CHAPTER III.
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF SPAIN
We have in English a very ample literature of travel in Spain and description of Spanish customs. It is chiefly remarkable for the number of important and unique features which these travellers have failed to see. Their periodical re-description of fans and mantillas, of bullfights and flirting, of cathedrals and vineyards, has merely succeeded in conveying to English readers a most inaccurate impression of the country. The unique things of Spain that it is useful to know are those features of the ecclesiastical world which I have described, and the complexion of its political world, which I am about to describe. One cannot wholly wonder at the perplexity of English men and women in regard to the execution of Ferrer. One must know Spain first.
It must not be imagined, however, that I am now about to describe features of Spanish life that are so obscure as to be open to different interpretations, or that I am about to retail the partisan charges of Anarchists. What I say in this chapter is based entirely on Spanish literature of the weightiest character, and is admitted by the foremost politicians of the country. It is the "open sore" of Spanish life, and is discussed in terms of scorn, anger, or despair by scores of recent Spanish writers who are far removed from either Anarchism or Socialism. One does not love to lay bare the shame of a neighbour nation. But when those who control this political system dip their hands in the blood of an innocent and noble-spirited man, it is time to tell the truth.
Let me introduce the matter with a glance at the recent work of a Catholic writer of undoubted culture and strict loyalty to his Church—Ramon de Torre-Isunza.[1] He calls his book
- ↑ La Verdad à S. M. El Rey (1902). All quotations in this work are translated, literally, by myself.
