Oldal 86 [86]
STATE BUILDING AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
while civil servants, seen as neutral and upright, should be responsible for
everything. There were even proponents of a new, civil-servant-based regime
(funcionarismo), defined as follows:
That in which, from the prime minister down to the last clerk, everybody is a
member of the nation rather than a party, and in which they all cease to have
privileges as politicians and become technicians; public servants and nothing
other than public servants, irremovable but responsible — truly responsible —
for all their actions; not legislating as they do now, by and for themselves in a
more or less obvious manner, but rather allowing the people to legislate, through
their representatives in congress, without the leadership or intervention of any
oligarchs”.
Ultimately, the dream of a government made up of technicians implied
a call for the disappearance of political parties and the establishment of
‘representative’ bodies devoid of ‘oligarchs’. Not a far cry from Joaquin Costa’s
‘iron surgeon’ or the remedies proposed by Ricardo Macias Picavea”’. Political
parties were using the administration to their own benefit, patronage
characterized the state at the local level, professionalism was not a selection
criterion as friendship remained the norm for selecting trusted personnel, and
irregularities remained the norm within the system rather than exceptions.
Another case in point: in 1908, the Maura government put the reconstruction
of the Navy’s fleet out to tender, awarding the contract to a company (the
Spanish Society for Naval Construction — Sociedad Española de Construcciôn
Naval, SECN) which was actually controlled by two British companies, John
Brown Co and Vickers-Armstrong. The irregularities involved in the process
were denounced by Juan Macias del Real, Lieutenant Colonel of the Navy’s
judicial corps. The outcome was an honour tribunal expelling Juan Macias
from the Navy within 48 hours, together with the dismissal of other high¬
ranking officers who had voiced their disapproval of the way the contract had
been awarded. For years, Vickers-Armstrong remained in control of SECN,
managed by Tomas Zubiria Ybarra, a businessman and politician with close
Aa José Cascales Mufioz: El problema politico al inaugurarse el siglo XX. El regimen
parlamentario y el funcionarismo, Madrid, Libreria General Victoriano Suarez, 1902, 3.
2 Joaquin Costa: Oligarquia y caciquismo como la forma de gobierno actual en España:
urgencia y modo de cambiarla, Madrid, Imprenta de los Hijos de M.G. Hernandez, 1902;
Ricardo Macias Picavea: El problema nacional: hechos, causas, remedios, Madrid, Libreria
General Victoriano Suarez, 1899.