Maura, yes... or Maura, no?
We review the highlights and low points of the Mallorcan politician who was five times president of the Spanish government, coinciding with the exhibition dedicated to him by the Museum of Mallorca.
Palm"One of our greatest role models and best ambassadors, considered the greatest politician in our contemporary history and one of Spain's greatest statesmen," stated the President of the Government, Marga Prohens, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition on the island politician Antoni Maura, which can be visited until May 10 at the Museu de Mallorca. The exhibition is titled Maura, yesIn contrast to the slogan 'Maura, no' with which practically the entire ideological spectrum of his time confronted him. Maura, yes? Or Maura, no?, we ask ourselves here as we review the lights and shadows of the man who has certainly been the most prominent figure from the Islands in the politics of the State.
Antoni Maura (1853-1925) was probably neither the paragon of virtue he is now portrayed as, nor the 'Herod' or 'Torquemada' that the anarchists claim. Or, rather, he was both at once. We must place him in his context: a politics linked to what we now call lobbies and structured around clientelist groups, which were more 'Mauristas' or 'Weyleristas' – after the Mallorcan general and politician Valeriano Weyler – than liberals or conservatives. As his biographer Pere Fullana observes, his distrust of workers' demands stemmed from having personally experienced them during strikes that harmed the family business. Maura was the target of fierce criticism from all sides. Perhaps no other politician in the country has been so universally vilified, except for Pedro Sánchez in our time. His personality contributed to this: he was aware of his abilities, which made him "incorrigibly boastful," in the words of his political rival Romanones. Nor can Maura be understood without considering his family environment, his "execrable relatives," in the words of a character by Valle-Inclán. Some of his brothers and nephews were also prominent figures of the time. But it's difficult to ascertain to what extent this wasn't due to their blood ties with the national hero. Gabriel, the eldest brother, continued the family business and was an extraordinary storyteller. But at the same time, he was the one who coordinated his political network in Palma: he said it was like a business agency, with so many requests he had to pass on to him. Miguel, a priest, acted as the diocese's courier with his brother in Madrid. He wanted to make his cousin Joan Maura Bishop of Mallorca, but he refused.
The execution of Ferrer and Guardia
Maura practiced cronyism, but not as we understand it today—a brother-in-law who knows everything—but rather as a tool in public life. He entered politics through his brother-in-law Germán Gamazo, leader of the 'Gamazo faction' of the Liberals, and with him at the Treasury, he became Minister of Overseas Territories for the first time in 1893. One of Maura's brothers-in-law, Pasqual Ribot, became a member of parliament in Madrid and civil governor of Valencia and Cádiz. And it seems the tradition continued, because Gabriel, the politician's son, married the daughter of the shipowner Ramón Herrera, a prominent supporter of Maura in Cuba.
Antoni Maura was president of the state government five times. But his most stellar period was the "long government," from 1907 to 1909. It might seem strange to call a two-year government "long" now, but back then they usually lasted only a few months. Maura announced the "revolution from above": a set of 264 initiatives to modernize the state and prevent a revolution from being carried out from below by leftist forces.
It was during this period that social security was born in Spain—no, not by Franco—with the creation of the National Institute of Social Security. The Maura government also established mandatory rest on Sundays, for which he was accused of being anti-bullfighting, so that bullfights, which were common practice, could not be held on that day. Other initiatives were not so progressive: the draft law on terrorism provided for the expulsion of anarchists and the closure of their centers and newspapers.
Maura's modernization project came to nothing when his government made the colossal mistake of mobilizing reservists—those who had already completed their service—to go to Morocco, sparking the Tragic Week in Barcelona in protest, a revolt involving the burning of churches and the city's main cone. Javier Tusell, despite his admiration for Maura, acknowledges that the repression was "blind and brutal." The execution of the anarchist educator Francesc Ferrer i Guardia, after a legally dubious trial, triggered a wave of protests throughout Europe, accusing Spain of having resurrected the Inquisition. This gave rise to the "No to Maura" slogan: a unanimous rallying cry across almost the entire political spectrum, and led to his downfall.
Maura was a bundle of contradictions. At the head of that 'long government,' he wanted to dismantle the system of local political bosses, the control of votes by sinister figures who controlled entire regions. But, instead, he took advantage of "the well-fed machine of these bosses," in the words of Miquel Àngel Casasnovas, to win seats in Congress election after election. When he was Minister of the Interior—now the Ministry of the Interior—and therefore in charge of preparing the elections, four of the five deputies for Mallorca were elected—surprise, surprise!—from the ranks of Maura's party.
Maura versus Joan March
Three-quarters of this occurred with his relationship with regionalist or autonomist movements. He feared the Bases de Manresa, a proposal for Catalan autonomy from 1892, due to the potentially unfavorable consequences for the system. But when he became president in 1907, he timidly opened the door to the mancomunitas (associations of municipalities), which were not autonomous entities, but rather decentralizing ones. However, when the liberals wanted to implement them, he opposed it. Upon returning to government in 1918, however, Maura appointed the Catalan nationalist Francisco Cambó as minister. In 1921, Antoni Maura won the presidency for the last time, and Cambó served as Minister of Finance for another period. A new power broker had emerged in Mallorca: Joan March. The financier had created a petrochemical complex in Portopí, which posed competition for Manuel Salas Sureda's operation in El Molinar. And Salas was the one who financed Maura's election campaigns. Not only that: he was president of Salinera Española, where Francesc Maura, the politician's brother, was vice president. Francesc was married to Salas's sister and owned a house—of all places!—in Portopí.
Maura's government ordered the closure of March's complex, alleging non-compliance with health regulations, and this led to another web of cronyism. Joan March had the support of Palma councilors Guillem Forteza, who was the architect of the complex; Joaquín Pascual, March's brother-in-law; and Just Solà, who managed one of his properties. Meanwhile, the mayor, Bartomeu Fons, was another of Sales's brothers-in-law.
One of the last controversies in Maura's career was the construction of the colossal monument to the Sacred Heart on the Cerro dels Àngels, in Getafe (Madrid), which he himself inaugurated in 1919, and which was heavily criticized by the left, even though it had been built. It should be added that the architect was Carlos Maura Nadal. Indeed: his nephew.
Was Maura far-right? The Falangist Rafael Sánchez Mazas –yes, the same one that Javier Cercas made into a character in Soldiers of Salamis—He claimed to have been a precursor of fascism. The current far right has hailed him as nothing less than a founder. But this makes no sense. The fundamentalists, the extreme right of the time, harshly criticized him for trying to prevent Catholic votes from going to that option.
In short: one cold and one hot. Maura, yes: the capable politician, with regenerative aims and the capacity for dialogue. Maura, no: the politician who used a patronage network, who sent a Turkish chief to his death without legal guarantees and with a perhaps not always strict separation between public and private interests. The reader can choose whichever version they prefer.
As a student in Madrid, the young Maura was ridiculed by his classmates for his strong accent and the Mallorcan slang he used when speaking Castilian Spanish. This resulted in a radical conversion to Spanish nationalism and a commitment to the defense and use of Castilian Spanish, eventually leading to his appointment as director of the Royal Spanish Academy. He also established, as Prime Minister, the national holiday of October 12th, known as Columbus Day.
From his position at the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), he promoted a new edition of the dictionary, which was renamed 'of the Spanish language' and not 'of the Castilian language,' as it had been titled since 1780. Incidentally, the engraving for that volume had been done by his brother Bartomeu. He also argued that only Castilian should be the language used in education throughout the country, which provoked protests from a group of Mallorcan intellectuals, including Joan Estelrich, Salvador Galmés, and Miquel Ferrà.
For that conversion, worthy of a Saint Paul, Maura was showered with criticism: "A proud son," La Almudaina called him, "who forgets his small homeland to which he owes everything" and who "forgets or pretends to have forgotten his own mother tongue, that beloved Mallorcan language." Indeed, he switched completely to Castilian Spanish: hardly any native expression appears in his correspondence.
A large segment of Mallorcan society believed that Maura had become like Madrid. Of course, he resided in the capital: he lived on Génova Street, where the headquarters of the Spanish Conservatives are now located—it's a small world, or perhaps Madrid isn't so big after all. And they felt he didn't care about the islanders and their problems. "He only remembers Mallorca when he needs to beg for votes to get elected to parliament," claimed the Republican Union. The accusation wasn't entirely accurate, because Maura did process a good number of Mallorcan issues in Madrid, including the demolition of Palma's city walls.
He also faced a barrage of criticism from the other side. When he presented a proposal for autonomy for Cuba in 1893, while serving as Minister of Overseas Territories, "patriotic alarms" were raised, as noted during the parliamentary proceedings, and it was claimed that he was endangering the unity of Spain. Moreover, when war finally broke out—which he had tried to prevent—he was blamed for having fomented separatism: "Mothers, if you mourn the loss of your sons (...) you must attribute it exclusively to Don Antonio Maura," declared the newspaper El Día.
Information compiled from texts by Pedro Fullana Puigserver, Javier Tusell, Miguel Ángel Casasnovas, María Jesús González, Susana Sueiro Seoane, Antonio Janer Torrens, Isabel Peñarrubia y Marqués, José Manuel Cuenca, Juan Soldado, Primitivo Lahoz and Joaquín García Murcia and María Antonia.