Dan Snow's History Hit - Division. Corruption. Incompetence: A History of Spain

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

Professor Paul Preston doesn’t pull his punches. His magisterial new history of modern Spain is called 'A People Betrayed'. He is the greatest living authority on Spain and he is not a fan of how that country had been governed. In this podcast he tells me a sorry story of corruption, war and brutality. And that's before the 20th Century even kicks off. This podcast, unusually, made me feel profoundly sad. For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, including our new in depth documentary about the bombing war featuring James Holland and other historians, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV Use code 'pod1' for a month free and the first month for just £/€/$1

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hits. This is a pretty depressing podcast to be honest with you, and I wasn't expecting it to be. We've had a lot of Holocaust pods on me recently, we've had strategic bombing, I mean I thought I'd heard it all. But this one just got me. Professor Paul Preston at the LSE in London is the world's leading expert on modern Spanish history. And he's not exactly a cheerleader for how things were done in Spain. He talks about corruption, betrayal, incompetence and division. And that's before we even get to the more infamous episodes of Spanish history, like the Civil War in the 1930s. The picture he paints of Spain,

really since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, is pretty depressing. And I doubt it was a picnic in the 18th century, to be honest. Paul's extraordinary knowledge, forensic knowledge of Spanish history was a pleasure to behold and to learn from. But I must say the whole podcast left me feeling pretty depressed about Spain and about humans generally. Anyway, if you want to listen to other podcasts,

some of which are more cheerful, you can listen to our entire archive of past podcasts exclusively at historyhit.tv. It's our subscription service. It'd be fantastic to have you as a subscriber. If you want to listen to lots of podcasts, if you want to watch hundreds of documentaries, please head over there.

Use the code POD1, P-O- pod1 pod1 for a month free and then your first month after that for just one pound euro or dollar it'd be fantastic to have your subscriber thank you very much indeed enjoy professor paul preston paul we think so much about spain as a hegemonic power in the first great global power. In the 18th century, it's terrible problems with its competitors, imperial candidates, it's Nadir and Napoleon. Where was Spain by the mid to late 19th century? What was going on?

Well, in the immortal words of Lord Salisbury, it was a dying nation. He made this famous speech in the 1890s about how the dying nations will soon be encroached upon by the living nations. the disintegration of the colonial empire, is something that explains so much of 20th century Spain, just as it explains so much about Britain today. Why did the stripping away, the independence of Spain's empire in the early 19th century have such an impact on Spain's metropolitan core,

whereas, well, I won't compare it to Britain the 20th century but yeah so why did it have such an impact well I think Spain as imperial powers go was especially parasitical and so the and I mean Spain itself internally was unbelievably uneven, unequal, and so on. And so the lack of those external funds to keep it going was especially disastrous. I mean, one of the consequences of the nature of Spanish imperialism was that there hadn't been a proper industrial revolution. Spain didn't really have its own economic dynamism if you like you know it had a rickety agriculture and hardly anything in the way of industry so the loss of empire was catastrophic

and is that just because of the giant transfer of gold precious metals and objects from the rest of the world yes just kept the spanish economy going yes so you don't have the you don't have the george stevenson's working away in the north of england. Yes. Just kept the Spanish economy going. Yes. So you don't have the George Stephensons working away in the north of England, you know, like in Spain, inventing stuff. No, one of the problems was that even the people who might have been the energetic ones who might have created a modern economy were attracted by the prestige

that land created. So any time money was made, it went into land. But land was used for prestige rather than for production. And it strikes me with 19th century Spanish history, there was this very unanswered question, wasn't there, between this sort of the bonapartist and the reactionary elements within Spanish society? And does that continue through the century? I think it continues up to the present day, to be honest.

I mean, one of the issues now, one of the themes of the book is that the corruption of the ruling classes basically posed a conundrum for the rest of the population. You can either accept this, in other words, apathy, or you can rebel against it, violence. And so electoral corruption led to that sort of contradiction between the two things. It was the fundamental source of social division. I mean, I'd almost say that the book poses a mathematical formula. Corruption plus political incompetence equals violent social division.

Why were they more corrupt than, say, the Prussian aristocracy, the British aristocracy? I think it's almost impossible to make comparisons. I mean, this is a question I get asked by Spanish journalists all the time. You know, why are Spaniards so corrupt? Well, are they? You know, I think it's much more to do with human greed and so on. more to do with human greed and so on. The book starts with a sort of reference to the two great Spanish picaresque novels, but there's a whole tradition of French picaresque novels.

We've got to buy a Smollett, there are great British or English picaresque novels. So that kind of corruption, which is one of the kinds of corruption dealt with in the book, is fairly common. And I would say probably that, you know, if you like, once put into novels becomes quite amusing. That amusing picaresque corruption really comes out of poverty. But then there are other, you know,

then there's the electoral corruption that is at its apogee in the last, basically the last third of the 19th century, is about keeping the rich in power. I mean, that's a different kind of corruption. Then we have institutional corruption of one kind or another. And the two most extreme cases that I deal with are the dictatorships of Prima Rivera and Franco and there the corruption is just it's so grotesque that at times it's almost funny I mean what I think stops the book from being a as much of a slog as it might have been is that there are some almost hysterical anecdotes about the things that

people got away with and then we get to the the current situation where there is you know the corruption that has bedeviled spain over the last 20 years is again it's it's partly permitted by legislation mistaken legislation over things like you like how you rezone land. And that opened the way to massive corruption. There's another reason, which is the legal restraints on electoral funding, funding electorally political parties, opened the way or or tempt it you know in order to do it the the the the party funders went down the corruption road and along the way realized there was so much money to be made that you know several millions went into their own pockets

now whether that you know that particular story of different kinds of corruption i think you could apply to italy you could apply to greece i think there's corruption in this country but it's very different it's if you like it's much more legally armor-plated in spain it's much there's a wonderful word in spanish cutre, which means kind of sleazy. And corruption in Spain is much more about, you know, nudge nudge as an envelope. There's these stories in the book about when the police finally get onto a case and they go and they search. And there are piles of black rubbish bags stuffed with cash. Now, without naming names, I doubt whether our prime suspects in this country

keep the money in that way. I think it's much more cleverly done in this country. But the idea that somehow Spaniards are especially corrupt, I think, is nonsense. Spain has had an especially turbulent 150 years. Indeed. So how do you identify, what is the cause of that political turbulence, the violence?

Well, if we go back to what i said earlier you know in in the last third of the 19th century and indeed really until 1917 which of course interesting date for many reasons you've got an electoral corruption which keeps a corrupt elite in power so that you've it's like a pressure cooker you know all kinds of social aspirations are kept down and it's it's it's bubbling up in one way or another and every time there is an attempt at reform in in which you know reforming members of the middle classes try to do something about the inequalities of society, that is crushed, and there are various moments in which it's crushed. And one of the first biggies is 1917,

where, of course, the contemporaneity with what's going on in Russia is important. It increases the fear you know and so what we get again is a kind of alliance of the army which is the army for a variety of reasons i mean it's a whole a whole long story in a very long book um has become the servant has become the praetorian guard of the landowning class and that the political elite is largely the representative of different factions of the landowning class so reform is blocked in 1917 it builds up again over the following years and is crushed with the um the dictatorship of general

prima de rivera in 1923 which calms things down for a while, but it is a regime, and actually I think this is one of the most original parts of the book, the scale of corruption, and it's wild. I mean, it came as a surprise to me because almost none of the books that you read, either about Spain in general or about that dictatorship stresses the level of corruption. It's something I did a lot of research on. And it's why that dictatorship fell, which opened the way to a republic.

Unfortunately, the republic tried to do too many things too quickly, which led, of course, to the military uprising and the civil war and so on. And General Franco. And General Franco. We all know recently we've been talking a lot about Spain's geography, the political geography of Spain, different nationalities, different people. different nationalities, different people. Has that been something that has hindered the kind of middle class sort of bourgeois coalition that you might see in France and Britain that has agitated for sort of better government,

more sort of bourgeois governments? Yes, I think it has. I mean, obviously the two most obvious nationalities within Spain that would be relevant for a discussion about this are the Basques and the Catalans. And they are, of course, the Basque country and Catalonia, the two most industrially advanced areas. And in the earlier period that we've been talking about, up to 1917,

And in the earlier period that we've been talking about, up to 1917, their attempts to, the Basque bourgeoisie and the Catalan bourgeoisie, their attempts to have a somewhat more open society. I'm not trying to imply that they were revolutionaries, but they could see why a more democratic polity would be in their interests. They effectively were, if you like, they were then on the front line of working class agitation and so in panic turned to the army and the landed classes to protect them. So that's the first problem. But there is a further problem that Madrid and the landowning elite of all over Spain, apart from the Basque country and Catalonia, has tended to be deeply reactionary. in a way that really builds up and gets worse and worse over the 20th century, used anti-Basque sentiment, anti-Catalan sentiment,

I mean, centralist propaganda, in a way to try to build up popular support against those regions. And that is one of the, you know, it's the worst problem facing Spain today the present government of Pedro Sanchez and the socialist coalition if they can't find a way of if you like resolving this very large poison chalice

that's been built up over well really throughout the 20th century but specifically over the last 15 20 years then they're doomed and spain is in a way why are you mentioned how reactionary the ruling class are is that is that to do with memories of a of a glorious imperial past or... cover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's

Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. That's a really difficult question because obviously the mass of the population had very little memory of imperial glories. Spain had very, very high levels of illiteracy, so it wasn't like, you know, the only media, certainly until the 1920s and really the 30s, was print media. People weren't, you know, weren't reading it so there wasn't so much of a sense at a popular level

of Spain's imperial glory that's one of the things one notices that the rhetoric of the ruling classes is all about Spain in a way that you don't find here you don't find that same rhetoric about the empire in a way that you don't find here, you know, that you don't find that same rhetoric about, if you like, the empire, the sense of superiority is implicit.

It's not as explicit as it is in Spain, which is incredibly explicit all of the time. But it is limited to a tiny group, particularly the army, that feels that it, the army, is the safeguard or the guardian of Spain, of this notion of Spain, and therefore they have a right to dictate everything about the national polity. Do they still have that role in Spain today? It has changed enormously since the military reforms of 1984 when Spain joined NATO and so on. That's made a huge difference. But it is astonishing that still there are generals who come out to praise the Franco regime and to praise General Franco as a national saviour and so on. Whether, as some people fear,

the centralism of the more right-wing elements of the military hierarchy would ever be tempted into taking military action against Catalonia. Personally, I doubt that very much. But then, you you know predictions never been I've enough trouble trying to sort out the past without getting into prediction. Well let's talk about the Spanish Civil War because it was such an

important war both in Spain and internationally. The Republic as you mentioned was simply pursuing policies that that was a existential threat to the existing power structures with it yes i mean the the first government of the the so-called reformist biennio the first two years 31 to 33 was a coalition of republicans and socialists now we have a real problem here in terms of nomenclature. So if I can permit myself a long interruption. Okay. First of all, Spanish Republicans have got nothing to do with American Republicans. There's no, you know.

Republican in Spanish simply means not monarchist. Okay. So that's the first thing. But there is also a problem everybody who is not monarchist is a republican with a with a small you know with a with a lowercase r republicans with a capital you know with a with an uppercase r are basically liberals they're middle-class liberals and it then gets very problematic because during the civil war we talked about the Francoist side and the Republican side and there are people on the Republican side who hate the Republic the

anarchists you know they're almost as much the enemies of the Republic as as Francoist so having confused everybody with that little interruption let's get back to 1931 we have a coalition of Republican the so-called Republican Socialist Coalition now 1931 we have a coalition of republican the so-called republican socialist coalition now what that means is a coalition of the socialist party and middle-class republicans and they both have different agendas but huge agendas so basically the socialists want agrarian reform and if you like social welfare reform they want to legalize trade unions they want to do all the things you'd expect a labour party to do the republicans on the other hand want more political reform they want to put an end to what they see as the real blights on spanish society they want to put an end to what they see as the real blights on Spanish society.

They want to put an end to the power of the army. In other words, they want to put an end to militarism. They also want to break the power of the Catholic Church. All of these are fairly laudable intentions, but put together, what you have is the socialist, if you like, challenge, What you have is the socialists, if you like, challenge the landed oligarchy, the industrial oligarchy and the banking oligarchy, while the Republicans challenge the two institutions that best protect those. So there's the Praetorian Guard, the army, and there's the institution that moulds hearts and minds, the Catholic Church. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. It's extremely problematic. Now, having said that, long before any of this gets going,

the Republic is founded on the 14th of April, 1931. And by the afternoon of the 14th of April, the plotters who will eventually plot the uprising of the 18th of July 1936 are already at it, talking about, you know, fundraising for a military uprising. So even if they hadn't gone after everyone, it was still just... It was going to be very difficult. Now, and then into that rather combustible or poisonous situation, we now have to introduce political incompetence. So one of the villains of the book is actually the leader of the Socialist Party, Francisco Larro Caballero, who, to all intents, I mean, could not have made more mistakes. who, to all intents, I mean, could not have made more mistakes.

So in order to have any chance of that coalition and its combination of ambitions having any success, they needed to stay in power. Because the right was very successful at undermining reform, Lara Caballero decided this was the fault of the Republicans not being left wing enough and therefore refused to go into coalition with them at the next elections. So

you know one thinks Joe Swinson, Jeremy Corbyn, you know it's and I always think my wife will kill me for saying this you know that Lara Caballero was the Jeremy corbyn of his time or vice versa anyway so that's his first huge mistake which basically allows the right in

and for the next two years the so-called black two years all of the reforms that the republican socialist coalition has managed are brutally dismantled and then again you know a very complicated story i don't want to bore your readers more or your listeners more than i already am doing but we get to the famous popular front elections of 1936 which by now the repression after the asturian uprising of October 1934 has led to everybody on the left realising that the coalition's the only answer. They come back together, they win the election, and Alarro Caballero makes his next mega howler,

which is, he says, we don't want to be in power with the Republicans, so they can go into power. They can go as far as they can with their agenda. And then we will have a totally socialist government with a totally socialist agenda. And when reporters and other people said, well, you know, isn't this going to provoke a fascist uprising? To which he replied, and, you know, and it will be provoke a fascist uprising to which he replied and you know and it will be welcome and we will crush it we then without ever getting to the stage of the republican you know there was still the republicans were still in power when uh the the military uprising

took place and again in september 1936 lara caballero has decided they need a widely recognized working class leader to to unite the forces of the left comes in and makes certain decrees you know no one will wake me before eight o'clock in the morning you know a great way to run a war no matter what the emergency you know i mean it's well it's all in the book but you know politic this is where political incompetence plays its role now there are many many reasons why the spanish republic lost um you know the civil war many of them to be found in whitehall but you know there are internal reasons as well. What's the scale of the Civil War?

Because it seems to me there hasn't been a reckoning in Spain with the true casualties and scale of the violence. Oh, I think in terms of numbers, we know enough. What hasn't happened is there hasn't been anything in the way of in truth and reconciliation commission so on so basically in terms of figures probably in the actual in the actual fight in battlefield casualties you're looking at maybe 300 000 In terms of innocent civilians murdered behind the lines, in the Francoist zone, we're talking at least 150,000. I mean, I can go into details about these figures that arrived at, but possibly nearer 200,000. And in the Republican zone, we know within 100, one way or the other, that it was 50,000. Now, that's still a horrendous figure, but basically we know that, quantitatively,

the number of civilians murdered by the Francoists was three times the number of civilians murdered in the Republican zone. I stress that because it's often said oh by the republicans which implies it was by the government whereas and this is where we come to the qualitative difference which is that in franco's own it was a deliberate instrument of policy whereas in the republican zone this is why the numbers although horrendous are lower the republican authorities were trying to stop it you know It was carried out by uncontrolled common criminals, anarchists, extreme elements of the Communist Party, and so on and so forth. memory and why it's still an issue today the Francoist regime immediately organized a kind of state investigation which of course encouraged denunciations and so on and it came up with a figure of 84,000 this put Franco in a difficult position since he'd already announced it was 400,000.

And in fact, subsequent research after he died showed that that 84,000 has huge numbers of duplications and mistakes and so on. And it is now accepted that it's 50,000. It's either 49,900 or 50,100. You know, it's that sort of figure. of 50,100, you know, it's that sort of figure. But the point is that under the Franco regime, people were able to, you know, the victims or the victims' families were able to mourn their dead, they were commemorated, their names are engraved on the sides of churches and cathedrals and so on and so forth.

Whereas the Republicans were never able to do that to this day. I mean, in some places they're able to, but there are parts of Spain where that has been absolutely impossible. And one of the reasons why I said there's a slight doubt as to whether the number of those killed in the Francois zone is 150,000 or 200,000, is that there are regions of Spain that have been under the control of the Partido Popular where it's been impossible for the research to be done to this day. So it still casts a long shadow.

Very much so. I mean, I can remember being interviewed by journalists 20 years ago and blithely saying oh yes you know it's only a matter of time time will heal all and i'm sure you know that people have other things on their minds you know they need to get the kids to school they need to put food on the table at the end of the month there's no way this could continue with the same intensity now it hasn't continued with the same intensity that that i would say in my own defense but it's still much much worse than i could ever have anticipated and the kind of hoo-ha that there's been because of the move to you know to exhume of Franco. And now one of the other great villains, General Capo

de Llano, whose body murdered 12,500 people in Seville alone, and his body had its own little basilica in the cathedral. Now he's being exhumed, but only to be moved a bit further back in the cathedral. Now he's being exhumed, but only to be moved a bit further back in the cathedral. So when these things happen, or when there's an issue over what to do about street names and so on, it all tends to flare up.

And there's no national anthem? No. That's not a good example. Thank you very much indeed, Paul Preston. The book is A People Betrayed. It's a monster. Thank you. In a good way.

Thank you. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart,

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