SPAIN AND ITS FUTURE
By GERALD BRENAN Iv HE picture that British and American observers bring back from I Spain is a very sad one. Spain today is a totalitarian State, controlled entirely by a single party, the Falange. But it is totali- tarianism broken dawn. Partly from sheer inefficiency and partly from lack of faith in its own ideals, this all-powerful party has allowed the whole mechanism of the State, except the police, the army and the penal system, to go to pieces. It has ceased to be a party bent on carrying out certain industrial reforms, and has become a gang of self-seekers, living solely to suck as much money as possible out of the country.
As an illustration of this let us take the rationing system. Spain t normally produces almost all the food its population consumes, d besides exporting considerable quantities of oil, rice, fruit and early vegetables. Yet today only one person in twenty is properly fed I and about half the population is near the starvation level. : The reason for this is that the Falange, through its syndicates and r its provincial governors, controls both the official black market, ) known as the estraperlo, and the rationing system. Potatoes, for example, are sold for i peseta the kilo on a ration card and for 3 pesetas on the estraperlo ; oil for 4.60 the litre and to, bread simi- larly. The difference between the two prices is kept by the Falange. Consequently, to increase the quantities sold on the 3straperlo, the supplies of rationed food are kept as low as possible —in fact, below subsistence level. As a result, the working classes, who cannot afford to buy in the black market, starve, whilst the middle classes keep alive with difficulty. One could go through the whole of Spanish administrative life in this way, pointing in
; every department to similar methods of depredation.
Another feature is the steady inflation. The cuse of this would seem to be the increasing national debt. The great projects of electrification, building and irrigation planned by the State are not being carried out because so large a part of the national income goes in maintaining a huge army, which is kept contented by generous rations, and in constant readiness to suppress a rising. Thus while the soldita-s and the Falangists lead lives of plenty, and a small number of speculators amass money, the price of food con- tinues to rise and wages and salaries do not rise with it.
But no government as corrupt and oppressive as this can maintain itself in power indefinitely by force alone. Many of the very people who profit by it hate it. And so it is that the Government of General Franco is in a state of ever-increasing crisis and dis- integration. Among the governing class there are two particular fears—fear of losing their jobs and fear of reprisals. Among the people at large, who loathe the regime, there is a general though vague fear of another Civil War. But the strongest fear, the fear that with many people is an obsession, is the fear of reprisals. They remember the Red Terror at the beginning of the Civil War ; they remember, too, though they never speak of it, the far more severe but less advertised White Terror that both accompanied it and followed it. They see the widows and orphans of the men they killed living all round them. If ever these people should get into power again, they expect them to take a fearful revenge. That is why, though the majority of the army, the landowners, the business men, and probably the whole of the Church want to get rid of Franco and the Falange, they also want to be quite sure that the regime that will follow will afford them and their interests protection.
Let us see what the alternatives are. First there is the defeated side, the Republicans. Nearly half a million Spaniards left Spain when Franco came in, and they include among them the flower of the Spanish educated classes. Lawyers, doctors, scientists, writers, professors—men for the most part of liberal tendencies, and rather vague political associations. Some of them, the Basques, are Catholic Conservatives. Among these men there have been found sufficient deputies to the late Cones to form, by the Constitution of the Republic, a quorum; they have therefore met in Mexico and elected a Government. This Government is today recognised by all the Spanish Republicans in exile except the Communists. But curiously enough neither of the two most prominent Spanish poli- ticians in exile are represented in it. Senor Prieto, the Right Wing
Socialist, who had much to do with summoning it, could not join it because he was having an operation. Now, it seems, he prefers to retain his independence. The tithe!, Senor Negrin, the last Spanish Prime Minister, refused to join the Government unless he were restored to his previous post ; however, he has given his support to it. At present this Cones is hoping, if the French Government will give it rights of extra-territoriality, to adjourn to France.
The last Republic failed partly through Its own mistakes (its attack on the Church was one of these) and partly because the Right, feeling Hitler and Mussolini behind them, refused to accept the last reform and so provoked a revolutionary response from the Left, wh.ch in its turn provoked the Army officers to rise. Of all Spanish political groups today, the Republicans are, in my opinion, the most apt for steering Spain through to better days. They are men who have kept their faith in their country and in humanity, and they have learned prudence in exile: moreover, after the waves of fear and terror that have passed through Spain, the moderate reforms they would propose would no longer excite great opposition. But they are the leaders of the side that lost the war, and however strongly they may declare that they do not desire retribution, the people who won the war will never again, if they can help it, allow them to come back, without ample guarantees, to the seats of power. It is difficult to see, there- fore, how, for many years at least, they can succeed in their aim of restoring the Republic.
There is, however, another alternative regime for Spain—the Monarchy. The heir to the Spanish throne, Don Juan, is living at Lausanne, and both the old Monarchist Party and the Carlists are anxious that he should return. He is, in fact, the heir to both the Bourbon lines. And yet, though there is only one claimant to the throne, there are two possible Monarchies. There is a constitutional monarchy with elections and an absolutist monarchy without. It is because no decision has yet been reached upon this, that Don Juan is still living beside Lake Geneva. Briefly, nearly all the Spanish Monarchists, nearly all the Army officers, and probably all the clergy want Don Juan as an absolute king. They would agree to his dis- solving the Falange, opening the prisons, allowing most of the exiles to return. They would grant a measure of home rule to the Catalans and the Basques. There would be a little more liberty. But no talk of reforms, least of all of agrarian reforms. And above everything, no elections.
Don Juan's advisers, however, who live out of Spain, see that no regime that is not based on elections can hope to last in the climate of modern Europe. For one thing it would not have the goodwill of the democracies. Then, by calling off the terror that at present freezes all political opposition, it would open the door to a demand for still greater liberty: in fact, for the liberty of electing a govern- ment. Such a demand, coming in that way, would probably bring down the regime.
But would not elections, even if held straight away, also be fatal to the Monarchy? Respect for kings is largely a habit, and this habit has been broken too often in Spain to exist any longer outside a certain very conservative class of people. Many Spaniards believe that such an election would result in an overwhelming vote for a Republic. Personally I am not so sure. It it were felt that the new Monarchy would not lean entirely on the Right—that is, not on the Monarchist Party—the protection it offered against the general dread of another Civil War might produce a large vote in its favour. Contrary to many people's belief, a large number of Spaniards belong at heart and always have belonged to the Centre. A Monarchy that could draw to itself these Centre votes could rule Spain—anyhow for a time.
What then should be the attitude of the British Government in these questions? Surely British policy ought to square with British con- victions—that in Western Europe at all events we cannot recognise any government as having full sovereign rights that is not rooted in the goodwill of its citizens by means of elections. The question of monarchy or republic is a matter for Spaniards to decide. All we have the right to ask is that they should be given the opportunity. Let those people who tell us so blandly that representative institu- tions do not suit Spain explain in what way they find dictatorships suit it better. Perhaps, if we press them, we shall discover that they are the same people who once glorified the Nazis.
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