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1 La España Invertebrada, 1874â1914
Spain drags on invertebrate, not just in politics but in something more substantial and profound, its own social life.1
A WEDDING IN MADRID
On 31 May 1906, Madrid might well have claimed to be the capital of Europe. That morning the city was glowing with an atmosphere of joy and festivity. Thousands of new lights had been installed and the well-cleaned streets were adorned with Spanish and British flags. Around a quarter of a million people had arrived from all corners of the country and even from beyond its borders. They were hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal wedding between the young Spanish king, Alfonso XIII of Bourbon, and the English princess, Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, the niece of the British king Edward VII.
Following the nuptial ceremony, performed by the Cardinal Primate of Spain, a long procession of horse-drawn carriages and mounted escorts advanced along the crowded streets towards the royal palace. There could be found the heirs to all the European crowns, princes and princesses, ambassadors and all the grandees of the Spanish realm. At 1.55 p.m., a bunch of flowers was thrown at the carriage of the royal couple from the fourth-floor balcony of a hotel at number 8 Calle Mayor. In a few seconds, a devastating blast transformed the former jubilation into scenes of mayhem. Alfonso and his wife, her white dress now reddened by blood, miraculously escaped unscathed. Yet the sight of dying horses and charred corpses, together with the screams of the injured, had turned the party into a Dantesque spectacle. In total, 20 people were killed and 108 wounded.
In the ensuing confusion, Mateo Morral, the perpetrator of the bombing, managed to escape. The son of a wealthy textile family from Sabadell (Barcelona), he worked as a teacher in a school headed by the anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer Guardia. Morral had arrived in Madrid on 21 May determined to murder the king. Whether his plan was part of a vast conspiracy or whether it was the manic expression of his infatuated love for Soledad Villafranca, Ferrerâs lover, we shall never know. On the morning of 2 June, he was recognised in TorrejĂłn de Ardoz, a village outside Madrid. After killing a guard, he shot himself in order to avoid capture.2
NEW EUROPE, OLD POLITICS
In the early 20th century, terrorist outrages were neither new nor confined to Spain. Bombs, bullets, and daggers had sown panic amongst Europeâs ruling classes. Outstanding examples were the assassinations in Russia of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the Minister of the Interior Dmitrii SipiĂĄgin in 1902, and the Prime Minister Peter Stolypin in 1911; the killing of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth in 1898; in France the bombing of the Chamber of Deputies in 1892, and two years later, the fatal stabbing of President Sadi Carnot; the assassination of the Italian King Umberto I in 1900 and that of the US President William McKinley in 1901.3
Individuals or small secret cells of anarchists were behind this campaign of murder. Regarding themselves as âmartyrsâ, prepared to sacrifice their lives in daring acts of vengeance, they genuinely believed that their spectacular deeds were the spark needed to ignite a universal revolution.4 This type of terror, âpropaganda by the deedâ, represented the most extreme outcome in the social conflict that was taking place in a rapidly modernising Europe.
The 19th century brought about an age of economic modernisation and scientific revolution. The expansion of the generation of electric power and the invention of the telephone, the internal combustion engine, and film were rapidly changing the world. At a political level, the ancien régime, based on the alliance of altar and throne, gave way to constitutional orders based on elections, parliaments, and competing parties. Meanwhile, on the social and economic stage, capitalist forms of production replaced feudalism and new social classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) began to emerge.
Yet, the age of revolution, initiated by the overthrow of the absolutist state in France, had definitely come to a halt. Following the revolutionary cycle of 1848, the creation of the First International of Workers in 1864, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the onset of the Great Depression in the last quarter of the century, the continent saw a conservative reaction taking shape. By 1914, most countries were ruled by parliamentary forms of government. However, beneath all the liberal pretences, elements of the past were still heavily represented in Europeâs political and civil societies.
With the exception of France, kings, emperors, and tsars were at the apex of their states and, far from being mere figureheads, conserved vital prerogatives. They reigned over still largely rural societies and were backed by royalist armies and bureaucracies. Save for the United Kingdom, the primary sector still claimed the larger share of Europeâs labour force and also generated the largest proportion of the gross national product. The old landed aristocracy, in most cases, preserved its social status within the new political order. In fact, common intermarriages and the process of ennoblement followed by the monarchies consolidated the alliance of landed and bourgeois interests. The nobility transformed its former feudal privileges into capitalist rights, and so became a class of agrarian entrepreneurs, as well as diversifying its economic interests by going into commercial and business ventures. In turn, financial magnates and industrial barons bought landed estates and sent their children to elite schools and universities. The Church, another vital constituent of the ancien rĂ©gime, still exerted a significant sway through its quasi-monopoly of education and social services, acting as the ideological guardian of the state. Upper chambers became the ultimate guarantors against the potential threat presented by the elected lower houses, even though mechanisms were devised to ensure the latterâs complacency. Indeed, often governments were accountable to the crown and not to parliaments, results were rigged in advance to ensure majorities for monarchist parties, and all states either limited the franchise or gave disproportionate weight to rural areas, where it was easier to produce conservative majorities.5
SPANISH LIBERALISM AT WORK
The restoration of the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish throne in December 1874 was not by popular acclaim but was the consequence of a military coup (or pronunciamiento). Unlike earlier in the century, the new regime initiated a long-lasting era of political stability. The Constitution of 1876 introduced a modicum of significant civil liberties.6 Political parties and trade unions were permitted to exist and to voice their views in a large number of local and national newspapers; and in 1890, universal male suffrage and trial by jury were introduced.
However, despite all these modern political trappings, Spain was far from being a genuine democracy. The principle of national sovereignty, shared by crown and parliament (the Cortes), concealed a form of potential autocracy. The monarch was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and as head of state, had the prerogative to dissolve parliament and to appoint or dismiss governments. He was at the top of the legislative process, as no government could introduce a new law, sign an international treaty, or declare war, without his approval, and he retained vast powers of patronage, conferring titles, honours and rewards, and granting pardons. The upper chamber, or Senate, remained an entrenched symbol of the old regime, as only 50 per cent of its members were elected; the others were royal appointees, retired political dignitaries, generals, aristocratic grandees, and the high echelons of the clergy.7
Despite religious toleration, Article 11 of the constitution confirmed Catholicism as the state religion.8 The clergy was granted almost total control of primary and secondary education and a leading role in running charitable trusts, orphanages, hospitals, and asylums. After the publication by Pope Leo XIII of the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the first serious ecclesiastical attempt to respond to the challenges presented by the arrival of the industrial age, the Spanish Catholic establishment sought to influence public opinion and infiltrate the labour movement. Catholic intellectuals were behind the creation of the AsociaciĂłn CatĂłlica Nacional de Propagandistas (ACNP) in 1909, the influential publications of which included the newspaper El Debate. However, in general, efforts to influence the organised working class met with disappointment. Led by priests and funded by wealthy patrons, their organisations acted normally as strikebreakers and, as such, they were regarded as âyellow unionsâ by the proletariat. More success was achieved in rural areas of northern Spain, where small farmers and large landowners joined Church-sponsored trade unions which effectively prevented the spread of revolutionary theories by helping their members with machinery, credit, and low-interest loans. The ConfederaciĂłn Nacional CatĂłlica Agraria (CNCA) was set up in 1917, with an estimated membership of 200,000. The Restoration also confirmed the economic might of the Church. Most of the wealth lost by previous confiscations of ecclesiastical land was recovered and re-invested. It was believed that, by 1912, the Catholic establishment controlled almost one-third of the wealth of Spain.9
In turn, the military constituted the regimeâs praetorian guard. Officers were rewarded with seats in the Senate, aristocratic titles, and representation in monarchist parties. Politics remained in the hands of civilians but, in exchange, they were not to interfere in military matters. Between 1875 and 1917, generals always occupied the post of War Minister. Furthermore, the second clause of the Law of the Constitution of the Army, of 29 November 1878, stated that the armed forces had as their primary function the defence of the nation from its internal enemies. Thus, any social unrest was automatically followed by the suspension of constitutional guarantees and the declaration of martial law. This effectively granted the army final control over public order.10
ELITES AND CACIQUES
Spanish Liberalism sealed the hegemony of a governing oligarchy. During the entire period, two monarchist (or dynastic) parties exerted an absolute monopoly of political power. The shrewd Andalusian politician and historian Antonio CĂĄnovas del Castillo was the architect of the new order. As head of the Conservative Party, he remained in office until 1881. However, he understood the need to avoid the strife of previous decades, during which exclusive power had resulted in praetorian intervention as the only means for change. Hence, CĂĄnovas agreed to alternate in government with another political party, the Liberals, led by a former rival, PrĂĄxedes Mateo Sagasta. At the deathbed of King Alfonso XII, in 1885, both parties formally sealed the so-called âPact of El Pardoâ, after which they succeeded each other in power in such a perfect sequential process that it was known as the turno pacĂfico (âpeaceful rotationâ).11
There were no major differences between the two dynastic parties, particularly after the Conservatives accepted the introduction by the Liberals of a more permissive Law of Association in 1887 and universal male suffrage in 1890. There always existed, though, a more accentuated clericalism on the part of the Conservatives, and a discourse more prone to emphasise the defence of civil liberties by the Liberals. Yet these were no modern political formations but factions formed by professional politicians linked by ties of patronage and clientelism, and whose alternation in office guaranteed them all the spoils of administrative graft. The leading members of this governing class were linked with agrarian interests, banking and financial concerns, railway companies, and state monopolies. However, the complex nature of factional politics, added to the competing interests of the dominant economic sectors, meant that these ties were at a personal or local level rather than being the result of a perfect synergy between the political and economic oligarchies.12
Stunning levels of nepotism marked Restoration parliaments. Despite the short-lived nature of the administrations, the portfolios were constantly distributed among a concentrated number of notables. There existed a significant number of aristocrats present in parliament, especially in the upper chamber.13 Faction or party leaders were addressed as Jefe (âchiefâ) by their political clienteles, who were themselves referred to as Amigos (âfriendsâ). There always existed a large retinue ranging from minor civil servants and secretaries to the many benefiting from concessions and licenses related to state institutions and the administrative machinery, dependent on the political Jefe. Indeed, jobbery (âempleomanĂaâ) and pulling strings (âenchufismoâ) were an essential part of the system, the pay-off to the clients for political services.14 Even the respected Conservative leader and five times Prime Minister, Antonio Maura, kept a register where he carefully noted those who were recommended and their sponsors.15
The hegemony of the dynastic parties did not hinge on popular support. On the contrary, it relied on electoral falsification, widespread political apathy, and when necessary, physical violence and bribery. Accordingly, elections in Restoration Spain were above all two things: a comedy in regards to public opinion and a bargaining process for the dynastic notables to parcel out spheres of influence. The monarch played a vital role in ensuring the smooth functioning of turno politics. In times of political crisis, factional infighting, or when it was deemed that the government was âexhaustedâ, the king consulted the dynastic leaders and the one chosen with the formation of the new administration was granted a decree of dissolution of parliament. The next task was entrusted to the Ministro de la GobernaciĂłn (Minister of the Interior) who, in collaboration with the prime minister, engaged in the crucial manipulation of the electoral results. This process was known as encasillado, the act of filling in the casillas (âspacesâ) in the electoral roll with the names of those who were to get a seat. It was a Byzantine process in which the party in power had to ensure a working majority while negotiating with all the faction leaders competing for seats for their clients. The dynastic opposition had also to obtain a significant minority, while even the political strongholds of the non-monarchist groups were respected. As CĂĄnovas pointed out, it was better to have them in parliament debating than outside plotting.16
Fundamental in liberal politics were the so-called caciques, or local notables. Omnipotent in their provinces, they collaborated with the civil governors and mayors appointed by royal order to deliver the right electoral results. They could be money-lenders, landowners or their agents, civil servants, or sometimes even priests, who ran their areas as personal fiefdoms. When caciques clashed with the civil governors, in theory the highest local post, the latter had to give way. No government dared to move against the caciques, as its position in office depended on them.17
When necessary, all kinds of chicanery and trickery (known as pucherazos) were undertaken to return the official candidate. For instance, the electoral census was manipulated so that the dead, the absent and émigrés still voted, the polling booth was hidden or installed in epidemic hospitals, or the ballot box simply switched. When all this failed, political rivals were imprisoned or gangs of thugs terrorised the community. Yet pucherazo...
