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on royal decrees authorising the use, for a limited time, of the old budget, or on demands of credits addressed to the Council of State, which has not always a clear right to grant them. Such a situation was of course most irregular. It was complicated by grave disturbances, notably by the agitation called sindicalista in Catalonia (labour troubles, threatening a revolutionary outbreak), and by a similarly anarchical state of affairs in Andalusia and other districts.

It was in these circumstances that the question of autonomy for Catalonia arose. The claim for this was not presented to Count Romanones, but to an ephemeral Cabinet led by Señor Garcia Prieto. The Catalonian Mancomunidad (an official body created by Señor Dato) claimed home rule for Catalonia and came to Madrid to demand it, after having secured the votes of a great number of Catalonian Municipalities. Señor Puig y Cadafalch, president of the Mancomunidad, said to Señor Garcia Prieto, upon handing him the petition: If we cannot return to Barcelona with a satisfactory answer, allow us to return, at least, with some hopes.' Señor Garcia Prieto replied that he would give the matter careful attention; but no sooner had the commissioners taken the train back to Barcelona than he published the petition. This caused a tremendous sensation and alarm in all Castile. The Catalonians were openly accused of aiming at the independence of their province and its separation from Spain. Charges of treachery and hypocrisy were made against them. Garcia Prieto resigned, and scarcely had Count Romanones taken the oath at the Palace and formed his Cabinet, when a great concourse paraded the streets, shouting 'Death to Catalonia,' and heaping upon the Catalonians insults like those so lavishly bestowed on the revolted Cubans from 1895 to 1898.

The demonstrators stopped before the building of the Presidency, and a Committee delivered to Count Romanones the protests drawn up by several Chambers of Commerce and the representatives of industrial interests in the rest of Spain, with the exception of the Basque provinces, which are themselves claiming home rule. The number of demonstrators has been variously estimated at from 40,000 to 100,000; at all events the gathering was large and influential. Romanones

answered that no Spanish Government would ever allow the separation from Spain of a part of the national territory, and promised that the matter should be solved by the Cortes. The Cortes met shortly after, and the Catalonian question was immediately taken up. The Catalonian deputies, with exceptions-such as that of Señor Maciá, who openly declared himself in favour of the complete separation of Catalonia from Spain, which he stigmatised as moribund, and a few others belonging to other parties-attended, firmly united in the purpose of supporting the project of the Mancomunidad. A few days after the session began, the Catalonian leader, Señor Cambó, rose in the Chamber, and announced, to the great surprise of all, that the Catalonian deputies, seeing the hostile attitude of the assembly-which had warmly applauded a speech made by Señor Maura-were going to withdraw in a body, rather than allow a long and futile discussion to take place, with the inevitable result of the rejection of their petition. Thereupon he walked out, followed by the deputies of Catalonia and the Republicans who had joined them.

Romanones protested, and announced the Government's decision to settle the question. He appointed an 'extra-Parliamentary Commission,' including the most important politicians of all parties, Señor Maura among them, to frame a scheme of home rule for Catalonia. But the Mancomunidad was not satisfied with such a step. It declared that no Home Rule Bill for Catalonia would be accepted, if it were not drawn up by the Catalonians themselves; and it met at once to prepare another scheme, called estatuto, for submission to the Cortes. This was done. The two bills were prepared, showing, of course, important differences. That of the 'extra-Parliamentary Commission' is a fair grant of liberal institutions and rights, but of course from a Spanish point of view, and allowing for the keeping of an important part of the control of Catalonian affairs in the hands of the Central Government. The scheme of the Mancomunidad is almost the constitution of a new state, free and independent, allowing a minimum of interference by the Spanish Government in the local administration. The Catalonian deputies returned to the Cortes to defend their bill. The Government insisted upon the

primary necessity of approving the budget, and much time was lost in futile discussions; then suddenly, on Feb. 21, 1919, Count Romanones, without any previous warning, read a royal decree suspending the sessions of the Cortes sine die.

The Catalonian deputies took this decision quietly. It should be borne in mind that the political agitation in Catalonia in favour of home rule is principally inspired by a patriotic institution, the Lliga Regionalista, which includes among its members Señores Cambó, Rodés, Ventosa, most of the other Catalonian deputies, and Señor Puig y Cadafalch and the members of the Mancomunidad. The Lliga has carried on for many years, at Barcelona and throughout Catalonia, an energetic campaign for the official recognition of the Catalonian language, on the same footing as the Castilian. The Lliga, in a word, says that Catalonia is not a Spanish province, but a nation; and its active and enthusiastic propaganda is essentially national. No sooner had the Mancomunidad presented its petition to Señor Garcia Prieto, than the national character of the home rule move became evident. Catalonian flags waved over all Barcelona. The people sang everywhere, and on the slightest provocation, the hymn Els Segadors, a song which reminds the Spaniards of the terrible slaughter of Castilians made by the Catalonians on the bloody day of Corpus Christi' (el Corpus de Sangre), as they name the revolt at Barcelona which caused the war in the time of Philip IV.

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From the bad Spanish Government; from the incapacity and poverty of the Spanish state,' says Señor Rovira y Virgili in his book on El nacionalismo catalan, 'the Castilians of Castile and all other Spanish subjects suffer. But the Castilians of Castile do not suffer the imposition of another language, of other laws, of another culture, of another spirit; and this imposition, in a word, is what constitutes our national question.' The Catalonians claim that they are citizens of the ancient kingdom of Aragon, of a different race from the Castilians, with a brilliant and glorious history of their own. They feel proud of their past, of their prowess at sea, of their conquest of Majorca, of their long dominion over Sicily, of the deeds of their heroic sea-captain Roger de Lauria,

of the craft and shrewdness of their King Ferdinand praised by Machiavelli, of their wars with France and their struggles against the infidel. In spite of the fact that Dante wrote in the 13th century of l'avara povertá di Catalanni, they claim to have been in the Middle Ages as wealthy and prosperous as they are now. Spaniards elsewhere allege that, if Catalonia became independent of Spain, a prohibitive tariff imposed by the Spanish Government would be enough to ruin her, for the tariff at present protects Catalonia, and permits her to sell throughout the kingdom, without competition, her cloths and the other products of her industry. Perhaps this is true; but the Catalonians ascribe their prosperity, not to the Spanish tariff, but to their own capacity and energy, which, in spite of Spanish misgovernment, have made them rich. And in this they are right. They do not need Spain, if they can secure other markets; and the advantageous position of Barcelona on the Mediterranean should render such an expansion easy.

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'Catalonia,' says Melquiades Alvarez, a sane Spanish politician from Asturias, has a right to be autonomous, and attend to her own economic affairs, because she has suffered too much from the backward and reactionary spirit of the Spanish administration.' Alvarez does not believe that home rule would bring about the separation of Catalonia from Spain; and many other impartial Spaniards think with him. The problem, consequently, is not solved, nor are the demands of Catalonia satisfied. The settlement has been merely deferred.

While the Catalonian deputies were talking about home rule and their rights in the Cortes, and the antiCatalonian propaganda was raging furiously at Madrid, the people at Barcelona hissed and stoned a Spanish vaudeville artist, Mary-Focella, who dared to sing at a theatre there a couplet ending 'Long live Spain.' Riots and grave public disorders took place; encounters with the police resulted in several deaths and other casualties; and the Government suspended the constitutional guarantees. But, at the same time, the public troubles in Barcelona assumed another aspect, which has frightened even the Catalonian home rulers and induced them to be somewhat more prudent.

The Lliga is a political association, and its purpose is to secure for Catalonia an autonomous government with the least possible interference from Spain. But the majority of its members belong to the middle class; its directors are nearly all well-known bourgeois ; and they have impressed on the Lliga a conservative character, even a decidedly Roman Catholic one. The wealthy merchants, the owners of large Catalonian factories, the members of the liberal professions (lawyers, physicians, engineers, architects, etc.), who form the majority of the Lliga, are not the only representatives of public opinion in Catalonia. Still more numerous, and organised against them, are the working classes. Barcelona is a big industrial city; and the large majority of its labouring population is not composed of Catalonians. The rest of Spain contributes much more than Catalonia to the number of its working men; and the Galicians, Asturians, Biscayans, Andalusians, and even Castilians (without reckoning the French, Italian, Germans and Russians), outnumber the Catalonians in the factories. This was one of the things that strengthened Señor Lerroux in Barcelona when he opposed the Lliga there, and organised the Republican Radical party. But after Señor Lerroux's electoral victories over the Lliga, and notably since 1909, Barcelona gradually changed, and in a few years became, from a centre of political conspiracies, a hot-bed of revolutionary anarchism.

In 1909 took place the violent outbreak called 'the bloody week' (la semana sangrienta), because the city was in the hands of the populace for seven days. It was then that Francisco Ferrer, who propagated anarchy in Catalonia and founded La Escuela Moderna, was arrested, submitted to a court-martial, and some months later shot at the fort of Montjuich. Like all violent repressions, this caused a revival of anarchical ideas and organisations; the result being that, after many years of alarming agitations before and after 1909, the working classes, much to the prejudice of the catalanistas or partisans of the Lliga, combined to form at Barcelona a very formidable anti-bourgeois force. They are organised by trades, each one calling itself a syndicate, and having at its head a group of their leaders. All syndicates meet when necessary and follow the direction

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