Shaw, Rafael; Spain -- Politics and government -- 1886-1931; Spain -- Social life and customs
Happily for Spain, the syndicate of newspapers known as the _Sociedad
Editorial de España_, which is edited under the direction of the
Liberal-Monarchist party in Madrid, and read by thousands, as against
hundreds of readers of the journals which support a different policy,
never wavered for a day in upholding Moret’s recommendation of patience
and submission to the law, and refrained from increasing their sales by
pandering to popular excitement with allusions to what was going on
outside of Spain, notwithstanding the grossest insults from the
Ultramontane press. Those who control the organs of the party knew well
enough that if they had raised the cry of “Down with the Jesuits!” they
would have called up a tempest not easily or speedily to be allayed. But
they knew that their adversaries wished for nothing better, and they
kept on their own course and saved Spain from a violent revolution
against the Church. The syndicate of Liberal-Monarchist papers is
continually accused by the Ultramontane press of being responsible for
the attack on the religious houses in Cataluña, and is held up to
reprobation for “encouraging the destruction of the country by
maintaining the right of the people to have lay schools.” But the truth
is, and the Ultramontanes know it, that to the Liberal-Monarchist press
is due the present security of innumerable buildings belonging to the
Church, which, but for the influence of the Liberal party, would be in
smoke-blackened ruins to-day.
Many members of the educated middle classes of Barcelona assert that the
disturbances in Cataluña in July, 1909, were deliberately instigated by
the Jesuits. The object was, they say, by hook or by crook, to close the
lay schools, and that it had long been an open secret that the
Ultramontane party were determined to take the first excuse they could
find to destroy an educational movement which they find inimical to
their interests. And the link connecting the Jesuits of Barcelona with
Don Jaime, the son of the recently deceased Pretender, Don Carlos, was
provided by an indignant disclaimer of Carlist participation in the
affair, published by a Carlist organ edited in Paris, long before any
suggestion had been made that such participation was suspected. This was
so clearly a case of _qui s’excuse s’accuse_ that no thoughtful
observer, unbiassed by political passion, could fail to put two and two
together.
The peasants had no doubt whatever as to the origin of the disturbances.
One of them gave me his view of the situation, as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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