Paul Preston

A People Betrayed


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parade passed down the Calle Mayor, Morral threw the bomb, hidden in a bouquet of flowers, at the royal carriage. The explosion killed twenty-three people and seriously wounded 108 more, but the royal couple were unhurt. Morral escaped. Later, near the village of Torrejón de Ardoz, he shot an estate guard who confronted him, and he then committed suicide. On the day of the royal wedding, Ferrer had presided over a meeting of anarchists to whom he had given money to buy arms for the hoped-for uprising. In Barcelona, he and Lerroux sat at separate tables in the same café in the Plaça de Catalunya waiting for the news that they fondly believed would be the trigger for a republican uprising. They waited in vain. Ferrer was arrested on 4 June and his property placed under embargo. The authorities had only circumstantial evidence of his involvement in the two assassination attempts. Nevertheless, his numerous influential monarchist and ecclesiastical enemies were convinced that he was responsible and they ensured that he remained in prison for a year under threat of the death sentence. Eventually, the Spanish government surrendered in the face of a huge international campaign in favour of Ferrer. Lerroux played a key role through El Progreso, which he had converted into a daily newspaper. After a four-day trial from 3 to 7 June 1907, Ferrer would be found innocent.35

      Barcelona remained the centre of terrorist activity. This was considered locally to be partly the consequence of the totally ineffective police service. The Catalan nationalist Enric Prat de la Riba wrote in December 1906: ‘The Spanish Police, like all the organs of the Spanish State, is powerless to function in areas of a high density of population. It is a primitive outfit, a useless fossil. To try to deal with the modern evil that Catalonia suffers – that is to say, anarchism – is like fighting with flint-head spears and stone axes against multitudes armed with Mausers and Krups. We cannot rely on the police because the State is incapable of organizing it any better.’ Prat’s complaint was merely one voice within an ever louder chorus of demands for the police to be restructured.39

      The subsequent career of Rull vividly illustrates the relationship between administrative corruption, political incompetence and social violence in Spain. In March 1908, awaiting trial for other subsequent crimes, Rull claimed that the years in prison had changed him, pushing him to conclude that anarchist terrorists were ‘hyenas thirsting for human blood’. Accordingly, he said, he had decided to devote his life to pursuing them. The truth was somewhat different. An acquaintance, Antoni Andrés i Roig, alias ‘Navarro’, had suggested to him that he could make money as an informer. ‘Navarro’ introduced him to the wealthy Catalan industrialist Eusebi Güell. Güell reluctantly provided the pair with a letter of introduction to the Duque de Bivona. Wearing a suit bought with money provided by Tressols, Rull, accompanied by ‘Navarro’, went to see Bivona. They told him that they knew who was responsible for the most recent bombs and would be able to predict the time and place of their next atrocity and thus allow the authorities to catch them red-handed. Bivona handed over a substantial sum of money and, until he ceased to be Civil Governor on 28 June 1906, continued to pay Rull. During that time, only one bomb went off in Barcelona; placed on a tram, it harmed nobody. The lack of incidents could not be attributed to anything that Rull might have done – other, perhaps, than refraining from planting bombs himself. Since no actual perpetrators had been apprehended, Bivona was soon complaining about the lack of results. However, he was replaced before he could put pressure on Rull, and his successor Francisco Manzano Alfaro continued to pay Rull for some months.41

      Those April 1907 elections were called by the now 54-year-old Antonio Maura after the collapse of General Azcárraga’s short-lived government. A formidable orator noted for his unflinching personal integrity, Maura had initially come to power in January with the ambition of sweeping away the corrupt electoral system of the Restoration and fostering widespread electoral participation. He planned to end political corruption by means of three laws: a law of municipal justice, an electoral law and a law of local administration. In order to have any chance of getting his projects approved, he needed a parliamentary majority. Given the challenges of the Catalans, the Socialists and the Republicans, that made him a hostage of the great electoral fixer, Juan de la Cierva, a master in the use of the methods that Maura was trying to eliminate. Thereafter, despite unflinching adulation of his boss, La Cierva would be an albatross around Maura’s neck.43 The first of Maura’s projects aimed to separate executive and judicial power and remove one of the most powerful weapons in the cacique’s armoury – the capacity to exert pressure on and even blackmail rival candidates via the ability to appoint judges and magistrates who would then pass sentences in the interests of their patrons.