Twenty-eight years ago, the Spanish Civil War burst forth in fury; and presently there was added unto the Liberal vocabulary a new term of abuse — Francospain. Today, the great success of the New York World’s Fair is the Spanish Pavilion, praised by all the press for its beauty, its imagination, its architecture, its cuisine, its dignity, its dim religious light, its paintings, its mementos, its wonderful jewels by Salvador Dali.

Yes, America loves the Spanish Pavilion, a triumph of traditionalism alive in the modern age; and the government of General Franco is now the close ally of the United States. In less than a generation, the real power of doctrinaire Liberalism has much decayed among us, however vexatious the ritualistic Liberals still may make themselves on occasion. The Spanish Pavilion’s triumph is one symbol of Liberalism’s decay.

This is sufficiently appropriate: for the ideology called Liberalism first appeared in Spain, toward the end of the Napoleonic era. Heavily indebted to Jacobinism, los liberales were the anti-clerical (actually anti-Christian) party, levelers and uprooters; and liberalismo swiftly became, in passionate Spain, a rigid dogmatic system, even though los liberalesprofessed to detest all dogmas. Though altered somewhat by the intellectual controversies and political events of the nineteenth century, in essence this doctrinaire Spanish Liberalism persisted until the Civil War. It is not yet dead: but one does not see it conspicuous in the Spanish Pavilion.One cannot really understand the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent years without knowing something about liberalismo; but little of consequence has been published — let alone taught — in these United States concerning the Spanish roots of modern Liberalism. Few Americans understood anything about the Spanish internecine struggle until they read Gironella’s The Cypresses Believe in God and his recent sequel One Million Dead. And those novels are more easy to apprehend, in their fascinating accounts of factional and ideological passion, if one has some knowledge of liberalismo — which Gironella, incidentally, abominates.

Two paperbacked little books are now available in English which supply some important information about Spanish Liberalism. One is a longish pamphlet entitled What is Liberalism? (original Spanish title, El Liberalismo es Pecado — Liberalism is a Sin). It was first published in Barcelona in 1886, the work of a priest, Don Felix Sarda; and it was translated and added unto, for American readers, by a Dr. Pallen, in 1889. Father Sarda’s essay — which was approved subsequently by the Vatican — is concerned principally with the great gulf fixed between Catholicism and Liberalism.

A much more recent Spanish essay is that of Gregorio Marañón, The Liberal in the Looking Glass, translated by Dr. Edwin Klotz, with a valuable “Background” commentary (Long House, Inc., New Canaan, Connecticut, $2). Marañón published this during the second year of the Civil War, while in exile; he died in Madrid in 1960. His original title was Liberalism and Communism in Spain, and the purpose of his pamphlet was to expose the Marxist character of the “Loyalist” regime, from which he had fled. He cried mea culpa:
Liberalism’s immense prestige, and its colossally unfortunate blunders, have filled with confusion today’s political scene. Its utter blindness to the anti-liberalism of the Left has been pledging its soul to the devil. The liberal’s punishment will be equal to his error, for liberalism, as a political force, will in all probability exercise little direct influence on world affairs during times which soon will be upon us. True liberalism, however, will remain, for it is a spiritual force, a personal code of conduct. By whatever name it may be known, true liberalism, from its origin and by its essence, reflects the immortal drive toward the betterment of man and his estate, the deathless spring of human progress.

So wrote Marañón. Despite the melioristic note of his concluding sentences, his chastened Liberalism was a mighty improvement upon that strange Spanish philosophical and educational phenomenon called “Krausism,” the principal Liberal intellectual cult almost until the outbreak of the Civil War, founded on the dry doctrines of an obscure German pedant. Dr. Klotz analyzes Krausism and its works in his able “Background” essay. Interested readers can find a complete account of the Kraus liberales and their “Free Institution of Learning” — a kind of Spanish Deweyism long before John Dewey — in a two-volume Spanish work, Vicente Cacho Viu’s La Institutión Libre de Enseñanza, handsomely published two years ago by Ediciones Rialp, Madrid. Even if you don’t read Spanish, gentle reader, you should have a look at Mr. Anthony Kerrigan’s lively review of this book (“Progressive Educationists in Spain,” The University Bookman, Winter 1964).
‘ . . . sullen, lowering, somber’

Well, there’s no Krausism to be discerned in the Spanish Pavilion, praise be. “They aided and abetted and protected each other,” Menendez Pelayo writes of the Krausist Liberals; “whenever they were in command they divided up the professorships like seized booty; they all spoke and dressed alike, they all looked alike in their exterior appearance, for Krausism is something that imposes a certain character and even modifies physiognomies. . . . They were all sullen, lowering, somber; they all reacted according to formula. . . .”

They sound rather like certain American Liberal intellectual cliques, don’t they? But don’t worry: Dali’s fantastic jewels, at the Spanish Pavilion, give Krausism its coup de grâce.