The regeneration of Spain must necessarily be a slow process, for the causes of her degradation are deep-seated, and are not to be removed by mere legislative enactments or alteration of the machinery of government. One of the principal difficulties with which the country has to contend is the dishonesty of the bureaucracy, which paralyses any reform that may be attempted. Of what use is legislation, when the laws are not honestly administered? If what is the common talk of all classes has any foundation whatever in fact, the whole of the bureaucracy, from top to bottom, not excluding the inferior judiciary, is venal and corrupt, and until a tradition of honest administration is established amendment will be difficult, if not impossible.

The history of Spain for the last three hundred years affords an illustration of the proposition established by Lecky[28] that “the period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.” In no country in Western Europe has the Church of Rome been so entirely absolute and dominant, since the Reformation, as in Spain, where the Inquisition instantly and finally crushed out all freedom of thought and all opposition to theological orthodoxy. The Church in Spain to-day enjoys the unique position of holding a monopoly of the spiritual direction of the nation. Although other creeds and forms of worship are tolerated, there is no religious liberty. Everywhere else, even in Catholic countries, there is a vigilant and hostile body of opinion, of more or less weight, which necessarily contributes by its very existence to moralise the Church and to enforce on the priesthood a certain standard of duty. In Spain this check is absent. There is no rival Church, for the Spanish Protestants are too few in number and too insignificant in position to make their influence felt, and the working classes, who, as has been shown, are bitterly hostile to the priesthood, are inarticulate, and powerless as an influence corrective of abuses, while the middle classes, who might do something towards enforcing a higher standard, are generally speaking, indifferent.

To what extent the corruption of the spiritual power in Spain is responsible for the low moral standard of the laity is an exceedingly difficult question, on which I am not capable of pronouncing an opinion. There is no doubt that Spain for the last three hundred years has suffered from a succession of some of the worst, the most incompetent, and the most corrupt rulers known to history. During all this time, except perhaps during the thirty years when Charles III. was on the throne, the Church was supreme. If the clergy, the directors of the conscience of the nation, armed with the power of the confessional and supported if necessary by the secular arm, had deliberately set their faces against the system of public venality and corruption instituted by Lerma and Olivares and continued by their subordinates and successors, it is difficult to believe that the upas-tree would have grown so tall and struck its roots so deeply as it has.

The excessive centralisation of the whole administration in Madrid, coupled with the Spanish habit of writing long letters and reports about every trivial question, which reports are referred for further information from one official to another before the Minister or other authority gives his final decision, paralyses all initiative and causes infinite delays and annoyances over the simplest matters. On the other hand, if effective local self-government were given under existing conditions, the Cacique would be even more powerful than he now is, and Spain would be ruled, not by a single bureaucracy, but by a number of irresponsible autocrats.

Thus before Spain can effectually reform herself there is needed a change of heart, a vital conviction that only through honest and fearless administration is redemption possible. An educated Spaniard once observed to me, when discussing this matter: “In England you act on the supposition that a person in office is an honest man, and if you find that he is not, you punish him severely. In Spain we presuppose dishonesty, and do not chastise the rogue when he is found out.” This is perfectly true. There are swarms of official inspectors who are supposed to inspect everything connected with the public administration. But the inspectors themselves are venal, and for a sufficient consideration will report that all is well when it is far from well. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? It is the rarest thing to hear of any official being punished for peculation or receiving bribes.

Every educated Spaniard is fully aware of this canker, which is rotting the whole body politic: they talk to each other and to foreigners about it with the utmost frankness, entirely recognising the greatness of the evil and usually despairing of any amendment.

To turn to another side of the same question. In a different way the bullfight is responsible for an amount of moral degradation that no one but a Spaniard can adequately estimate. It is not only that the spectacle of broken-down horses gored to death and a wild beast worried for half an hour at a stretch is in itself debasing, but the whole atmosphere created by the amusement is thoroughly vicious and degrading. This is not merely my private opinion: I repeat what has been told me by cultured and thoughtful Spaniards, who see in its popularity one of the many obstacles to the growth of a higher standard of morality. Happily there are indications that the taste for the sport is on the wane. I know numerous members of the upper middle class and many working people, both men and women, who object strongly to the institution, and never attend a bullfight, and bullrings have been closed in many of the smaller towns during the last ten years or so, for want of support. But the vested interests—the cattle-breeders who make their living by breeding the bulls, the impresarios who get up the shows, the companies who have invested millions of pesetas in building bullring’s, the thousands of men employed in them in various capacities, and the bull-fighters themselves—form together a very powerful combination with a good deal of political influence, and it will be many years yet before this blot on civilisation disappears.[29]

One deplorable fact connected with the bullfights is the extent to which they are patronised by foreign visitors, and of these the English are among the worst offenders. I have been told, though I cannot vouch for the truth of the statement, that one bullring close to Gibraltar is practically kept going by the English spectators, and that but for their support it would be closed. I know that Englishmen and English women, in scores and hundreds, every year, some of them ardent supporters at home of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, make a point, when they come to Spain, of going to see the show. “No, I daresay I shan’t like it,” they will say, “but when one is in Spain it is one of the things one ought to see.” Let us hope that they do not realise that their example goes to make the task of the Spanish social reformers even more up-hill and heart-breaking than it need be.

I may instance an University professor who was wearing himself out in the endeavour to raise the moral and intellectual standard of his pupils. He himself was educated in England, and had the highest respect for English customs and institutions and for the general code of English honour. He told me that he had lain awake all one night trying to find a reply to his lads when they said: “If the English, whom you hold up to us as an example in so many ways, support the bullfight, there can be no reason why we should condemn it.”

“And meanwhile,” said the professor bitterly, “your English ladies come out of the bullring and tell me that what they have seen there proves us to be a nation of barbarians.”

In this connection it should be remembered that Spaniards of all classes have a great admiration for England and English institutions, which has been recently increased thanks to the popularity of the Queen. One sees this in all directions. English is beginning to replace French as the first foreign language a young Spaniard learns; English games and English fashions are rapidly being introduced; and one of the leaders of the Republican party has proclaimed a democratic Monarchy on English lines to be the best compromise possible under existing conditions in Spain. So that the support which English visitors give to the bullring is probably more influential for harm than that of other foreigners.

Materially, moreover, the bullring operates in a manner prejudicial to the country. All the best land has to be given up to the bulls, which require immense space to keep them from fighting each other. Thus great estates, which, if cultivated, would employ numerous labourers and produce a rich return, are lost to the nation.

In this matter, too, the Church might exercise a good influence and does not. On the contrary, the Clericalist newspapers give at least as much space to reports of the bullfights as do any others, and one of the reproaches levelled against the clergy by the working classes is that they attend these shows disguised in lay dress, and associate with bullfighters, regardless of the prohibition of the Church. In the parish leaflet already quoted, one of the cases of conscience put is “whether it is a sin to attend a bullfight”: to which the answer returned is, “No, it is not.”

Setting aside the question of a moral reform, without which legislative and administrative changes can produce little or no fruit, it may be useful to consider what measures are urgently needed to contribute to the intellectual and material development of the country.

First and foremost the Church should be confined to its spiritual functions, and restrained from active interference in politics, education, and business.

In a circular issued by the Bishop of Madrid in December, 1909, on the duties of Catholics in the elections, it is laid down that the Catholic voter must not vote for a Liberal as against a Catholic, and that a Liberal is, inter alia, “one who refuses adhesion to the propositions and doctrines laid down by the Apostolic See, principally in reference to the relations of the Church to the State” (italics mine).

The attitude of Rome to what it calls “liberalism” is so well known that there is no need to dilate upon it here. It is quite certain that unless and until the Church can be excluded from intervention in the State, no progress will be possible. The struggle will, no doubt, be severe, for Spain is now the last stronghold of the Roman Church; but once the democracy can make its voice effectively heard, the end will not be doubtful.

In education the dominance of the Church is, if possible, more prejudicial, more of an obstacle to progress of the best kind, than it is in other branches of the work of the State, and the clergy in Spain, as elsewhere, are resisting with might and main every attempt to set up schools which are not under their control. A sufficiency of good and well-conducted schools is one of the crying needs of the country; the Clericalists say they are unable to finance even the Catholic schools which already exist, yet the lay schools supported by the party of progress, although trivial in number, are not only virulently attacked, but are made the basis of a campaign against the Crown and the Constitution, and every nerve is strained to rally “good Catholics” to the fight against the spread of education among the poor.

Decentralisation of the machinery of administration is badly needed, because under the present system vexatious and unnecessary delays must occur, even were there every desire for progress on the part of all concerned. But local government cannot be effective, as has already been said, until the Cacique is abolished.

Among what may be called the material elements of progress may be briefly mentioned the need of improved means of communication, especially good roads. Most of the roads which do exist in Spain are very bad, and there are officially stated to be five thousand villages to which there is no road at all—nothing but a track or path, impassable for wheeled vehicles.

Much needs to be done to encourage agriculture, and to introduce improved methods. Systematic irrigation would render fertile hundreds of square miles of land, now sterile for lack of water. Phylloxera is ravaging the vineyards, and a contagious blight is devastating the orange plantations all over the southern provinces. Neither of these plagues can be effectively combated by private enterprise: public aid and public organisation are essential.

The postal service requires to be overhauled, and security taken, which now does not exist, that postal matter shall reach its destination, and that the contents be not stolen en route, as not infrequently happens.

Last, but not least, the conduct of elections must be reformed, so that the working classes may have an effectual, instead of, as now, a merely nominal vote. With a few notable exceptions they distrust their rulers, of whatever party; it should be made possible for them to return to the local councils and to the Cortes men in whom they have confidence, who know what they want, and who will devote themselves with singleness of mind to getting it. The hope for the future of Spain lies in the democracy. The peasantry, from whose ranks the whole of the working classes are more or less directly recruited, are sober, honest, and industrious. They work long hours for low wages without complaint, and employers—English, American, and so on—who come into contact with large numbers of them in the numerous industries established by foreign enterprise in the Peninsula, all speak in the highest terms of them as labourers. In America, too, they are highly valued, and it is said that the men who in the long run prove the most satisfactory and the best able to bear the trying conditions of work on the Panama Canal are the Spanish emigrants, of whom thousands cross the Atlantic every year.

As yet practically no member of this class, no matter what his natural gifts may have been, has ever risen to a position in which he could make his voice heard in the counsels of his nation. Many Spanish peasants have, no doubt, succeeded in Spanish South America, and some of them have come home again to spend their money and their declining years in their native land. I am not aware that such men have been encouraged to play a part in the politics of Spain, although their experience of the outside world would be of the greatest value. But the frequent instances of Spanish peasants rising to affluence abroad show that it is not their own incapacity, but the crushing burdens imposed on them by those in power, which are the cause of the miserable condition of the peasantry at home. When a Spanish peasant gets a chance, he is well able to profit by it.

Spain always seems to me like a great tree which for centuries has been allowed to go unpruned. It is half smothered with branches which bear no fruit, and the top is a mass of decay. Yet the trunk and the roots are sound and strong, so that once the barren wood which saps the life of the tree is cut away, a new and healthy growth will soon replace it. But the longer the difficult and painful process of pruning away the dead wood is delayed, the greater must grow the danger of a storm which will tear up the tree, roots and all.

Still, in spite of all the drags on the wheels of progress, in spite of ignorance, incapacity, and corruption, in spite of all the forces of reaction and all their efforts to keep Spain in the Slough of Despond from which she is struggling to emerge, one may say with Galileo, “e pur si muove.” Some little advance is being made, slight and slow though it be, and among the more thoughtful members of the younger generation one sees signs of a new spirit—an intelligent appreciation of the needs of the country and an honest and sincere resolve to work for their attainment, which cannot fail to spread and to bear fruit in due season. From the older generation nothing is to be hoped, but ere long they will have yielded their places to the young men—university professors, officers in the Army, journalists, and so forth, many of whom have ideas and ideals, and only lack power and opportunity to put them in practice. The little leaven is working, and though as yet it is small in amount and the lump is large, those who wish Spain well need not despair.