Throughout the three years that Señor Maura was at the head of affairs, Barcelona had been in a state of continual unrest and anxiety. Bomb outrages were reported every two or three weeks with monotonous regularity, but strange to say, the explosions seldom or never took place in public buildings or in places where people congregate. Now and then some inoffensive passerby was killed or wounded, and once in a way an insignificant house would be damaged more or less seriously. But the total injuries inflicted by this long series of bombs were so few that the object of their authors must have been to terrorise rather than to kill. When the King and Queen went to Barcelona in the autumn of 1908, the inevitable bomb was let off--or was reported to have been let off--on the sea shore, where no one could possibly have been hurt by it. Here, by way of parenthesis, I should like to call attention to the courage and devotion to duty shown by both the King and the Queen on this occasion. It was considered advisable by the Ultramontane Government that the young wife and mother should accompany her husband to the city which has been made to bear such an evil reputation as the home of anarchy and sedition. The nation watched the proceedings with admiration. “What courage the Queen had, to face the chance of another bomb being exploded in her presence so soon after that tragedy in Madrid!” said those who appreciated the human fear which they knew must be concealed under the smiles demanded by the exigencies of her position. Not a word of this was permitted to appear in the Press, of course. It was only the common talk of the common people. But one little paragraph slipped, through some mismanagement, into a popular paper, which revealed the Queen’s realisation of the danger she might be running. It was to the effect that “the alteration of their Majesties’ itinerary, by which they would spend two days in Madrid instead of travelling direct to Cataluña from Vienna, was dictated by the Queen’s wish to embrace her children before going to Barcelona.” The next day the paragraph was corrected by a careful explanation that the Queen had wished to see the royal children because they were suffering from childish ailments. But the people were not deceived by the second notice. They said that Doña Victoria’s conduct was worthy of a Queen of Spain. I do not believe that the people of Barcelona would hurt a hair of Queen Victoria’s head, nor that they would have raised a hand against King Alfonso had he appeared there during the riots of 1909: what advantage his secret enemies might have taken of his presence during the disturbances is another matter. And my personal belief is that the people of Barcelona were not responsible for any of the bomb outrages which have made their city a byword in Europe.