Alfonso Eager, individual Unmistakable—Was Too Much of a Democrat for Spain

by Robert Sencourt
IT was some five years ago in Cairo
that I was presented to King Alfonso. What struck one at once was the alertness of his mind and his curiosity for new things. To what I said of Spain and the monarchy he answered nothing, but he showed the liveliest curiosity in all that I was attempting to do in the University of Egypt.
No one could say that he was handsome, but his face was eager, individual, unmistakable. Although it seemed something of a mask, and his eyes were lovely, his whole
bearing was easy. friendly. gracious. And he loved to let himself go.
Once, when at the religious ceremony of Maundy Thursday he symbolically washed the feet of twelve old men, a man carrying a tray of oranges slipped, and the oranges roiled along the floor. At such an interruption of his ritual, the King was charmed: his eyes smiled with delight : his body quivered with suppressed laughter. When he came to the Naval College, Dartmouth, to see his son Don Juan, he at once made friends with every officer, and was soon down on all fours in a boisterous game in the ward room. Yet he could, at a moment's call, assume his dignity, and as he entered a great assemblage, all would draw back dazzled, as it were, before something of flash and splendour that emanated from the person of the King.
RULED WITH HIGH SUCCESS Trained from his cradle to be Sovereign, and well disciplined by an admirable Austrian mother, he seized at his sixteenth birthday the reins of royal power, and ruled with high success for thirty years.
For twenty of those years he had a Parliament, but as he knew too well, no sooner was Europe made safe for demo (-racy than democracy was found to be unsafe for Europe. The cliques, the ramps, the " graft " of the parliamentary system of Spain, as in many other parts of the Continent, were after 1919 apt to paralyse administration.
In Spain the Anarchists were also busy. In 1922 they killed 500 employers in Barcelona, once as many as twenty in a single night. Drastic action was needed; and it was taken ; and it was taken by the CaptainGeneral of Barcelona; Primo de Rivera. He seized the power and proclaimed himself dictator. That the King had connived at this move no one could show; but he certainly put no obstacle in Primo's way. He knew that public opinion demanded the change, and that for some years public opinion endorsed it.
PENDULUM COUNTRY But Spain is the country of the pendulum and opinion violently oscillates. Primo made some mistakes. After 1929 he had to face the money crisis, which changed history all over Europe. And when enthusiasm ebbed away from Primo de Rivera, the support of Don Alfonso followed it. The set policy of the King was to subject principles and policy to public opinion : he had been brought up to accept democracy.
The Parliamentarians now took their revenge. He had acquiesced in their deserved eclipse; they now demanded his. Primo had died in exile, and though they brought his body back to Madrid for burial, and called him, justly, the Saviour of Spain, King Alfonso omitted to attend his funeral. It was the signal mistake of the policy that ruined him. It showed bim to be depending on parliamentarians, and they seized their advantage. Organising municipal elections for April 14, 1931, they procured in the big towns a majority of Republicans, and on the strength of this, his demanded abdication.
Don Alfonso, with a generosity and a readiness he afterwards regretted, then left Spain to save the shedding of blood. He felt sure that the country would express an opinion in his favour.
TEN YEARS TOO LATE
He was right—but Spain rectified he judgment ten years too late. Ten wretchet years succeeded, the wretchedness culmin. acing in the nightmare crimes of 1936 and leading through those to the grim ordeal of civil war. Nor did that end things. A young State Socialism, ever+ though along the Christian lines of Porta gal has followed, and when Spain rein stated Don Alfonso, he was dead.