Jose Maria Salaverrίa, the well-known publicist, writing some months back in the monarchist daily A.B.C., bitterly lamented the lack of tolerance and compromise which characterized Spain’s political life. The reason, he stated, was to be sought in the age-old problem .... what must Spain do to keep up with the march of ‘progress’?.... a problem that has perplexed the greatest minds of the Peninsula and yet remains unsolved. Two solutions have been offered, one the europeizaciόn of Joaquin Costa, a renunciation of the past, a purging of all traditional elements, the double lock on the tomb of the Cid; the other the traditionalism of men like Ramiro de Maeztu whose desire was for a regeneration of his country on the old lines. Here in a nutshell is the tragedy of modern Spain, the struggle of opposites. The modernists have wished the complete elimination of traditional elements as incompatible with ‘progress,’ the traditionalists have viewed innovations with mistrust and have desired to maintain the old Spain without any concession. Other nations, confronted with the same problem, reached a solution through a process of transition, but Spain maintains partisan intransigeance to an extent unknown elsewhere, rendering political life a question of all or nothing, a violent oscillation of the pendulum from extreme to extreme. Political fanaticism of the Right or the Left is equally at fault and breeds nothing but continual alarm, violent polemic, and fruitless struggle. That ‘sweet reasonableness’ which is the essence of democracy is completely lacking.