A friend who I hold in high esteem has sent me a text from the work The Spanish Labyrinth by the historian GERALD BRENAN, a great lover of Spain, born in Malta and deceased in a charming town that I have very close Alhaurin el Grande“Although the Spanish they are SUPERFICIALLY RECEPTIVE TO IDEAS COMING FROM THE OUTSIDE, DEEPLY they are VERY ATTACHED TO THEIR CLAN LIFEWAYS By the beginning of the 20th century, RELIGIOUS FAITH HAD DECLINED THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.
First came the middle class, which was followed by the proletariat; but religion had meant so much to the needy that they needed something to fill the void it left. And this something could only be the political doctrines —ANARCHISM OR SOCIALISM — that were awaiting them.
The poor classes ASSIGNED, then, to those doctrines with the same spirit, WITH THE SAME RELIGIOUS FERVOR AND THE SAME SIMPLICITY WITH WHICH IN PAST TIMES THEY HAD ACCEPTED CATHOLICISM…When they envied the rich (and SPANISH ARE A VERY ENVYOUS PEOPLE), this meant almost as much the desire to lower them as to elevate themselves to them. I believe that, UNDER THE FOOLISHNESS AND FRENZY OF SPANISH POLITICS, THERE IS a firm attitude.
Let us look, for example, at two typical products of the country: anarchism and Carlism. As political systems, none of them can be seriously considered: one tries to realize a dream of the remote future, another to resurrect an idealized past. But, as critics of society, both channel A DEEPLY ROOTED FEELING among the Spanish. This feeling could be described as a HATRED OF POLITICAL FARCES, a LONGING FOR a richer and deeper SOCIAL LIFE, an ACCEPTANCE OF A LOW MATERIAL STANDARD OF LIVING AND a BELIEF that the ideal of human dignity and brotherhood can never be achieved.
it can be achieved by political means only, but must be sought in a moral reform (mandatory, of course) of society. This is what might be called the characteristic Spanish attitude. CONTRARY TO THE LIBERAL DOCTRINE, which separates the Church from the State and society from the government, points to an integration of political life with social life. But this is not totalitarianism. Far from affirming the moral supremacy of the State, it upholds the Christian view that every human being, whatever his ability and intelligence, is an end in himself, and that the State exists solely to serve those ends. And there is still more.
The long and bitter experience that the Spanish have of the functioning of the bureaucracy has led them to underline the superiority of society over government, of custom over law, of the judgment of neighbors over legal forms of justice, and to insist on the need for an internal faith or ideology, the only way for men to act as they should, in mutual harmony, without the need to force them to do so. If this RELIGIOUS IDEAL has taken root in Spain more deeply than in other European countries, IT IS DUE in large part to the influence of MUSLIM IDEAS on a Christian society.
THE DEEPEST LAYERS OF SPANISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND FEELING ARE EASTERN “Upon reading it I found myself, sadly, far removed from the sentiment it reflects. I think that society is blurring somewhat, sheepish by the false illusion of comfort.
I already saw, in my adolescence, how my generation distanced itself from the previous ones guided by a feeling of disbelief regarding the political ideals that had accompanied my older brothers and friends, giving priority to the individual over society, which I think has evolved into a sense of acquired rights that need a government to satisfy them.