During the First World War, European nations
were neutral because of policy - the Netherlands -,
by treaty - Belgium -,
or political constraints - Switzerland. But one nation's neutrality
was a reflexion of a deep divide in its society and its politics, Spain.
I'm Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about Spain in the First World War.
On August 7th, 1914, ten days after the war began,
Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato declared Spain's neutrality.
This was not a big surprise to anyone, as Spain was neither a member of the Triple Alliance
nor the Triple Entente,
and Spain's position at the time as only a minor
European power - both economically and militarly -
meant that neither side
actively pursued Spanish involvement.
Spain had been a signatory with Britain and France
to the Pact of Cartagena in 1907,
that aimed to preserve the status quo in the Western Mediterranean,
particularly Morocco, and Spanish king Alfonso XIII
had said that he would have pledged
Spanish support for France if the French had given Spain
control of Tangiers and concessions in Morocco,
but few prominent Spaniards actively opposed neutrality.
Dato even wrote that joining the war
"would ruin the nation, ignite civil war and put in evidence our lack of resources and forces..."
The king also had dynastic ties on both sides.
His wife was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria on one hand,
and his mother was a member of the Austrian royal family,
both she and Emperor Franz Joseph were descendants of Leopold II,
and Alfonso's sister had been married to Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria,
though she died in child birth in 1912.
The war did focus a growing divide between the political left and right in Spain.
The right - the aristocracy, clergy and the Carlists, supporters of the Bourbon dynasty -
were sympathetic with the Central Powers, whom they saw as representative of order and authority.
The left - the regionalists, republicans, socialists, intellectuals and middle-class professionals -
sided with the Allies, whom they saw representing democracy and reason.
They saw potential involvement with the Allies as a way to make political change in Spain,
making it more democratic like France.
But strict 1906 laws controlling freedom of speech and assembly
curtailed speech against the Spanish government, and were enforced by the army.
Despite neutrality, Spain was a hub for spies during the war, particularly Barcelona,
though the British did break Spanish diplomatic codes during the war
giving them access to cables between Madrid and Spanish embassies.
Militarily, Spain was still feeling the effects of its defeat by the United States
in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Though they hadn't taken significant casualties, Spain had lost Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines,
and now only had the Canary Islands, Equatorial Guinea, and parts of Morocco left as an overseas empire.
The Spanish Army had been modelled on the Prussian Army, and relied on conscription from the lower ranks on society,
since people could buy their way out of service or buy a commission.
As a result, the regular soldiers were often seen as expendable and were underequipped and often undertrained,
while the officer class was really top-heavy, having one officer for every ten soldiers.
The regulares were founded in 1911.
These were Moroccan soldiers with Spanish officers, and they would later rise to prominence,
along with future Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who graduated from the infantry academy in 1910.
Let me see... 1898, Franco, regulares... It seems like I'm forgetting something.
Indy, over here! If you're going to talk about Spain in World War 1, you gotta talk about guns.
That's right, because Spain was a pretty big arms provider in the pistol category.
Now, funny thing about Spain at that time is they had an unusual patent law, which said
that if you patented something in Spain, if you wanted protection in Spain for your idea,
you had to manufacture there within three years.
Well, obviously most manufacturers didn't have representation in Spain, so
whenever you patented something elsewhere in the world that you wanted to protect...
The Spanish just got to run away with it within three years, and that created an interesting little arms empire.
This is the Revolver Modèle 1892 - we've actually done, well, long ago we did a video on this.
Might have to do it again someday. Now, if we take a look closer at it, there we go.
You can see that this cavalry revolver is a swing-out cylinder, opening on the right, that's fairly complicated manufacture.
Now, France actually wasn't producing these guys when the war broke out, they sort of stopped off and said that was enough,
and they were done by the French arsenals, which were now making rifles, so they had no time
to produce any more of these handguns, and they needed something fast.
So, here comes this, the Spanish-made Ruby.
Most notably put out to sell by Gabilondo y Urresti, mostly to the Balkan region during that period of conflict
just before the Great War, this was a radical simplification of Browning's successful Model 1903,
adapted to use poor quality steel and to be handtooled.
Now that lack of patent protection kind of cuts both ways in this case because Gabilondo y Urresti
could not hold onto their trademarked Ruby design
and a number of other manufacturers would start replicating it, and also selling it to France.
Now, I'm simplifying the story a lot, again, we have a whole episode of this on our channel.
Now, these guns would come out to be roughly a million or so made, with additional units going to Italy as well,
and the French found one particular problem, having a bunch of cottage industries handfiling out these things for them,
well, it turns out that it's hard to get all the parts exactly interchangeable,
and that means you don't want to mess up your mag with your bodies.
In order to prevent accidental swaps, the gun and magazine were marked en receipt in France,
with a two-letter code to indicate the manufacturer, keeping them paired.
This is a bit of a mystery gun, it's called the Model 1915, and if I'd like you to take a closer look
you're gonna see one that was trying to be salvaged as a commercial sale post-war, so it was rechambered for .38.
At which point, and I don't know if you can see the detail, it blew out the crane lock, so it's incredibly unsafe to fire.
Now, these guns were rejected by France but that didn't stop them because they were picked up
by Romania. These were chambered the 8mm ordnance cartridge and they had had a previous contract for that French
1892 revolver, so they would take whatever they could get,
which in this case is not much.
By the way, these are meant to be a copy of the obscure Bayard Perfectionne, with its unique crane lock.
Honestly, there's still a fair bit of confusion and unknown factors about this particular revolver,
and we're trying our best to make this phony even operable.
This is gonna require a lot of work before we can get her to an episode,
but that's one of the good things about the war, there's always something to be discovered,
and when we're talking about Spain and its arms production, well, there's a lot to talk about, because
you're talking about industries that are set up overnight, in order to manufacture guns, they change names every week practically
in order to sign more contracts, sort of obscure who they are if they fail the contract bit...
And then, post-war, you have this industry that was so built-up and inflated and it just collapses.
The demand for all the stuff is gone, and the competition is extremely high because everybody's making one
practically in their backyard.
I exaggerate a bit, these are actually good workshops built on the older-style individual assembly methods,
and they deserve some respect, but...
They can't compete with modern manufacturing, and with the collapse of the war you have the collapse of the industry,
and you have a lot of these guns like the one I am holding in my hand from a failed contract
that are quickly rushed into another chambering, and then put out into the world market,
where they flood into various places like the US.
We practically trip over these things here.
Anyway, it's a piece of fascinating history, and it's an interesting look at how the Great War affected a neutral nation
right on its bore. We often think of the US as being the manufacturing plan of neutrality during that war up until our involvement, but
there's one little region, Spain, that just pumped out handguns like you wouldn't believe.
Alright Indy, back to you, and if any of you want to see any more about any of these guns,
come over and look at our channel, if the video is not up, it will be eventually.
Thanks a lot man! And you guys out there should definitely check out his channel C&Rsenal. It's really cool.
Anyhow, one of the biggest costs of Spanish neutrality was on commercial shipping.
German subs sank about a quarter of the Spanish merchant fleet during the war,
but despite this there was a general economic upturn.
Of course, the weapons industry helped, but also textiles for making uniforms, the coal industry, steel and grain production...
This was the first time in modern history that Spain had a trade surplus.
They also erased their national debt, though inflation was pretty bad.
By 1916 bread prices were up 25% and beef prices 33%.
Spain remained neutral for the whole war, but did not emerge unscathed.
From April 1917 to the Treaty of Versailles seven presidents from both the left and the right would come and go,
and the army began to assert itself in politics.
The Russian Revolution emboldened socialists, tradeunionists and even anarchists to begin working together
to fight the calcified political system.
Strikes broke out, and their rhetoric became increasingly revolutionary.
At the same time, there was resentment brewing in the army.
Both the conservative Dato government and later the liberal Figueroa government
had tried to reform the army, specifically to trim the bloated officer corps and make promotions merit-based and not merely by seniority.
In response, officers formed boards called "juntas de defensa" to resist the reforms.
When they were ordered to dissolve by the Minister of War, they refused and threatened to break ranks.
The king sided with the juntas and Dato returned to power,
recognized the juntas and increased press censorship.
Strikers were emboldened by the juntas' success and on August 13th, 1917 a general strike began,
calling for economic and political reform.
Spain ground to a halt.
The government ordered a crackdown and the army and Civil Guard put down the strike and arrested the leaders,
but the government was ever more deeply divided, specially over the role the juntas would play.
The events of 1917 showed that the monarchy was failing.
The king sided with the army and Civil Guard, and their influence in politics would grow and grow.
Separatist movements in Basque and Catalonia gained support, trade unions organized for greater influence,
and it all culminated in the 1923 coup of Miguel Primo de Rivera, which would suspend the constitution
and establish martial law.
All of that though, and the Spanish Civil War further down the road, are beyond the scope of this channel.
Today was just a brief look at what was going on in Spain during the First World War.
You might be thinking that, since I'm talking about Spain, I might talk about the Spanish flu, but I won't,
partly because it will get its own special episode but also because the Spanish flu did not come from Spain,
it got the name because reports of infection in the warring nations were censored,
but in neutral Spain the papers were all about it, so people though that's where it came from.
We'd like to thank Jonas Bressler for the research on this episode. If you want to learn more about the Spanish gun production
you should totally check out Othais' episode for the Ruby pistol right here.
Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook! See you next time.