Hello and welcome to the history page. This week we will begin our
exploration of the Spanish Civil War as it played itself out in the
islands of Ibiza and Formentera. In keeping with the rest of Spain, this
fratricidal conflict pitted family against family and brother against
brother in blood feuds that brought political dissention into the very
heart of home life. In the Pitiuses, this ripping apart of family bonds
was compounded and intensified by insularity of both the geographical
and the social variety. Instances of family feuds that originated during
the war and that, even today, remain unmended abound in the Pitiuses.
For reasons of tact and discretion I cannot divulge any of the specifics
regarding this phenomenon, but rather offer an informed appraisal of the
effects of war written by a young Ibicenco historian, Artur Parron i
Guasch, as an introduction to his book, La Guerra Civil a Eivissa i
Formentera:
“After sixty years, the Civil War is still one of the most feared and
misconstrued topics in contemporary Pitiusan history. The collective
historical memory has been guided along explanatory parameters that have
varied very little over the course of time. Certain beliefs regarding
the war have been highly tinged, for example, the idea that the
belligerency came from outside the island (the ‘Reds’) because here,
supposedly, we formed one big family. But the events of the Civil War
were not alien to the historical dynamics of the Pitiuses; its roots
must be sought within the social and economic development of the islands
during the 19th century and the first third of the 20th
century. (…)
(…) Repression and the militarization of civilian life became the
constants of a post-war atmosphere shrouded in anonymous accusations,
personal vendettas and generalized silence, for which reason, in many
ways the atmosphere of war extended well into the 1940s.”
The Pitiuses during the Second Republic
Before going on to discuss the actual invasion of Ibiza, first by
Republican forces in August of 1936 and then by National and Italian
forces in September of the same year, it will be helpful to get our
political bearings within the pre-war period.
With
the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931, the Pitiuses, along
with the rest of Spain, was swept up in a whirlwind of political
activism that challenged the mores of traditional society.
Interestingly, the two islands developed in completely different ways.
Ibiza, in the main, clung to the conservative mould of the old
established order, while Formentera subscribed largely to the New
Leftist ideologies. This divergence has been attributed to the modus
vivendi adopted by each island: Ibiza had been operating for centuries
under the yoke of a very old and indurate oligarchy, while Formentera,
definitively settled as recently as the 18th century,
developed along the lines of a collectively advantageous society in
which most families owned a small plot of land on which they lived and
worked.
Social Strata in Ibiza Town
Since antiquity Ibiza Town had been divided into two main quarters: Dalt
Vila, inhabited by the landlord class - old families with old money and
a vested interest in maintaining the status quo; and La Marina,
inhabited by corsairs, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists and other educated
professionals who formed the liberal vanguard. Starting in the
economically fructiferous 1920s, however, this neat categorization
ceased to apply. Folk from La Marina began increasingly to engage in -
and eventually monopolize - local commerce, shipbuilding and
warehousing, effectively overshadowing the economic clout of Dalt Vila’s
old landlord class. The Matutes family stands out as the foremost
example of the rise of capitalism in Ibiza, the equivalent of the March
family in Majorca. As is wont to happen in any newly successful social
sector, the influx of wealth shifted the political ground of La Marina,
and large contingents of its inhabitants were pulled into the
conservative camp where they rubbed shoulders with the ancient rightwing
of Dalt Vila.
As a
result, liberal tendencies in Ibiza, while marginally present during the
Second Republic, could never muster the electoral majority necessary to
obtain seats in local government. The intelligentsia and certain sectors
of the Ibicenco middle class coalesced into a number of republican
factions, while the working classes - primarily seamen, dockworkers,
stonecutters and, above all, salt workers - gravitated further left into
labour unions and socialist affiliations.
The Church in Ibiza
Also
in operation were labour unions operating under the aegis of the Church.
These syndicates, organized by the historian-priest Isidor Macabich,
found a large following within Ibiza’s rural population, always fervent
in its religiosity. Local parent-teacher associations also fell under
the umbrella of Catholic syndicates inasmuch as education, like in the
rest of Spain, fell under the auspices of the clergy. In a very real
sense, it was the peasantry’s love of Church, above and beyond any
well-defined political ideology, that accounted for Ibiza’s
predominately rightist orientation.
Readers will remember from our recent overviews that one of the most
controversial passages in the Constitution of 1931 was Article 26, which
guaranteed the separation of Church and State and stipulated that
religious orders could no longer undertake the schooling of Spain’s
youngsters. This article met with acute opposition in Ibiza, for the
Church played a leading role in both day-to-day life as well as in the
political arena. Those minority groups in Ibiza that espoused
anticlericalism became especially active during the Republic, causing
extreme social friction. One of their most scathing manifestations was a
satirical procession, known popularly as El Gato, which was held
every year on Ash Wednesday. These parades publicly parodied the foibles
of the clergy, invariably invoking the wrath of society’s right wing.
The island’s three conservative broadsheets, Diario de Ibiza,
Excélsior and La Defensa, decried the blasphemy of these
buffooneries which all too often succeeded in striking the public’s
funny bone, despite best intentions to the contrary. Another more
subversive anticlerical tactic was the occasional vandalism of Church
property, also denounced loudly by the local press.
Closing
Join
us next week as we go on to examine some of the leftist movements
exclusive to Formentera and set the stage for the outbreak of war in
1936. Until then. |