectual and material development of the country.

First and foremost the Church should be confined to its spiritual functions, and restrained from active interference in politics, education, and business.

In a circular issued by the Bishop of Madrid in December, 1909, on the duties of Catholics in the elections, it is laid down that the Catholic voter must not vote for a Liberal as against a Catholic, and that a Liberal is, inter alia, “one who refuses adhesion to the propositions and doctrines laid down by the Apostolic See, principally in reference to the relations of the Church to the State” (italics mine).

The attitude of Rome to what it calls “liberalism” is so well known that there is no need to dilate upon it here. It is quite certain that unless and until the Church can be excluded from intervention in the State, no progress will be possible. The struggle will, no doubt, be severe, for Spain is now the last stronghold of the Roman Church; but once the democracy can make its voice effectively heard, the end will not be doubtful.

In education the dominance of the Church is, if possible, more prejudicial, more of an obstacle to progress of the best kind, than it is in other branches of the work of the State, and the clergy in Spain, as elsewhere, are resisting with might and main every attempt to set up schools which are not under their control. A sufficiency of good and well-conducted schools is one of the crying needs of the country; the Clericalists say they are unable to finance even the Catholic schools which already exist, yet the lay schools supported by the party of progress, although trivial in number, are not only virulently attacked, but are made the basis of a campaign against the Crown and the Constitution, and every nerve is strained to rally “good Catholics” to the fight against the spread of education among the poor.

Decentralisation of the machinery of administration is badly needed, because under the present system vexatious and unnecessary delays must occur, even were there every desire for progress on the part of all concerned. But local government cannot be effective, as has already been said, until the Cacique is abolished.

Among what may be called the material elements of progress may be briefly mentioned the need of improved means of communication, especially good roads. Most of the roads which do exist in Spain are very bad, and there are officially stated to be five thousand villages to which there is no road at all—nothing but a track or path, impassable for wheeled vehicles.

Much needs to be done to encourage agriculture, and to introduce improved methods. Systematic irrigation would render fertile hundreds of square miles of land, now sterile for lack of water. Phylloxera is ravaging the vineyards, and a contagious blight is devastating the orange plantations all over the southern provinces. Neither of these plagues can be effectively combated by private enterprise: public aid and public organisation are essential.