Morral affair
The Morral affair was the attempted
The affair became a pretext to stop
Background
After a falling-out over politics, Mateo Morral's father gave his son a monetary parting gift, which he took to Barcelona in 1905. Morral's father was a textiles industrialist in the town of Sabadell, and Morral had traveled widely for his father's company, in addition to his prior studies abroad. He broke with his father over his support of a radicalized group of freethinkers, republicans, and freemasons—the Librepensadores. In Barcelona, Morral grew close to the anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer,[1] whom he had befriended two years earlier.[2] Morral was captivated with Ferrer's Escuela Moderna,[1] a school for rationalist workers' education, and offered the project 10,000 pesetas. Ferrer, in his telling of the story, declined and instead offered Morral a job in the school's library.[3]
An unrequited love interest and a desire for infamy spurred the attempted regicide. While working at Ferrer's school, Morral became infatuated with the director of elementary studies, Soledad Villafranca, but she did not return his private admission of love. Shortly afterwards, on May 20, 1906, he told Ferrer that he would be traveling to recuperate from illness. He went to Madrid, where he walked the streets, attended tertulia roundtables, and sent postcards to Villafranca professing his undying love and his feelings of alienation. Villafranca resided with Ferrer and they were likely lovers, though it is possible that this uncertainty was just as opaque to Morral.[3]
One week before the regicide attempt, a watchman at Parque del Buen Retiro found threats against the king carved into a tree's trunk, which he later attributed to Morral.[4]
Morral used his real name to check into a pension on Calle Mayor, 88. He paid in advance and requested a room facing the street and a daily bouquet of flowers. On the day of the regicide attempt, he requested sodium bicarbonate from the pension's attendant to treat a stomach problem and requested privacy.[3]
Assassination attempt
On May 31, 1906, Mateu Morral threw a bomb at
The fugitive Morral absconded to Malasaña[10] in the ensuing chaos and sought help from the republican journalist José Nakens.[9] Nakens was a vocal opponent of anarchism, but his anticlerical leadership attracted such radicals.[1] Historians have disagreed as to whether Morral's choice of approaching Nakens was premeditated,[10] but Morral was likely introduced to Nakens through Ferrer's school, which purchased the journalist's anticlerical writings.[11] Morral introduced himself as the assassin upon entering Nakens' printing shop and recounted how Nakens had previously helped Michele Angiolillo, the Italian anarchist who had assassinated the Prime Minister of Spain in 1897. Nakens was hesitant but agreed to help. He hid Morral at the press while arranging lodging for Morral, and returned 90 minutes later to transport him to a friend's house for the night. But Morral grew distrustful during the night and was gone by morning.[10]
Morral was discovered at a Madrid railroad station two days after the attack, whereupon he shot a police officer and killed himself.[2] He had first arrived in Torrejón de Ardoz for food and shelter. Morral was out of place, with his Catalan accent, handsome face, and dirty clothes, by means of which the locals quickly recognized him. In lieu of a direct confrontation, they sent someone to notify Madrid of their suspicions. On the second day, village militiamen attempted to detain Morral, who countered by using his revolver to fire two fatal shots: one villager in the face and himself in the chest. Morral's body was returned to Madrid, where it was identified.[10]
Aftermath
Ferrer
Between his 1901 return from Parisian exile and the 1906 attempted regicide, the outsize influence and rapidity of the rise of anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer worried Spanish authorities, who moved quickly to repress him.[13] Ferrer's school threatened many Spanish social foundations with its antimilitary, antireligious, antigovernmental curriculum and other subversive activities.[14] The conservative government and Catholic church each regarded the school as a hotbed for insurrectionary violence and heretical blasphemy, respectively. Ferrer was subject to police surveillance and harassment at home and denigrated in the press.[6]
Authorities used the 1906 regicide attempt as a pretext to stop Ferrer. He was arrested within a week of the attack and charged with both its organization and recruiting of Morral. Ferrer was imprisoned for a year while prosecutors pursued evidence for his trial.
Prosecutors had no easy case against Ferrer. In casting him as the bombing's mastermind, they relied on his ties to anarchism and revolutionary propaganda and proposed that Ferrer both fostered Morral's insurrectionism and suggested that Morral approach Nakens based on Ferrer's high regard for the journalist's works. However, in correspondence between the pedagogue and the anti-anarchist journalist just days before the bombing, the latter declined an offer from the former to write books for his school—while the two were cordial, Nakens regarded himself as an outspoken enemy of anarchism. In reply, Ferrer insisted that Nakens keep the money, perhaps intended as a bribe. The court was not convinced of conspiracy by this evidence.[11]
For his part, Ferrer proclaimed his innocence.
International pressure also played a major role in his release. Anarchists and rationalists likened his treatment to another Spanish Inquisition.[2] While Ferrer was jailed, the republican Alejandro Lerroux oversaw the estate and with the funds started periodicals dedicated to Ferrer and Nakens' release.[4] But while Emma Goldman proclaimed that Ferrer was known for his aversion to political violence,[2] the historian Paul Avrich has countered that Ferrer was a militant anarchist, proponent of direct action, and cognizant of the political importance of violence.[16]
Historians have disagreed on Ferrer's role in the regicide attempt. The
Ferrer's school was a casualty of the Morral affair, closed by the government within weeks of his arrest. Multiple conservative deputies of the Spanish parliament additionally petitioned to close all secular schools but were denied.[2]
Despite Ferrer's acquittal, the police continued to believe he was guilty.
Nakens
On the day of Morral's death, the republican journalist José Nakens had published a denunciation of the regicide attempt and terrorism writ large in his journal, El Motín, without mentioning Morral or Nakens' own harboring of the fugitive.[22] He was arrested within the week and the next day published a full accounting of his actions in two newspapers, in which he reaffirmed his opposition to anarchism, described Morral's attack as cowardly, and recanted his brief support of Morral as misguided but driven by his desire to help his fellow man.[23]
The judgment in Nakens' case came easily. While the court believed that Nakens had no prior connection with Morral, they found that his planning for Morral was more deliberate than a brief lapse of judgment. They argued that this aid led to the Torrejón villager's murder, and for this aid, sentenced Nakens to nine years of prison and financial restitution for the Royals, the military, and families affected by the bombing.[23] Nakens' friends Bernardo Mata and Isidro Ibarra were jailed as well.[24] Only half of the prison time between their June 1906 arrest and June 1907 sentencing was commuted.[24]
In Madrid's Cárcel Modelo prison, Nakens became an advocate for prison reform as a campaign mounted for his pardon. His advocacy for more humane prison conditions, through regular reports in a republican daily newspaper, improved his standing with those previously upset by his harboring of Morral.[24] Following a multifaceted campaign of letters, press, and testimony from prison officials, Nakens and his friends were pardoned in May 1908.[25]
Others
On the afternoon of the attack, both Ferrer and the republican partisan Alejandro Lerroux awaited news from Madrid while seated at separate tables in the same Barcelona café. But while Lerroux too denied involvement in and knowledge of the plot, he sat at the café having followers ready to storm the
Legacy
Episodes such as the Morral affair showcased Spanish republican ability to galvanize popular support through political drama in an age of lethargy towards formal politics.[1]
It also spotlighted Spanish republican fissures that would become an identity crisis,
In hindsight, historian Enrique Sanabria proposes Nakens as a tragic parable: that Nakens' decision to hide Morral reflected a willingness to work with revolutionaries that, when pronounced, would ostracize him from his more moderate republican colleagues.[27] Nakens was shortsighted to believe that his messages of egalitarianism, democracy, and cultural revolution would not appeal to the leftists he sought to avoid,[28] and his popularity within anarchist and radical circles reflected anticlericalism's status as a uniting force across the left. But whereas anticlericalism was attached to nationalism for republicans like Nakens, it was not necessarily attached for anarchists and socialists.[29] Nakens "became political roadkill" in the aftermath of the affair for his inability to draw an audience of workers while tolerating their revolutionary politics.[30]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Sanabria 2009, p. 102.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Avrich 1980, p. 28.
- ^ a b c d e Sanabria 2009, p. 103.
- ^ a b c d Sanabria 2009, p. 106.
- ^ Avrich 1980, pp. 27–28.
- ^ a b Avrich 1980, p. 27.
- ^ A year to the date prior, May 31, 1905, there had been a similar attempt on Alfonso XIII's life. That night, attackers threw two bombs were thrown at his carriage, which was returning from a night at the opera. Only one bomb exploded, injuring not the king but 17 bystanders and nearby vehicles.[6]
- ^ a b c Sanabria 2009, p. 104.
- ^ a b c Sanabria 2009, p. 101.
- ^ a b c d Sanabria 2009, p. 105.
- ^ a b Sanabria 2009, p. 108.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, pp. 104–105.
- ^ Avrich 1980, p. 26.
- ^ Avrich 1980, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, pp. 108–109.
- ^ a b Avrich 1980, p. 29.
- ^ Avrich 1980, pp. 28–29.
- ^ Avrich 1980, pp. 29–31.
- ^ Avrich 1980, p. 31.
- ^
- Holguin, Sandie Eleanor (2002). Creating Spaniards: Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-299-17634-1. Retrieved November 9, 2018.
- Avrich 1980, p. 32
- Cooke, Bill (June 28, 2010). A Rebel to His Last Breath: Joseph Mccabe and Rationalism. Prometheus Books. p. 217. ISBN 978-1-61592-749-4. Retrieved November 9, 2018.
- Hughes, Robert (2011). Barcelona. Knopf Doubleday. p. 523. ISBN 978-0-307-76461-4. Retrieved November 9, 2018.
- ISBN 84-306-0449-9.
- Holguin, Sandie Eleanor (2002). Creating Spaniards: Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 29.
- ^ Avrich 1980, p. 32.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, pp. 106–107.
- ^ a b Sanabria 2009, p. 107.
- ^ a b c Sanabria 2009, p. 109.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, p. 110.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, p. 121.
- ^ a b c Sanabria 2009, p. 122.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, p. 120.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, pp. 110, 115, 120.
- ^ Sanabria 2009, p. 119.
Bibliography
- OCLC 489692159. Retrieved April 17, 2018.
- Sanabria, Enrique A. (2009). "Republicanism, Anarchism, Anticlericalism, and the Attempted Regicide of 1906". Republicanism and Anticlerical Nationalism in Spain. New York: ISBN 978-0-230-61331-7.
Further reading
- Berzal, Enrique (June 2, 2020). "1906: atentado anarquista contra Alfonso XIII". El Norte de Castilla (in Spanish). Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved January 30, 2021.
- Hijos de J. Espasa (1918). "Mateo Morral". Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana (in Spanish). Vol. 36. Barcelona. p. 1161. Archived from the original on November 4, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
{{cite encyclopedia}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Jensen, Richard Bach (2014). "Multilateral anti-anarchist efforts after 1904". The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878–1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 295–340. ISBN 978-1-107-03405-1.
- Masjuan, Eduard (2009). Un héroe trágico del anarquismo español: Mateo Morral, 1879–1906 (in Spanish). Barcelona: Icaria. OCLC 549147889.
- "Mateu Morral i Roca". Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (in Catalan). Archived from the original on November 10, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
- Miguel Blanco, José (May 31, 2006). "Centenario de un atentado". 20 minutos (in Spanish). Archived from the original on November 10, 2018. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
- Sörenssen, Federico Ayala (March 29, 2015). "Historia de la primera gran exclusiva periodística que hubo en España". ABC (in Spanish). Retrieved January 30, 2021.
External links
- Media related to the Morral affair at Wikimedia Commons