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By Root 1113 0

that they took root and their power lasted long into the modern period. Like Russia, Spain was a cauldron in which the revolutionary element boiled against a tight lid of oppression. The Church, the landowners, the Guardia Civil, all the guardians of the State held the lid down. Although Spain had a Cortes and a façade of the democratic process, in reality the working class did not have open to it the legal means for reform and change which existed in France and England. Consequently, the appeal of Anarchism and its explosive methods was stronger. But unlike “pure” Anarchism, the Spanish form was collectivist because it had to be. Oppression was too heavy to allow hopes of individual action.

In January, 1892, occurred an outburst which, like the May Day affair at Clichy, was to inaugurate a terrible cycle of deed, retaliation and revenge. Agrarian revolt was endemic in the south where the immense latifundia of absentee landlords were farmed by peasants who worked all day for the price of a loaf of bread. Four hundred of them now rose in revolt, and armed with pitchforks, scythes and what firearms they could lay hold of, marched on the village of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia. Their object was the rescue of five comrades sentenced to life imprisonment in chains for complicity in a labour affair ten years earlier. The rising was promptly suppressed by the military and four of the leaders garroted, a Spanish form of execution in which the victim is tied with his back to a post and strangled with a scarf which the executioner twists from behind by means of a wooden handle. Zarzuela, one of the condemned, died calling upon the people to “avenge us.”

A bulwark of the Spanish government was General Martínez de Campos, whose strong arm had restored the monarchy in 1874. After this he had defeated the Carlists, suppressed an early Cuban insurrection, and served as Premier and Minister of War. On September 24, 1893, he was reviewing a parade of troops in Barcelona. From the front row of the crowds an Anarchist named Pallas, who had been with Malatesta in the Argentine, threw first one bomb and then a second, killing the General’s horse, one soldier and five bystanders, but erratically leaving its intended victim, who was thrown under the body of his horse, only bruised. Pallas, as he confessed with pride, had planned to kill the General and “his whole staff.” When condemned to death by court-martial he cried, “Agreed! There are thousands to continue the work.” He was allowed to take farewell of his children but, for some barbaric reason, not of his wife and mother. Sentenced to be shot with his back to a firing squad, another Spanish variant of usual custom, he repeated the cry of Andalusia, “Vengeance will be terrible!”

It came within weeks, again in the Catalan capital, and in the number of its dead was the most lethal of all the Anarchist assaults. November 8, 1893, almost coinciding with the Haymarket anniversary, was opening night of the opera season at the Teatro Lyceo and the audience in glittering evening dress was listening to William Tell. In the midst of this drama of defiance to tyrants, two bombs were thrown down from the balcony. One exploded, killing fifteen persons outright, and the other lay unexploded, threatening to burst at any moment. It caused a pandemonium of “terror and dismay,” shrieks and curses and a wild rush for the exits in which people “fought like wild beasts to escape, respecting neither age nor sex.” Afterwards, as the wounded were carried out, their splendid dresses torn, blood streaming over their starched white shirt fronts, crowds gathered outside “cursing both Anarchists and police,” according to a reporter. Seven more died of their wounds, giving a total of twenty-two dead and fifty wounded.

The answer of the government was as fierce. Police raided every known club or home or meeting place of social discontent. Hundreds, even thousands, were arrested and thrown into the dungeons of Montjuich, the prison fortress seven hundred feet above the sea, whose guns dominate the harbor and city