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The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote in 1921: ‘Starting with the monarchy and moving on to the Church, no national authority has thought of anything but itself. When has the heart, after all foreign, of a Spanish monarch or of the Spanish Church ever beat for ends that were deeply Spanish? As far as is known, never. They have done the exact opposite. They have ensured that their ends have been adopted as if they were in the national interest.’1 In similar vein, the poet Antonio Machado, during the Spanish Civil War, wrote to a Russian friend, the novelist, David Vigodsky: ‘The best thing in Spain is the people. That is why the selfless and heroic defence of Madrid, which has astounded the world, moves me but it does not surprise me. It has always been like that. In difficult times, the señoritos – our Boyars – invoke the fatherland and then they sell it; the people do not even mention it but they buy it back with their blood and they save it. In Spain, it is impossible to be a decent person and not love the people. For us, love of the people is a basic duty of gratitude.’2
Similar views were expressed in the nineteenth century by the English romantic travellers. The most celebrated, Richard Ford, author in 1845 of A Handbook for Travellers in Spain and one year later of Gatherings in Spain, portrayed ordinary Spaniards as generous and noble while referring constantly to bad government and misgovernment: ‘The real permanent and standing cause of Spain’s thinly peopled state, want of cultivation, and abomination of desolation, is BAD GOVERNMENT, civil and religious.’ He claimed that, at all levels of government, there were despots always open to bribes.3 Gerald Brenan agreed to a certain extent: ‘Spain has been seen as the land of paradox where a people of great independence of character allowed themselves to be governed by corrupt and arbitrary rulers.’ However, commenting on the extent to which such criticisms derived from an idealized image of Britain at the time when Ford was writing, Brenan remarked: ‘He has much to say of Spanish mismanagement and poverty, yet who would not have preferred to be a Spanish workman in those days to an English miner or mill-hand or agricultural labourer?’4