SPAIN AND 1 1 11E FUTURE
By V. S. PRITCHETT
SPAIN has been called the country of the unforeseen, where the imponderables in a clash of movements have an importance which they reach in no other European country. This romantic view of Spain is unpopular among those determinists who see the whole of Europe in clear-cut Fascist and anti-Fascist black and red, and who forget that the erratic tradition of Bakunin is far more powerful on the Spanish Left than the teaching of Marx, but it can find considerable justification. And any attempt to say what is going to happen during the present struggle and after it must bear the romantic elements in mind. First of these is the fact that there is no such country as Spain. There is a collection of highly diverse regions, nations in miniature, some with their own languages, all with very different climates and physical characteristics, cut off from close knowledge of each other by bad transport and differing economic conditions, and all of them in varying degrees as much con- cerned with their own interests and their independence as with a Spain united under this political doctrine or the other.
Today the large, popular forces of the Anarchist federation aim at a complete disintegration of government, while the Sindicalists want no more unity and government than would be provided by innumerable local trade unions. Such a theory of government must seem to us fantastic, yet its appeal to a very large number of the Spanish working classes is immense because it is fantastic ; and the Army garrisons, whose history is nothing but a long series of risings against the central authority, are possessed by the same anarchism. The anarchist tem- perament is as much General Franco's as anyone else's ; and its spiritual exaltation, its stress on honour and the individual light, finds inevitably and naturally its chief sanction in physical force. Force alone can bring libera- tion from the cruel oppression of centuries ; force alone can save us from anarchy. Such is the theory. As the Spanish poetaster has said :
"Free thought I now proclaim to all And death to him who does not think as I do."
The hope of Spain was and is its Socialist movement, because at last, from the 70's when it began to grow, there was a united organised movement which believed in authority as firmly as the Roman Catholic church. In Socialism and, latterly, in the very small Communist party, there were signs of a genuine political education which provided the progressive elements in the country with some stable defence against the Roman Catholic reactionaries—and one must distinguish among devout Catholics between clericals and anti-clericals—and against the anarchy of soldiers and Syndicalists alike. In the present struggle the Socialists, in spite of their divisions, alone have a political programme. General Franco has none. The Liberal Government in Madrid, at present the prisoner of the mixed revolutionary committees, has none beyond a hurried, anxious throwing of meat to appease the lions. And if General Franco wins he will, like his nineteenth-century predecessors, merely be an executioner, until inevitably the struggle for economic and social justice breaks out again.
The difficulties of the victors—if there is such a thing as a clear-cut victory—which seems very doubtful—en either side will be immense. Unity is easy enough in battle. A rapid victory is essential to General Franco, but although he has trained troops, the Moors, Italian and German bombers and so forth, and may even capture Madrid, one does not See him easily conquering Catalonia and the East. His failure so far to capture Irun" may be decisive ; the successful 'resistance of Irun decided the Carlist War. The longer time he takes, the more promises he has to make to the Moors. A curious report, which sounds untrue but which is curiously reminiscent of the first Moorish invasion of Spain in 700, says that he has offered the Moors land and mosques in the South. The point is, he has had to promise them something. He has already weakened Spanish Morocco ; he will have to weaken it even more, and it would not be surprising to hear that, although he is said to be a first class organiser and has left everything in good order in Morocco, his fate was decided there. He planned a coup d'etat and has plunged Spain into the bloodiest civil war it has known ; even supposing he gets a superficial victory, the guerilla fight will go on, and it is that kind of disorder which will bring disunity in his own ranks quite apart from his lack of programme.
Moreover, he is likely to be seriously affected by inter- national intervention sooner or later, as (I think) any future Spanish government will be. The weakness of Spain is congenial to English policy, but not the in- capacity of Spain to hold her own. One cannot see how, after a long and exhausting conflict, Spain will be able to hold Morocco if the two Fascist dictators think her weak enough to make a bid for it. From the patriotic and the social points of view Franco seems to be a disaster, and all the worse for being an anachronism. His victory portends, not only the death of the attempt of the masses to liberate themselves, but the paralysis of that quiet, diligent liberal movement which, despite its failures, has done immense work in fitting the Spanish mind for the changes the modern world was inexorably bringing about in the country.
A victory for the Government will mean first of all that General Franco has set in motion the social revolution which he pretended he had risen to suppress. It will be a victory of democracy only in the sense that every defeat of Fascism is this. But who is going to run the revolu- tion ? Fighting should have completely united the two powerful Socialist groups, but has it taught the Syndicalists and Anarchists anything ? One does not see them so quickly renouncing their beliefs, for in characteristic Spanish fashion it has been the religious or moral fervour of anarchism which has risen against the materialism of the Marxists. Will Anarchists of this kind abandon the faith any more readily than the out-and-out Catholics of Franco's kind will abandon theirs ? Will the Anarchists fight the rest of the Left ? Or will they suddenly drop out and refuse to co-operate ? Moral fervours make civil wars, if economics make revolutions, and the question is whether the Anarchists will permit a revolution any more than General Franco would. One does not imagine Azafia being more effective a teacher than the bookish leaders of the First Republic were. If the Left, after a victory—which would be brought about by disaffection among the Moors and half-hearted conscripts—are not united, one foresees more Generals beginning with liberal intentions and becoming more and more reactionary, and the country dragging along like a recalcitrant mule team on the Castilian roads.
It depends upon how much the Left has learned. The tactics and necessities of revolution, with the Russian revolution so near, ought to have become clear. From the revolutionary point of view the growth of a middle class and its steady, if precarious, enrichment, springing from neutrality in the Great War, has made an awkward obstacle. The revolutionaries deny the intellectuals this class has produced, though these have been in the fore- front of the struggle for education and justice ; and, having thrown them overboard, are left to face the unweakened and tenacious middle-class Fascists who in the cafes of Cordoba and Seville,' last year were exultant because 30,000 workers were in gaol and were still having peasants arrested because they were rude to bailiffs. No Great War had weakened these people ; the neutrality made them ; but the poor are always hungry. And not all the hungry are on the Left. The wretched peasant proprietor of Burgos, eking out his few acres in the bleached treeless plateau, is Right to the marrow. He is the classical Spanish reactionary.
And the Left, too, will have to face the problem of Morocco. Many would gladly let it go. But that presum- ably would not suit England or France. A Left Govern- ment has much to fear from the Powers if Spain is too -weak to hold Morocco, more if France drifts into Fascism. Any government will have much to fear from famine also ; for if Spanish peasants follow their habit of aban- doning revolt for their cattle and crops, what becomes of a general rising ? If the war goes on, what becomes of the cattle and crops Can even the towns, traditionally the decisive factors in Spain, go on on empty stomachs ? And what will happen to the Moorish mind if Franco's Moors go back to tell of the Spaniards they have conquered ?
Once more Spain has become Europe's vicarious battle- ground. The defeat or victory of General Franco, though he may not have bought his shirt off the Fascist peg, will have a deep effect upon his fellow irrationalists, who have introduced anarchy into Europe. For us what happens in Spain is important for the effect it has on Europe ; but if Madrid wins there is some reason to hope that Spain will eventually create a new political cast of thought as refreshing and re-vitalising to Europe as the Spanish personality is already. The anarchist of today, transformed by fire, may become the builder of some curious decentralised State of tomorrow.
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