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Ebook has 585 lines and 64569 words, and 12 pages

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION 13

INDEX 325

FACING PAGE

FACTORY GIRLS 14

PEASANT WOMEN 39

THE QUEEN AND THE QUEEN-MOTHER OF SPAIN 111

SE?OR MAURA, LEADER OF THE ULTRAMONTANES 149

DON JAIME OF BOURBON IN MOROCCO 153

A DEMONSTRATION OF REJOICING AT THE FALL OF THE ULTRAMONTANE MINISTRY 174

A CONSCRIPT 199

THE WAR IN MELILLA. A FORT ON MOUNT GURUGU 203

A RESERVIST AT THE FRONT 208

DON SEGISMUNDO MORET, LEADER OF THE LIBERAL-MONARCHISTS 227

SE?OR CANALEJAS, LEADER OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, AND GENERAL MARINA, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AT MELILLA 244

A STREET HAWKER DESCRIBING BATTLE SCENES TO AN ILLITERATE AUDIENCE 263

SAFFRON PICKERS SORTING THEIR CROP 285

A SELLER OF PALM-LEAF BRUSHES AND FANS 289

INTRODUCTION

While a good deal has been written of late years about Spain from the point of view put forward by the governing classes, little or nothing has been said about the people--the mass of the nation--who, unable, the immense majority of them, to read or write, are more inarticulate than their fellows in any country of Europe west of Russia, but who have, nevertheless, very definite aspirations and ideals, entirely distinct from those of their rulers, at whose hands, disheartened as they are by long years of misgovernment, they have almost abandoned any hope of amelioration of their lot.

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.

Emigration goes on to an extent which causes the gravest apprehension to those who have

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.

But with all this intensely anti-clerical feeling, the mass of the people are untouched by modern scepticism, and are deeply and sincerely religious. Their religion is simple in the extreme: many would call it gross superstition, but such as it is, it suits their stage of intellectual development and undoubtedly has a considerable effect on their conduct. To represent the Spanish working man--as the Church newspapers always do--as an atheist and an anarchist, only to be restrained by force from overthrowing the social order, merely proves how completely ignorant the Clericalists are of his real character.

RACIAL AND CLASS DIVISIONS

RACIAL AND CLASS DIVISIONS

The relations between rich and poor, between rulers and ruled, between employers and employed, in Spain are peculiar and not easy to understand.

The immediate dependents of a well-to-do family are allowed a freedom of manner and intercourse which is incomprehensible to English exclusiveness, and a sense of responsibility for their dependents, and especially for those who have rendered long domestic service, is almost universal among employers. Thus there is hardly a family of means that does not, as a matter of course, support for the rest of their lives one or more of the wet-nurses who brought up the children; and during the famine in Andalusia a few years ago, most, if not all, of the landowners continued to pay, to the limit of their means, the wages of their permanent labourers, although owing to the drought no field work could be done for months. But with all this very real generosity towards those with whom they are brought in contact, the rich have no corporate or class sense of responsibility for the working classes, and make no effort to understand or provide for their needs as a whole. Spaniards are liberal in alms-giving, and every good Catholic gives doles on one day of the week to his or her regular pensioners; but there is no public provision for the destitute, and it is not in the least realised that an organised system of poor relief would be less costly, and certainly far less demoralising, than the haphazard distribution of pence to all and sundry. It is true that in some towns benevolent societies are carrying on good work according to their means, but these, consisting only of voluntary gifts, are not sufficient to do more than touch the fringe of the poverty produced by the conditions of the country.

The original causes of this combination of an almost patriarchal relation between the master and his immediate dependents, and complete ignorance of and indifference to the lot of those outside of the home or estate, lie deep, and must be sought in the relations between Christians and Moslems when the Castilians re-conquered Spain. It must be remembered that the Arabs had brought agriculture and many industries to a high state of perfection, and after the conquest they continued to cultivate the land and work at their manufactures for the benefit of their conquerors. Thus for some hundreds of years the dominant was living with the subject race, and the conquerors would feel for the conquered the contempt of the fighting man for the labourer, of the Western for the Oriental, of the victor for the vanquished, and of the Christian for the infidel. It is easy to see that when the mass of the industrial population was of alien race, any idea of responsibility on the part of the employers for the employed as a class would be unlikely to arise, while on the other hand the personal relation between master and servant would become intimate, as it did in the Southern States of America in the slave-holding days, and as it is in the East to-day. This accounts for the relation between rich and poor already remarked on: liberal protection of immediate dependents, coupled with indifference to the general welfare of the working classes. The tradition, handed down from the time when the bulk of the proletariat were aliens, has persisted for two hundred years after the last of the Moslem inhabitants was expelled.

A right understanding both of the past history of Spain and of its social and political condition to-day is made still more difficult by the claim made by Castile, with Madrid as the capital, to speak for Spain as a whole. Most histories of Spain are written from the Castilian point of view, and foreign writers naturally go to the capital in search of their material. But this procedure leaves out of sight the very important distinctions between the different parts of Spain, and especially those between the Castilian and the Aragonese of the centre and north, and the Andalusian, Valencian, and Murcian of the south. Setting aside Catalu?a and the Basque Provinces, with a population in round numbers of 2,500,000, the rest of Spain north of the Sierra Morena has a population of 9,000,000, while the three ancient southern kingdoms, Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia, have between them a population of 6,000,000. The distinctive characteristics of these provinces, which contain about a third of the total inhabitants of the country, are left unnoticed by Castilian writers and those who follow them, or, if the southerners are mentioned at all, it is usually with some expression of contempt. This applies especially to the Andalusian, who is always spoken of as lazy and incompetent, without ambition, content to sit in the sun and smoke a cigarette, a windbag who talks everlastingly and does nothing, and generally a negligible quantity in Spanish politics, and a person unworthy of serious consideration in Madrid.

The ingrained orientalism of the south is at the root of the hostility with which it is regarded by Castile and the north. Andalusia and Valencia were under Moslem rule for some 500 years--Granada for nearly 750--and this long occupation and colonisation has left an indelible impress on the race, language, customs, and modes of thought of the south. On the other hand, the Arab invasion of the north was soon driven back beyond the Sierra de Guadarrama, and even in New Castile and Estremadura, north of the Guadiana, their occupation was more in the nature of a military tenure than a colonisation, and, such as it was, came to an end 160 years before the Christians were able to win any footing in the southern provinces. There is, therefore, comparatively little Eastern blood in the veins of the Castilian, while in those of the southerner the Arabic strain is at least as strong as the European.

How little sympathy exists between Castile and Andalusia may be judged from the following facts: In 1904 the south-west of Spain was afflicted by ten months of drought, causing the worst famine known for many years. Men literally died of starvation by the roadside, and the suffering among women and children was something terrible. No national or combined effort was attempted for the relief of the distress, which, indeed, the Clericalist organs of Madrid minimised and almost mocked at, saying that "every one knew that the Andalusians were all farmers, and farmers would grumble whatever the weather was." On the other hand, when comparatively small districts in Castile, Leon, and Galicia suffered from floods in 1910, over 100,000 pesetas were collected by voluntary subscription within a week.

Although the great preponderance of the Arabs and Moriscos was in the south, numbers of them were scattered over other parts of Spain, even so late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, which accounts for the position of the working classes elsewhere being much on a par, so far as their employers' view of them is concerned, with that of their fellows in the south.

Thus Spain is now divided into two unconsciously hostile camps, with an ingrained tradition of racial and religious hostility at the root of their antagonism, which is a fatal obstacle to mutual understanding. The Spanish labourer has replaced his predecessor of alien race, but the tradition of contempt and indifference remains, and the employer--and especially the employer who is "addicted to the priests"--still regards him, as his predecessor regarded his Moslem servant, as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, whose duty is to pay his taxes, and to use the suffrage nominally bestowed on him by the Constitution in the interests of his master. The working classes, if we are to believe the assertions of their "superiors," are a godless lot with anarchical leanings, whose vandalistic tendencies have to be suppressed with a strong hand lest they break out to the total subversion of society. But ask a peasant about his politics, and he will say that all he wants is a sufficient wage to provide for his family and a decent education for his children, and he will add that he has no hope that any political party will help him to realise this modest ambition, or do anything whatever for him, because "all Governments, whatever they call themselves, are of one kidney, and care for nothing but pocketing the public funds, and pleasing the Religious Orders; the Conservatives because they love them, and the Liberals because they fear them, and both because the Jesuits are the richest people in Spain."

The patient submission of the labourer to conditions which he believes to be unalterable is partly the result of three hundred years of corrupt government, during which he has been steadily squeezed to provide money for the wars, luxuries, and amusements of the governing classes; partly of the terror of the Inquisition and the tradition of silence that it has left behind it; partly of Oriental fatalism; but is certainly not due to the animal indifference and stupidity to which his "betters" attribute it. The peasant refrains from open complaint, not because he is contented and has nothing to complain of, but because long experience has taught him the uselessness and the danger of protest. He may offend his employer and lose his place, or, still worse, he may offend the Church and the Jesuits, in which case he will be a marked man, and can never hope to get permanent employment again.

Here is a paragraph which appeared in a leading Clericalist organ on December 1, 1909:

"Canovas and Sagasta attracted to the Monarchy the most aristocratic elements of the Carlist and Republican masses, through the mediation of Pidal and Castelar. Se?or Moret does not act in this way. Instead of considering the honourable people he considers the masses, the elements which bring about disturbances of the social order."

This summarises in a few words the attitude which has always been maintained by the Church, and the aristocracy attached to the Church, towards the democracy. The people must be restrained from making their voice heard in the counsels of the nation, although they have nominally possessed the suffrage for some forty years, because, if the masses are given the free use of the vote, they will disturb a social order maintained exclusively in the interests of the classes. Such sentiments were common in France before 1789, but one hardly expects to find them so badly expressed in the twentieth century.

The upper classes in Spain are in the majority thoroughly materialised. Their object in life is simple--wealth and power, with all that they bring in their train, often without too nice a regard for the means whereby those ambitions are realised. Their religion consists in a diligent observance of the ordinances of the Church, and submission to the dictates of the priesthood. Of any higher ideals--of any amelioration in the general lot of the poor, of any improvement in the deplorably backward state of education, of any attempt to raise the low moral tone which prevails in their own class, little or nothing is ever heard. There is, however, an increasing number of educated young men who are doing what lies in their power to promote a better state of things. They have to contend, not only against the active hostility of the clericals, but against the dead weight of middle-class apathy and ignorance, and in consequence their labour is as that of Sisyphus. Yet they patiently struggle on against all discouragements, and their circle of influence is widening every year.

THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE

THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE

If you ask upper-class Spaniards, priestly or lay, about the religion of the people of Spain, you will be told that half the nation are bigots and the other half free-thinkers and atheists, or at best indifferent Laodiceans: a sweeping assertion that has so often been made that it has become a commonplace with foreign journalists and magazine writers.

To accuse the nation at large of bigotry, atheism, or indifferentism, is nevertheless as unjust as to accuse the army of cowardice. Small though is the attendance of the working classes at Mass, and hostile though they are to the practice of confession, they are none the less deeply religious--firm believers in the efficacy of prayer, and loyal to the fundamental tenets of their faith, such as dependence on the will of God, gratitude for small mercies vouchsafed by a good Providence, and devotion to the Virgin and the saints.

In the middle class there is, no doubt, a good deal of rather shallow free-thinking, although it usually goes little beyond a scoff at superstition and contempt for miracles and images, and is confined to the men. The women usually follow in their mothers' footsteps, attend Mass, run through the rosary, and thoroughly enjoy the processions which enliven so many Church festivals. Confession, however, is perfunctory even among middle-class women, and the poor avoid it altogether. For strict observance of the ordinances and for material support of the Church you must go to women of higher social position, ladies of title and the wives of rich men, whose political relations keep them hand in hand with the priests and the Religious Orders. They are the bulwark of the Church in Spain. Indeed, it is often said that if all the ladies of the aristocracy could be locked up for a few years, the Church of Spain would go to pieces, so little real hold has it on any other element in the national life.

Yet notwithstanding their antagonism to this primary dogma of their religion, the working classes, and especially the peasantry, are, as already stated, deeply and sincerely devout, and firmly uphold the Christian faith as they understand it.

One of the most remarkable features in the spiritual life of the nation is the clear comprehension of even the least educated among them that the sins of the priests and the Religious Orders stand apart from and leave unsmirched the national religion.

"What have I to do with those people?" said a young fisherman to the writer. "Confess to a priest? Never! I confess to God and my mother, and I want no priest to come between me and my God."

"I? Confess to a priest? What for? Every night when I go to bed I confess my sins to the Virgin, and I can die as well after that as if I had received the holy oils," said an old woman of deep and sincere faith.

"No, I did not call in a priest when my husband was dying. He would have died all the sooner if I had, he hated them so. We poor people never call the priest if we can help it. We say 'death gave us no time.' The priests pretend to believe it; they are glad enough to be saved the trouble of coming to our houses because, if we send for them, they have to give the holy oils gratis. And we get buried all the same," said a young widow who had lost husband and child within three months of each other.

"And you are not afraid the dead will stay longer in purgatory if they die without the holy oils?" I have frequently asked on hearing such statements.

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