Oldal 85 [85]
JULIO PONCE ALBERCA
powers were not expected to serve citizens and civil servants were there not
to serve the state, but rather to serve themselves from its platter. Signs of this
state of affairs abound (particularly as of the crisis of 1898), though we shall
only concern ourselves here with a small number of testimonies.
José Maria Bayton, a civil servant for the Ministry of the Treasury,
published a book outlining the deficiencies of the state’s fiscal model: not only
was legislation on the matter flawed, but it was also abusive “to the obvious
detriment of the Treasury, tax-payers and civil servants”'”. One year later, he
wrote:
In the higher spheres of the administration; at the summit of the eternal
bureaucracy; in the inaccessible regions where luxury flaunts its disdainful
provocations and the sadness and vexations of misery are not felt, privileges
accumulate and utilitarian rewards are granted by the laws of the state, always
harsh towards those dispossessed by fortune and battered by the rigors of human
justice, which in application of social convenience is neither just nor humane’.
The arbitrary nature of a state at the service of the few and their friends was a
widely perceived. Schoolteacher Juan Fernandez Carrero bitterly decried the
failure of the Provincial Council of Alava to pay him what he was owed and the
inaction of the central government, which only exercised its authority against
the weak’. The Catholic church was not much more satisfied: the bishop of
Jaca, from his rather personal perspective, denounced the purported injustice
of the Spanish state towards the clergy, notaries, the armed forces, the press,
and others.” In general, two trends are salient: (1) criticism almost always
originated in the opposition party (especially Liberals) or in outsiders to the
establishment (Republicans, Socialists, Traditionalists, Catholics, etc.), and (2)
the blame was typically placed on politics and politicians, exempting society
from responsibility. The most common form of critical analysis rested on a
presumed duality between corrupt politicians and the noble long-suffering
people; while the former managed the state to their own benefit, the latter
remained its servants, be it as civil servants or as mere tax-payers. This view
was so ingrained that many clamoured for the disappearance of politicians
José Maria Bayton: Errores de la Administraci6n publica, Madrid, Tip. De F. Nozal, 1898,
207. The book was dedicated to the Traditionalist ex-member of Cortes Damian Isern y
Mascé, author of another work of interest to our topic: Del desastre nacional y sus causas,
Madrid, Imprenta Viuda M. Minuesa de los Rios, 1899.
Jose Maria Bayton: Apuntes economico-burocraticos, Madrid, Imprenta de F. Nozal, 1897,
83.
Juan Fernändez Carrero: Don Quijote y Sancho Panza en Vitoria, Vitoria, Imprenta de los
Hijos de Iturbe, 1905, 14.
Antolin Lépez Peléez: Injusticias del Estado español. Labor parlamentaria de un año por el
Obispo de Jaca, Barcelona, Gustavo Gili, 1909.
s 84 e