Tomorrow in Spain
Peers, E Allison
TOMORROW IN SPAIN By E. ALLISON PEERS That not all news which comes out of Spain during these unsettled days is deserving of implicit faith remains a truth which Americans may profitably absorb....
...The question is one which Spain itself cannot answer...
...Superficially, this is most noticeable in the large cities...
...The following paper is written by one who has devoted his time to understanding the life and literature of the Spanish people...
...When Spain's enemies abroad printed maliciously fabricated reports about her, and well-disposed foreigners inquired of Spaniards concerning the truth of them, all the Spaniards would do was to point to the exchange figures outside their banks and sagely report their proverb: "Don Dinero es el mejor informado"-"The most reliable information comes from Mr...
...But it was only after the disasters of 1898 that things began to mend...
...while even upon the humblest villager it seems at least to be dawning that civilization consists in more than the possession of a cinema theatre...
...But, secondly, Spain, more perhaps than most nations, lives on change and variety, and, though certainly not prepared to get these by violence, is far too individualistic to settle down permanently under a dictatorship...
...And this depends ultimately on several basic facts, some of them not as generally known as one could wish, which dominate the situation...
...Barcelona, the chief city of Catalonia, always striving to outbuild her Castilian rival, has long since conveyed a similar impression...
...There is no reason to believe that it will differ very greatly in the immediate future...
...Great Britain is an island, and we Britons have all the innate reserve and all the conservatism of islanders...
...What matters an occasional outburst of paternal unreasonableness in a prosperous and happy family...
...Not without reason is Spain the scene of that legend which tells how a monarch addressed his faithful subjects from the balcony of the royal palace...
...Like many another of his kind, Primo found power easier to assume than to resign...
...Since the advent of power of Primo de Rivera it has been rising more steeply still...
...Peers limits his prophecy to the belief that the Spanish future will mean not violence but a steady trend toward European civilization and prosperity.-The Editors...
...Money...
...That was the atmosphere of Madrid at what was considered abroad a time of crisis...
...And, taking all of them into consideration, I am prepared to prophesy three things about Spain's future...
...Of the convinced anti-monarchists, many believe that the opportune moment for putting their principles into practice will come in the course of time with the end of the present reign...
...A third is the genuine and growing concern about the many deficiencies which are still existant in all grades of education...
...Crowds of people watched them, with some interest...
...At the end of three hours, there was an insurrection, and the monarch lost his kingdom...
...Groups of police stood about chatting together in the principal thoroughfares ready for duty if they should be needed...
...First, that the immediate and important changes shortly to take place will come about quite naturally and without the slightest violence...
...The feminist movement in Spain, too, has grown up with the Junta, and is at this moment closely connected with its progress...
...These, and the complex Spanish character-that strange admixture of independence and idealism, of the practical, the artistic and the dramatic-are the elements to be reckoned with...
...That is why, in spite of the dictator's frequent highhanded actions, Spain has been perfectly content to abide him...
...Tourists are no longer tolerated in Spain as an unavoidable nuisance but welcomed as contributors to the ever-growing national prosperity...
...First gradually, then more steeply, rose the curve of Spanish progress...
...A final and most significant feature of Spain's present position is the sure, if gradual, progress of her Europeanization...
...The most conservative of all the larger Spanish newspapers has now a weekly page, and an occasional "extraordinary number," devoted to turismo...
...The ever-greater prominence given in the Spanish daily paper to European and American news is a sign of the times...
...For half an hour, and still they listened attentively...
...Third, and at once most welcome and most certain, that such changes as come will be accompanied by a steadily increasing measure of prosperity...
...What they ardently desire is material and spiritual progress...
...It is likely to rise still further...
...Connected with this is the recent and important innovation providing for university teaching in modern languages and literatures-one of the most characteristic omissions of Spain's past...
...But there are deeper changes being wrought than these, which may not, it is true, affect the more immediate developments in Spain, but are bound to have an important influence upon the eventual situation resulting from them...
...Both with the masses, and with many of the leaders of opinion, the present king is highly popular, as indeed a man of his character, and, above all, of his courage and spirit, deserves to be...
...the interest being taken in the League of Nations is another...
...First, to me, as I visit Spain twice yearly, and move about among the Spanish people, the most significant fact is the little interest which they take in politics...
...Aside from insignificant groups of extremists and a small body of ardent Catalonian patriots, the Spaniards, even in Madrid, their capital, are supremely indifferent to the nature of the constitution and the government...
...Spain is a peninsula-and, when I compare my own countrymen with hers, I am sometimes inclined to think that peninsularity is a greater curse than insularity 1 Louis XIV, that seventeenth-century Canute, had indeed the hardihood to declare, in his omnipotent way: "The Pyrenees are no more...
...There are many republicans in Spain, but a few of them have alienated sympathy by imprudent and somewhat foolish utterances, and, as a body, they have not a great deal of coherence...
...Certain foreign newspapers printed the most ridiculous reports about mounted police charging crowds of turbulent students, and peace-loving English tourists, duly horrified by the reports, canceled their Easter bookings at Seville and spent the vacation in Paris instead...
...Had Primo de Rivera persisted in power definitely, there is not the slightest doubt that one of the more powerful groups of malcontents would have risked a counterblow against him...
...But they never were needed...
...But now all is changing...
...And such a policy suits both the temperament and the present feelings of the Spanish people-especially of those of them who can remember, or have heard from their fathers, the events of the short-lived republic of 1873-74...
...Madrid has the words "European capital" written all over her...
...At the end of two hours, threatening gestures...
...These are the facts which will chiefly count in that future which Spain is slowly forging for herself...
...for, at first whenever the people seemed restive, and latterly almost week by week, he reiterated his earnest desire and firm intention to quit his self-made position as soon as possible...
...He spoke for a quarter of an hour, and they applauded him to the echo...
...WHAT will happen to Spain now that Primo de Rivera's strong hand has thrown down the reins of power...
...But there never was in Madrid the least commotion that deserved the name of riot...
...It should be read not as a prediction of what will happen but as an analysis of factors which have been operative in recent political and social history...
...Seville, especially since the Exhibition, is fast losing her old character...
...An occasional newspaper appealed to them to confine their howling to the streets, lest they should disturb the dictator's household...
...Second, that their main eventual trend will be to bring Spain into line with other great European countries...
...Till then, they are content to wait...
...But, as one studies the Englishman, the Frenchman and the Spaniard, one realizes that the Pyrenees have been much more effective as a spiritual and a social barrier than has the English Channel...
...In the past, with brief intervals of exception, Spain has willingly and of her own choice stood aloof from Europe...
...But he knew the people he ruled...
...Nor has the precise course of happenings in the immediate future anything like as much interest as their eventual outcome...
...At the end of an hour there were darkening looks...
...In themselves these changes may appear to be shallow ones and to have no bearing whatever upon the political situation...
...During March and April, 1929, when the so-called university riots were in progress, I chanced to be lecturing at the University of Madrid, and was thus in the midst of the disturbances...
...While Spain continues to prosper as she is doing at present, there will be no revolution...
...and she is emulating Barcelona and Madrid in providing exhibitions of futbol which are rivaling the peculiarly Andalusian bull-fight...
...Further they are not at present unduly impatient...
...Guesses are being hazarded freely, but no one who recalls the suddenness of the Russian and the Portuguese revolutions -or, for that matter, of the Spanish coup d'etat of 1923-will care to risk a detailed prophecy...
...A third aspect of the situation concerns the throne...
...Every visitor to the peninsula who returns after a period of years notices how the traditional character and the habits of the Spaniard are blending with those of other nations...
...That was the cry of the Spanish people throughout the bitter years of civil war, social stagnation and misgovernment- throughout almost the whole of the nineteenth century...
...The other day, in a file of Spanish newspapers dated 1838, I came across an article, curiously modern in spirit, entitled Peace and Pesetas...
...Those who have followed the course of Spanish progress for the last twenty years know what great work (great in every sense of the word) has been done by the "Junta para Ampliacion de Estudios," that permanent board with which are related, in one way or another, almost all of the progressive educationists of the country...
...Primo had ended the unpopular Moroccan War, turned out the professional politicians, got rid of civil servants who drew salaries without attending their offices, made new roads, improved train communications, increased work, brought about radical and progressive changes in education, and raised continuously (until shortly before his resignation) the value of the peseta, which had been falling since the end of the European war...
...He must have realized this himself as well as anybody...
...A few hundred students marched through the streets nightly singing songs, and occasionally howling outside the dictator's private residence...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 19
