Ferrer’s Execution

Today’s installment concludes Spanish Civil War Prelude,
the name of our combined selection from William Archer and Perceval Gibbon. The concluding installment, by Perceval Gibbon from Trial of Ferrer, was published in .

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Previously in Spanish Civil War Prelude.

Time: 1909
Place: Barcelona

As the case proceeded, Ferrer seemed to lose interest in it. No doubt he recognized that the trial was no more than a form, a preliminary prescribed by etiquette to precede the sentence of death. At the beginning he had watched events shrewdly, and from time to time had spoken briskly and incisively; but long before the last of the seventy witnesses had been heard he had given himself up to thought. Captain Galceran charged the prosecution with burking the trial. Many witnesses for Senor Ferrer had been refused a hearing, on the ground that the time limit had expired; only hostile evidence had been admitted, and statements had been received from persons not qualified to offer testimony; even anonymous denunciations had been suffered to have weight. Ferrer himself spoke, but briefly, and the trial was over. No one was in doubt as to the result.

It is said — with what truth I cannot say — that King Alfonso was willing to reprieve Ferrer. He was inundated with petitions for mercy. One was from Senorita Paz Ferrer, the condemned man’s daughter in Paris; and there were others from nearly every country in Europe. The report adds that an interview, with that object, took place between the King and Senor Maura, the Prime Minister. In such an event, the King’s purpose can only have been frustrated by Senor Maura. A death sentence, once confirmed by the Cabinet, cannot be revised by the King. This is quoted in support of the charge that Ferrer owed his death directly to Maura.

On the evening of October 12th, the Cabinet met and ratified the sentence. Ferrer, who had been removed to the fortress prison of Montjuich, was informed the same night that he was to die next morning. The sentence of the court martial was contained in a long and prolix document, and it took three-quarters of an hour to read it to him. His calm as he listened impressed everybody present. One knows that passive, half-melancholy Spanish calm, more than oriental in its strength.

There were priests to attend him. He had been placed en capilla in the little chapel in which a condemned man is made to await the hour of execution. But Ferrer would have none of them.

“Leave me to die in peace,” he said to them. “I have my ideas, and I am as firm in my convictions as you are in yours.”

At nine o’clock in the morning of October 13th they took him forth to be shot in one of the ditches of the fortifications, consecrated to its grim use by many executions. On the hill side at a little distance were groups of spectators from the city; the troops would not allow them to come nearer. He still preserved his indomitable calm. In that hour his every day and commonplace aspect must have worn a look of greatness. Two friars would have accompanied him, but he sent them back, and thus he came to the foot of the rampart sloping steeply up against the sky, against which it is the custom to shoot men. Ordinarily a man faces the rampart and is shot from behind; but Ferrer begged that he might see his death.

“It is not allowed,” he was answered. “A traitor must either turn his back or be blindfolded.”

It was the latter alternative that he selected, and a hand kerchief was bound over his eyes. There were only four men in the firing-party, soldiers from the garrison chosen by the drawing of lots. The officers and guards stood away from him, the signal was given, and the volley rang out. Ferrer gave a loud cry and fell forward. It was over.

And what remains? There remains at least the Escuela Moderna which Ferrer founded, and money to carry it on. In less than eight years its branches have spread from Barcelona over all Spain; and though Ferrer is now absent, the very momentum of its own success will carry it on. It is the most powerful force against clericalism, and it will not become less formidable as time passes. And there remains, further, — what was lacking before, — proof, plain to people of all classes and all grades of intelligence, of the evil influence of the Government of Spain. It is not merely a name, to be potent as a rallying-cry on barricades when Barcelona raves in her periodic fevers, that Ferrer leaves behind him; it is a vital fact of official cruelty, dishonesty, and malice, to which there can be no answer but reform from the root up.

He was not a great man in the sense of a man whose inward strength would have thrust him to the fore in any environment. Rather, he was a product of his time and country, one of those men who are created as though by an economic demand to meet a need. He was not eloquent nor cultured; he could not move gatherings by speeches, and he wrote little. At his trial, the spectators were surprised to hear him speak the formal Castilian of official procedure “like an ill-educated Frenchman.” But, once his interest was strongly taken, he could kindle to vivacity; he could be brisk and downright, and the living force within him would come to the light. He had, what is rare in Spain, a reserve of energy to back the faith he professed — something akin to fanaticism. It was that, and the fact that he was rich, that made him formidable.

As an Anarchist he hardly counted. Anarchism demands a more strenuous adherence than Ferrer could give to it. Certainly he was never in any sense a member of its councils or a leading figure among the Anarchists of Barcelona. He led an irregular life, but not, as has been charged against him, a loose one. His two daughters are resident in Paris. Senorita Paz, the elder, is an actress. The younger, a widow with two daughters, was supported by her father; since his death she has obtained employment in a biscuit factory. His wife still lives in Spain.

Since Ferrer died, Senor Maura’s government has fallen, and has been succeeded by Senor Moret’s administration. Possibly there is a meaning in this change. Since the death of Ferrer was the issue on which the Government fell, the change may presage reforms. But Spain is used to government by spoliation; to parties that succeed one another in power by mutual arrangement; and hopes are not strong. The real hope is still in Ferrer. The world’s voice denounced the system that slaughtered him; his death is the chief count in the indictment against clericalism and bureaucracy. Not even his own Escuela Moderna could show Spain to the young generation of Spaniards in a harsher light than the tragic farce of his two trials, his condemnation, and death.

This ends our selections on Spanish Civil War Prelude by two of the most important authorities of this topic:

• Barcelona Outbreak by William Archer published in .
• Trial of Ferrer by Perceval Gibbon published in .

William Archer began here. Perceval Gibbon began here.

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