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Social Unrest in Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2024

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Few, least of all the Catholic, will deny that the present social system with its manifest injustice cries out urgently for radical reforms, and it is to this task that some of the best Catholic minds in Spain are now applying themselves. The main problem is to win back the masses to the Church and to convince them that a true remedy for the social ills that afflict society is to be found in the papal encyclicals, and there alone. That the task is a difficult one will be realized from an analysis of Spain’s political panorama as it affects the proletariat. At the present time liberalism, democracy, and ‘reformist’ socialism are engaged in a life and death struggle for survival. A clear-cut alignment of social forces is taking place through the gradual elimination of all intermediary or ‘compromise’ parties. The issue daily narrows itself down to the choice between ‘integral’ Marxism and one of the brands of anti-Marxist Fascism; a Soviet workers’ republic or a strong government able to alter the whole structure of the State and introduce a measure of planned economy. Social unrest is no new feature in Spanish history of the twentieth century, but never has it reached such aggravated proportions as to-day. The introduction of lay education has provided the revolutionary parties with a rich recruiting ground, a none too surprising fact if we consider that no less a person than Léon Blum, the French Socialist leader, once declared in a moment of frankness, ‘Give me the lay school, and I guarantee to provide you with a generation of revolutionaries.’

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1934 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers