A TALE OF TERROR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3829, 4 November 1936, Page 3

A TALE OF TERROR

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY. HUNDRED YEARS OF CHAOS. UNLUCKY IN RULERS. Would you hear the story of the Great Spanish Tragedy? asks C. A. Lyon in the Sunday Express. How a world Power crumpled up like a lofty building dissolving into dust? How a cultured nation relapsed into such barbarism (and that during the “enlightened” nineteenth century) that a sober historian has said the Tuareg tribes of the Sahara could not have acted more cruelly towards each other? I suppose the average person has a vague idea that Spain is a place where there have been “a lot of revolts.” When you look in detail at the wickedness, the unfaithfulness, the murders, shootings, tortures that have been Spain’s lot since 1800 they seem enough to kill one's faith in “progress” for ever. Indeed, the history of Spain since the beginning of the nineteenth century has in some ways been almost that of a savage nation. Why has it all been? By the year 1800 Spain, once mistress of half the world, was hanging together only by the sheer force of tradition and habit. It was like a very delicate icing-sugared Christmas cake, and as soon as anyone gave it a jar it would fall to bits. It was centuries behind the times, and it h:“l never been modernised. The jar came when Napoleon’s armies marched into Spain. The miserable Spanish King, Charles IV, would not stand up to Napoleon. He ran after him, fawned on him, and gave himself up to be a tame prisoner. The People Better. The Spaniards were better than their King. But with the King gone, no organised resistance to the invader was possible. Spain was a land where everything revolved round the King’s sacred person; he gave all orders, and when he took to his heels no orders could Ire given. But Spaniards everywhere, high and low, banded themselves into wandering bands of freelances, guerrillas, who inflicted great injuries on the French troops. The guerrillas were patriots. But they sowed the seeds of Spain’s tragedy. When Napoleon had fallen the guerrillas and the guerrilla habit —the habit of sniping, of shooting, of plotting, and secretly organising—remained. It remains to this day. The stage was all set for the great tragedy round about 1814. Note that: 1. Spaniards come together when there is a common foe and quarrel in time of peace. They united centuries ago to drive out the Moors. To-day the Spanish Socialists, forever quarrelling, are now as one man against the rebels.

2. The Spaniard is naturally cruel. Or at least he has always had an indifference to pain, almost a love of it. The early Iberians astonished the Romans by chanting their national songs when nailed to the cross. The Iberian mothers dashed their children to death rather- than that they should be slaves. Here and there in Spain one still hears of a brotherhood -who cut themselves with sharp pieces of glass for repentance. 3. The Spaniard is excitable. If the postman leaves a letter at the wrong house the Spaniard will make a political quarrel and a street fight out of it. Tyranny of a Kiny. Charles IV’s son Ferdinand VII came back to rue the seething New' Spain with its 300,000 war-destroyed houses and its bands of plotters and guerrillas. The King was one of the w'orst Spain had ever seen. He amused himself by appointing Ministers, keeping them for a week or two and then sending them off to prison. There were revolts against him. The corpses of the King’s enemies were dragged through the mud of Madrid. Garrisons revolted. Barcelona, Valencia, Pamplona rose. A rebel leader was taken through the streets in a basket drawn by an ass, then hanged and quartered—as in the Middle Ages. In this atmosphere Ferdinand died. This made things worse. Ferdinand, three times married and childless, had at last married his own niece, and surprised the world by becoming the father of a daughter. When he died his daughter was proclaimed Queen, but his brother, Don Carlos, claimed the throne as the male heir. A great breach of the royal family followed. It was to be the source of most of Spain’s troubles. i A hateful war ensued, a war between the supporters of Don Carlos and Ferdinand’s daughter, who became Queen Isabella 11. Spaniard massacred Spaniard with dreadful ferocity. The palace at Madrid was attacked. Barcelona flared up. Five hundred people were killed in a street battle. Scores of Jesuits and friars were massacred at Madrid by the mobs, W'ho believed they had poisoned the wells on behalf of Don Carlos. Franciscan friars were butchered at Barcelona. Queen Shocks Europe. There seems no end to her misfortunes. Isabella, whose position would have been difficult in any case, turned out to be a queen who shamed the

throne. The parentage of her children was only too much open to conjecture, and her scandalous method of living shocked Europe. She condemned her husband to a hermit's life in a hunting castle, and made companions of various army officers. Withal she had the mind of a child, and the heiress to all the stately ceremonial of the Spanish monarchy made long noses at her- Ministers and stuck her tongue out at them when they turned their backs. There were risings against her- in 1854. In 1857 the military lined up and shot dead 98 rebels in Andalusia. A priest stabbed her, but she was saved by her whalebone corsets. The priest was garrotted; his body burned. In 1886 the Governor of the Balearic Isles landed with 3000 troops to put a male relative of Isabella’s father on the throne, but was defeated and (naturally) shot. In January, 1860, there was an insurrection at Aranjuez, sieges of other towns, and later in the year 200 prisoners were shot following a revolt in Madrid. 1868. Insurrection of the fleet. . . . Governor of Burgos murdered in cathedral . . . more slaughter at Cadiz . . . revolution . . . Isabella deposed in a plot in which her own sister took part Then the crown of unhappy Spain, was hawked round Europe. It was tried on the King of Portugal, on a cousin of Queen Victoria, and on an Italian Prince. All of them decided it did not quite fit them. Eventually •they found an excellent, earnest Italian, Amadeo, Duke of Aosta, to take on the job. He stayed two years and did not take a penny of the money voted him by the State for his trouble because he knew the Treasury was in low water. He decided he did not like the old Spanish customs when his carriage was fired on as he was driving to a circus, and abdicated. Republic Proclaimed. Chaos again. A republic was proclaimed. Andalusia ruled by Socialist agitators, the north acknowledging Don Carlos, Barcelona a kind of little Slate of its own. Some people wanted a kind of United States; others a Republic. Others, Federal cantons like Switzerland. The country simply fell to pieces again. Each part had its own Customs duties -and in the old Spanish way the privates shot the officers un-. til the officers could execute the privates. The Republic only lasted a matter of months. Then the son of Isabella, Alfonso XII (whose mother was certainly- Isabella and whose father—who?) was proclaimed (1874). A lot of people who had telegraphed their determination to defend the Republic with their lives 48 hours before sent their protestations of loyalty to the newspapers—arid the fighting went on as usual. There we?e anarchist outrages in industrial towns. Anarchists threw bombs into theatres. The Government retaliated with torture. The new regime lasted leas than 50 years. Here are some of the incidents during the life of Alfonso XII and his son, Alfonso XIII: King fired at 1877 Conspirators garrotted, suspected rebel officers shot .. 1884 Attempted military insurrection, Cartagena 1885 Mutiny at Cartagena 1886 Revolt of Madrid garrison . . 1886 Barcelona under martial law .. 1890 General strike in Barcelona, 40 deaths 1902 Attempted assassination of King Alfonso on his wedding day 1908 A Constant Stream. So Spain’s unhappy story goes on to the perpetual accompaniment of executions and deportations, through the riots over the unsuccessful Moroccan war, down to the departure of Alfonso XIII. Even that did not heal Spain of the great disease of her countrymen —killing each other. There have been three revolts under the Republic. In one of them, in 1934, the following things happened in one town: Inhabitants were beaten in the streets. Three men living in a house, one ill in bed, were shot dead; an old man was shot before the eyes of his 12-year-old grandson by the Government troops; another man was flogged mercilessly; his manacled corpse, cut to pieces, was found later. A gipsy woman was beaten to death. The rebels’ houses had been set fire to with petrol-soaked balls of cotton wool. Six men were machine-gunned; 14 more collected and shot. Five hundred years ago the Spaniards banded together to expel the Moors. Now the Spanish rebels have brought the Moors back—as troops to fight the Government. The Moors have a reputation of a cruel race. But nothing any Moorish force does is likely to be more cruel thgn the things Spaniards have been doing to Spaniards for the last century or so.