Spain’s Dictator.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 152, 14 September 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

Spain’s Dictator.

AIMS OF THE DIRECTORATE.

Political & Constitutional Issues

•"pHE dictatorship of Primo dc Rivera in Spain has received little of the limelight which has been directed for the last six years upon that of Mussolini in Italy; nor does it, indeed, deserve so much attention, being far more modest in its aims and of no special significance beyond the Pyrenees. But it is, nevertheless, not without a certain interest as a political experiment which, if it succeeds, may well inaugurate the national revival which the friends of Spain have been prophesjdng ever sine.® the disastrous war of 1898 revealed to her people the depths to which she had sunk. The coup d’etat of 12th and 13th September, 1923, by which Primo dc Rivera, with the support of the other army chiefs, and, almost certainly, the approval of King Alfonso, who had probably been privy to the conspiracy since the preceding June, swept away the whole constitutional regime almost overnight and without the slightest struggle, had a very definite and limited object. The political paralysis which had crippled Spain for more than a century, and of which the modern symptoms were the utter apathy of the mass of the people, the manipulation of the despised Parliamentary machine by a handful of professional politicians who controlled the country through local caciques, or “bosses,’’ and a degree of corruption and inefficiency throughout the whole administration quite unparalleled in Western Europe, had been aggravated by the app'earance of a crop of critical national problems. As a result of the steady drain of the Moroccan war, culminating in the terrible disaster of Anual in July, 1921, when the army in Africa was thrown back to the coast and till work of a decade undone; of the violence of the Catalan separatist movement, and of the social disorders in the industrial centres, the nation appeared to be on the verge of disintegration. The politicians had shown themselves utterly incapable of dealing with the situation, and to the military leaders the only hope for the country seemed to lie in the overthrow of the Parliamentary regime and national reorganisation under an absolute government. When, therefore, the administration was placed by royal decree in the hands of a Military Directorate, with General Primo do Rivera at its head, that leader at once proceeded to establish an effective dictatorship. Th*» Cortes was dissolved and the various Ministries swept away, the constitutional guarantees were suspended, local elections and trial by jury were abolished, the administration of justice largely militarised, a strict censorship of the press established, and all criticism of the new regime forbidden. The arbitrary form of government thus set up has lasted substantially to the present day. In December, 1925, the Military Directorate was changed into a "Civil and Economic’’ one—that is, a civilian Cabinet; but Primo de Rivera remained, in effect, Dictator. RECORD OP THE DIRECTORATE. The aims and programme of the Directorate, as immediately announced by its head, were by no means extravagant. It did not attempt, like the Fascist dictatorship injtaly, to impose a profound revolution upon the Spanish people, but concerned itself solely with the practical problems of government. Certain reforms, said the dictator, immediately necessary for the safety of the State must be carried through in an arbitrary fashion. Public order must be restored, the administration purified, the Moroccan muddle cleared up and the finances stabilised. When this had been done —and he estimated the necessary period of preparation first at thrSe months, then at three years, and finally at six years!—they could turn, in co-operation with the whole people, presumably through some representative machinery, to the solution of the great national problems of constitutional, educational and agrarian reform. The dictatorship was thus envisaged as being essentially a temporary expedient. What success, it will first be asked, has the Directorate achieved in its preliminary task of national reorganisation! Public order has undoubtedly been stored. Industrial upheavals and separatist agitations no longer disturb the country. But whether the discontent has been cured or merely driven below the surface is a highly debateable question. Again, *ll observers agree that great strides have been mad® in cleaning out the Augean stables of the Administration. The public service has been much improved, and some check imposed upon the shameless corruption and nepotism which previously permeated every department. Caciqucism has been dealt a severe blow by the substitution for Wee ted local councils of delegates directly appointed by the central Government, but the new’ system appears to be subject to almost as many abuses ns the old. In the same way, while the Catalan question is nominally settled by the gift of a certain degree of local autonomy and the severe repression of further demands, separatism is by no means dead. The great and unqualified triumph of the regim®, however, has been the pacification of the .Spanish zone in Morocco, which was finally comPletcd. in co-operation with the French, by the surrender of Abd-el-Karim *t T irquist in May, 192fi, and is largely the personal achievement of the dictator. Altogether the Directorate may justly claim to have given Bpain the least inefficient government which she has suffered for generation-, and to have successfully brought her through a crisis in which, under constitutional methods, she might well have foundered. THE POLITICAL SITUATION. When one comes to inquire into the present political situation, with tcc:.'v regard to the stability of the dictatorship, the most striking fact revoab dis the continued apathy of the mass of the people. They re--o,v. i *he new regime with indifference, and, in its four years’ rule, it ha- in ally failed to arouse any degree of popular enthusiasm. The attempt to found local somaten or groups on the model of the Italian focio came to nothing, and though the Patriotic Union, a heterogeneous collection of individuals pledged to support the Government in its .efforts *t national reconstruction, has been more of a success, it cannot compare ® strength and importance with the Italian Fascist party. Gn the oth®r hand, the opposition has been negligible, consisting for the most part of the hopelessly discredited professional politicians and a far Republicans and Socialists, who have very little following in the country. The directorate has the active support only of a few young Con-V! a lives with Fascist ideas, the Carlists amt Clericals, who like ahsoiut" government for its own sake, ami the army ami the King. The af br. n spite of the widespread suspicion that his intrigues with his •vouritos. Generals Silvestre and Cavalcanti, against the High Commis,,f)ncr m Morocco, General Bircnguer, were partly responsible for the disJ* ter of AnUal, is enormously popular, ami probably the strongest single face in the country. Th. natural result of arbitrary rule, continued longer than was origin- % contemplated, has liSen a growing irritation amongst the upper middle. ?s * I ''Gicularly the intellcctur l c uch as Unamuno, but the Governto“nt <!..•- not seem to have been at all weakened thereby. The revolt fanned for .Tune. 192(5, by Generals Weyler and Aguilfra and I)r. Maraand easily nipped in the bud, caused scarcely a ripple upon the poliGk! ’ "hile in the plebiscite held in October of the same year tin " M confidence in the Administration, which is about four los inure than have ever before voted at any .Spanish election. The ‘&*ifie:iii, ~ of this, bow< ver, is somewhat impaired by the quite extraordinlaxity of the polling methods. lor ■'*t titude of the army has been the gravest concern of the DictaI’ made him, and it could unmake him. The strong and loyal VP r, r> of the King, however, whose influence with the army is great, has t ,; r k‘T l him secure. When his policy of military retrenchment ali'en- ' "iv opinion, and the officers, in the artillery revolt of August, 192(1, ,u r, ’ v '* r t to the methods of tlie Juntas, which had been so efof v' f , * u ‘ politicians between 1917 and 1923, the prompt action ' n * Mfonso brought about the immediate collapse of the movement. i*iil ° SU " lc while in no sense truly popular, is in a y stable position owing to the absence of any reputable opposition.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE As has been suggested, Primo de Rivera, with his Andalusian optimism, greatly underestimated the time needed to carry out enough of his programme of purification to permit the undertaking of an attempt to solve the three great national problems. The best illustration of this has been the continual postponement of the calling of the promised National Assembly to consider the future constitution . There was, however, another reason for delay. Although the exercise of power by the Directorate has undoubtedly been unconstitutional; it was always possible to maintain that the constitution had merely been suspended owing to the critical circumstances. For the King, however, to summon a National Assembly by royal decree for the purpose of devising a new system of government would be a definitely revolutionary step, finally destructive of the constitution of 187(5, and so of his own legal sovereignty. Such an act would bind the dynasty irrevocably to the new experiment, whose failure would almost inevitably entail its fall. Alfonso XIII. accordingly hesitated. Eventually, it seems, he decided that Lt was better to risk alfon a complete, if bloodless, revolution than to compromise the monarchy by further support of a frankly unconstitutional regime. He therefore in September last year signed the decree calling a National Assembly, to the fury and dismay of the regular political parties. This body, which has now boon in session since the 10th October, is composed of 4(10 members, nominated by the Government and "representative of all the economic and intollcctuaf activities of the nation.” Its function is to draw up a new constitution, which will subsequently be submitted to a plebiscite, ami to work out a complSto programme of educational, agrarian and economic reform. The results of its labours arc not yet sufficiently advanced to give much indication of the proposed (hanges, Pi into do Rivera, however, has stilted that he will never permit a return to the old Parliamentary system on the English model, which would place the country once more in the hands of the professional politicians and it is probable that the new system will provide for a Chamber composed of representatives of corporate bodies and economic interests whose functions will be primarily consultative and critical, greater powers being left in the hands of tiie Executive. Part of the economic programme, including a high tariff, subsidies to national industries and schemes for balancing the budget, has already been put into operation. The most serious difficulties may he expected to arise with regard to agrarian reform and educational policy from the great land owners and the church respectively, both at present favourable to the directorate. For the next few years foreigners will watch with keen interest this unique Experiment in "revolution disdo arriba” (revolution from above).