One Taboo Less in Spain

...Now the newspaper Ya, considered the mouthpiece of Catholic Action, asserted that in the modern world social considerations must take priority over property rights, and Falangist spokesmen urged the government to expropriate the Count's land...

...But this was Europe, and these landlords were Christians-not only Christians but dignitaries of the Church...

...it is also a heartening chapter in the moral history of Spain...

...The reverend beneficiaries were, indeed, quite merciless landlords...

...The story marks an interesting stage in the evolution of the Franco regime...

...When they refused to retract their protest he charged them before an ecclesiastical tribunal with indiscipline...

...Just over half this land was worked by day laborers', the remainder, 13 square miles, was let to 830 tenant farmers...

...It is difficult for any priest to give the dictates of his conscience a higher priority than the orders of his bishop, and in Spain the penalties for trying can be severe...

...All that they have achieved is to dishonor the diocese and Spain...

...but the general public was carefully shielded from all such dangerous thoughts...

...Moderates who hope for a peaceful transition to democracy after Franco's death feared the Supreme Court's judgment might strengthen left-wing extremism...

...He told the correspondent of Pueblo, the organ of the Falangist sindicatos (the official and only labor unions of the Franco regime): "The attitude of these parish priests is incomprehensible...

...It may be significant that both cases occurred in northeastern Spain where latifundismo is less common and public opinion more alert than in the south...

...At first the chapter dragged its feet, and the press and public opinion in other provinces began taking an interest in the dispute...

...Two banks were interested, but could offer no security to the tenants, many of whom would have to leave...

...At this point four parish priests of the Lérida diocese wrote an open letter to the cathedral chapter, boldly and bitterly denouncing this "scandal...

...After several days of editorial uproar and angry bar-talk (public meetings were, of course, banned) the Count of Sâstago announced his intention of transferring part of his estate to landless peasants and helping the townsfolk, many of whom had threatened to emigrate, to acquire agricultural machinery...

...There is no news of the fourth, but their friends are confident that-thanks to the publicity the affair is receiving-all four will be let off lightly for their "incomprehensible" behavior...

...The word came from Madrid that no pretext must be given for a repetition of the Sâstago uproar...

...The "top ten" grandees alone-the Dukes of Medinaceli, Pefiaranda, Vistahermosa, Alba and six others -possessed 1,270 square miles...

...Suddenly, during the last few weeks, as a result of an extraordinarily vigorous public reaction to two cases of flagrant injustice, the taboo has been broken...

...Three of the four priests who took the lid off the scandal are being transferred to another diocese...

...Apparently this was not enough, for in 1966 they put the property on sale, with the permission of their ecclesiastical superiors, for $6.6 million...

...During the last few years they have been receiving from their 830 tenants an annual income of about $166,600, tax-free, plus substantial sums from the sale of grazing rights and wood...

...Franco's own government even intervened in the second case-on the side of reform...

...In 1941, after the Republic had been overthrown and the clock turned back, the Count reclaimed his land...

...During the Republican regime the canons had agreed to sell the 13 square miles to their tenants for $16,700 payable in installments...

...but the town council boldly sought a decision from the courts, arguing that the land had not been expropriated: the Count had handed it over voluntarily...

...The government advised the cathedral chapter to sell the land to the 830 tenant farmers and to fix a reasonable price that they could afford to pay...

...I asked...

...But 1966 is not 1941, and many who had applauded Franco's abrogation of land reform after the civil war now protested against this "land reform in reverse" A generation before, hotheads associated with Catholic Action and the Falange had helped hunt down and "execute" reformers who had given the peasants ideas above their station...

...so were a high proportion of the villagers in contact with them...

...The fear of purgatory and hell is still cultivated more vividly in Spanish Catholicism than in most other Western branches of the Church...

...The issue was complicated by the fact that the property register for the area had been destroyed during the civil war and the council possessed no documentary title to the land...

...The reverend beneficiaries took advantage of this to impost more severe conditions on them and get more out of the property...

...The Bishop of Lérida, Monsehor Del Pino, called the four priests to heel at once...

...when they were disillusioned they went to the opposite extreme of accusing the priesthood of living in idleness and luxury on the proceeds of exploitation and speculation...

...This is good news...

...In 1931, when King Alfonso XIII stepped down in favor of the Republic, the Spanish aristocracy owned 2.229 square miles of land...

...But when Franco took control of Spain they cancelled the agreement...

...But the priests' letter served its purpose...

...one fifth of the purchase price, which the tenants had paid them in 1936,' a Lérida priest told me...

...For the next quarter century or so public discussion of the subject was taboo...

...The immediate outcry over Sâstago subsided but the wider argument it had touched off continued...

...The priest shook his head...

...There are twelve beneficiaries in all...

...In 1931, shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, the Count of Sâstago gave 41 square miles of largely uncultivated land to the village council, which settled some 600 peasants on them...

...Jesus expelled the merchants from the temple but we seem to have brought them back and put them in charge of it...

...Shortly afterward a strangely similar storm blew up over estates administered by the chapter of Lérida cathedral...

...They have attracted attention abroad, where everything that harms Spain's reputation is sure of a good reception...

...The bishop's social and political outlook may be deduced from his praise of General Franco in the course of a service in Lérida cathedral in June 1963: "Thanks to Franco's genius and heroic deeds, and to his lofty religious outlook, qualities that make him stand out on the international scene, all people of good faith must admit that Spain is the nation that lives in the most profound peace and in the truest spirit of truth, rectitude, brotherly love and liberty...

...You forget, or were fortunate enough never to know, the repression that followed Franco's victory...

...The 830 tenants and their families, the four priests said, were "totally dechris-tianized...

...Gregorio Biosca, the president of the local farmers' union, who had negotiated the purchase on the tenants' behalf, had to flee to France to avoid being shot...

...In the summer of 1966, after more than twenty years of litigation, the Supreme Court confirmed the Count in his possession of the 41 square miles and ordered the Sâstago town council to pay him 2.25 million pesetas ($37,500) in damages...

...Couldn't the tenants protest...

...Reading the contracts they obliged their tenants to sign, I was reminded of the Near East-of the contracts the semi-feudal beys of Syria and Iraq imposed on their peasants until the recent revolutions in those countries...

...When the generals began plotting to overthrow the Republic, the major landowners supported them...

...But although the first reaction was local, the indignation aroused soon spread to Madrid and other cities...

...But as this is written, representatives of the chapter and its tenants are said to be opening negotiations...

...Sâstago is a sleepy little Aragonese town wedged between fearsome meanders of the Ebro halfway between Zaragoza and Lérida...

...They did not, however, return to their tenants the first installment of $3,340...

...After the Civil War General Franco rewarded landowners by cancelling the Republic's cautious agrarian reform and restoring them to full possession of their estates...

...In 1966, the estates administered by the canons and beneficiaries who make up the chapter of Lérida cathedral were estimated to cover 28.5 square miles...

...Ray Alan is a British correspondent who has reported on Europe, Africa and the Middle East for many years...

...Even indigent Catholics in Spain try desperately before dying to save enough money to pay for the Masses that they are taught will hasten their souls' admission to heaven...

...The farmers, all on three-year leases, were scared of eviction and completely cowed...

...Most Spanish dioceses possess great wealth, much of it land or the proceeds of land, bequeathed to the Church in payment for masses its owners wished the clergy to say in order to hasten the release of their souls from purgatory...

...The reason, the priests continued, was clear: Simple folk expected their "landlord-priests" to behave in a Christian manner...

...Timidly, the Republic regime distributed 343 square miles to landless peasants-some of it State land, the rest trimmed from underculti-vated corners of the grandees' estates...

...In technical studies of limited circulation economists such as Ramón Tamames occasionally mentioned the need for "structural reforms" to improve the efficiency of Spanish agriculture...