Old Man's Revolution

The embers of a generation-old Spanish feud kindled again last week. Wicked darting flames of revolution spurted high at Barcelona, industrial tinder box of Catalonian unrest. Upon the city and all Spain Dictator-Premier Primo de Rivera clapped his oldfashioned, iron extinguisher of smothering censorship. With all commercial telegraph and telephone lines completely silent throughout Spain, voluminous clouds of rumor billowed with the awesome menace of uncertain portent.

At the Franco-Spanish frontier, eagerly questioned travelers from Spain declared: "Weyler is after Primo's scalp again." They meant, of course, General Don Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, Marquis of Teneriffe and Duke of Rubi. He had, it was reported, lent the weight of his notorious influence to a band of his henchmen, who counted on marching from Barcelona to Madrid and Power--even as Dictator Primo made exactly that same "march `a la Mussolini" (TIME, Sept. 24, 1923). The active leaders of the revolt were 18 generals and a round dozen of Liberal and Communist politicians. General Aguilera, onetime Minister of War, was named as field generalissimo of the movement.

Interest centred upon "Butcher" Weyler. At 87 he has outlived, but not lived down, the odium of his bloodthirsty governorship of Cuba (1896-97)--a direct and major cause of the Spanish-American War. His position among the older and potent hierarchy of Spanish officers was never successfully challenged until last fall (TIME, Oct. 19). At that time General (Dictator) Primo de Rivera, representative of the younger military clique, ousted him from the gold-braided citadel, which he occupied as Chief of Staff of the Spanish Army. Having plotted energetically for eight months, according to despatches, he established himself on the Island of Majorca (100 miles from Barcelona) and loosed his revenge from there last week through henchmen not so near to being centenarians as himself.

Obviously the peculiar organizations of the Spanish army lends itself to "old men's revolutions" of this type. For decades Spanish artillery officers have been organized in juntas (literally, "committees"; actually, glorified military trade unions); and during the World War Spanish infantry and cavalry officers similarly organized themselves. The effect has been to develop loyalty to the junta at the expense of obedience to the state, to foster intrigue among the various generals who respectively head these military cliques.

So great has their influence become that, on entering his junta, a Spanish officer ordinarily takes oath that he will obey his immediate superiors, even to the extent of refusing promotion by the military authorities at Madrid, except in the regular line of junta seniority.

To combat this vicious system, Dictator Primo de Rivera has been attempting since his triumph in capturing Ajdir, the capital of Abdel-Krim (TIME, Oct. 12, FRANCE), to institute a system of rapid promotion for meritorious young officers. Against this the "junta generals" have fought tooth and nail, which makes probable the reported participation of so many of them in the uprising of last week. The officially censored version of the revolt was that the Government's secret police discovered the plans of the conspirators some weeks ago and, accordingly, arrested some 200 suspected officers and politicians last week before their revolution had gotten fully under way. The lie seemed to be given to this statement by the fact that all normal means of communication were suspended, as though to conceal and strangle a highly menacing threat to the Spanish Government.

King Alphonso, no unskilled politican, postured that all was well by leaving Spain, as scheduled, for a visit to London. General Marquis Baron Weyler was subsequently reported arrested, hustled to Madrid, "detained" there under guard in his own sumptuous residence--built with the spoil of Cuba.