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*DEATH TO INTELLECTUALS
The history and the persecutions of Spanish Freemasonry.*
by *V.W.Bro. Martin I.McGregor*

Grand Lecturer, Freemasons New Zealand

Master of the Research Lodge of Southland No. 415 (2007-08).
PM and Secretary The Southern Cross Lodge No. 9.
PM Lodge Te Puke No. 261.
Companion St. Andrew's Royal Arch Chapter No. 90.
Member the Waikato Lodge of Research No. 445.
Grand Steward, Freemasons New Zealand.

The paper details the history of Spanish Freemasonry from its

foundation to the present day presents details of the persecutions
suffered by the Spanish brethren virtually throughout their history.
The paper describes the socio-political developments in Spain in
which Spanish Freemasonry was intertwined and explains the development of the
contubernio (secret alliance) theory by which anti-Masons sought to justify their actions.
Considerable detail about the Spanish Civil War and the Franquismo. Explanation of the
relationship between Freemasonry and the Age of Enlightenment and Liberalism and
the reasons for persecution.

On 6 June 1936, Snr. Jose Maria Gil Robles, Leader of the Spanish Catholic Party, the
CEDA, rose to address the Spanish Cortez or parliament. He laid bare the parlous state
of Spain when he noted that during the four months the left wing Popular Front
government had been in power 160 churches had been burned to the ground and there
had been 269-mainly political murders and 1287-assaults. No less than 69-political
centres had been wrecked and 10-newspaper offices had been sacked. There had been
113-general strikes and 228-partial strikes. "Let us not deceive ourselves!" said Gil
Robles,
"A country can live under a Monarchy or a Republic, with a parliamentary or a
presidential system, under Communism or Fascism! But it cannot live in anarchy.
Now, alas, Spain is in anarchy. And we are today present at the funeral service of
democracy!"

This stinging criticism of the government was taken up by the Monarchist leader, Snr.
Jose Calvo Sotelo, who claimed that the disorder in Spain was due to the flawed
Constitution of 1931.
"Against this sterile State," he proclaimed, "I am proposing the integrated State,

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 which will bring economic justice, and which will say with due authority: no more
strikes, no more lock-outs, no more usury, no more capitalist abuses, no more
starvation wages, no more political salaries gained by happy accident, no more
anarchic liberty, no more criminal conspiracies against full production, the national
production will be for the benefit of all classes, all parties, all interests. This State
many may call Fascist; if this indeed be the Fascist State, then I, who believe in it,
proudly declare myself a Fascist!"

Reports of this debate reached every corner of Spain but Calvo Sotelo's words were
widely misconstrued, as was his call to the Spanish armed forced to be prepared to rise
to the defense of Spain against anarchy. On Monday, 13 July, Jose Calvo Sotelo was
murdered by members of the Assault Guard, Spain's urban paramilitary police. The
assassins had links with the Young Socialists and the principal assassin, Victoriano
Cuenca, was known to be a bodyguard of the Socialist leader Indelicio Prieto. The right
wing and its supporters, which had only narrowly lost the election and might have
formed a government had the centre parties lent their support, were outraged and Spain
held its breath.

The response was not long in coming. On the very day of Calvo Sotelo's assassination,
General Emilio Mola Vidal, the principal planner of the military rising that had been
planned to take place in the event of a breakdown of public order, sent a directive by
coded telegram to numerous members of the Spanish Army officer corps that the rising
was to commence in Morocco at 1700 hours on 17 July and on the Spanish mainland
the following day. But the date and time was betrayed to the commander of the Spanish
forces in Melilla in Morocco and the leader of the rebel officers there, Colonel Jose
Segui Almuzara, was forced to move fast. Carrying a loaded pistol, Colonel Segui
strode into the office of his commanding officer, General Romerales Quintana
(Freemason), and with his pistol aimed at point blank range at the general's head,
obtained his resignation. Segui then ordered the troops out on the streets. The Spanish
Civil War had started.

It did not take long for Segui's men to take control. All public buildings and left-wing
centres were occupied and all republican and left-wing leaders were arrested and shot.
Lists were obtained of members of the left-wing parties, trade unions and Masonic
lodges and all persons on the lists were arrested and executed without delay. This
pattern was to be repeated in every city, town and village seized by the rebel military
throughout the war. In the meantime Colonel Segui had contacted Lt. Colonel Juan
Yague Blanco and Colonel Eduardo Saenz de Buruaga y Polanco, commanding officers
at Ceuta and Tetuan respectively. Lt. Colonel Yague, who was also the commanding
officer of the elite Spanish Foreign Legion, dispatched telegrams to the mainland giving
the password Sin novedad, the sign for the uprising. The commander-in-chief in Africa,
General Agustin Gomez Morato (Freemason), was placed under arrest. Colonel Segui
also telegraphed General Francisco Franco, then commanding in the Canary Islands.

At 0610 hours on 18 July, General Franco sent his reply

"Glory to the heroic Army of Africa. Spain above everything. Accept the enthusiastic

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 greetings of those garrisons which join you and all other comrades in the Peninsular
in these historic moments. Blind faith in victory. Long live Spain with honour".

This communiqué was sent to every army and navy base. Throughout mainland Spain
army garrisons rose in rebellion but the element of surprise had been lost and the
uprising was only a partial success. In the north of Spain, in General Mola's sector of
command, the rising was successful but even there the Basque Country held out. The
only other immediate gains were pockets in Andalucia, in particular Seville, where
General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano (Freemason) took control by dint of astonishing
audacity, Cadiz, Toledo, Jerez and La Linia where Carlist troops shot 200-Freemasons.

At 4 in the morning of 19 July the Prime Minister, Snr. Santiago Casares Quiroga, a
Freemason, resigned and President Manuel Azana, also a Freemason, invited Snr.
Diego Martinez Barrio, a former Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Spain, to form a
government. Martinez Barrio urgently contacted Freemasons representing all parties but
was unable to come up with a solution. Politically a Liberal, Martinez Barrio was inclined
to moderation and sought ways to achieve reconciliation with the political right. To this
end he telephoned General Mola, a former Freemason, with an overture of peace.
General Mola, in his usual lofty manner, rejected Martinez Barrio's peace initiative
emphatically.
"It is not possible, Senor Martinez Barrio," said Mola. "You have your people and I
have mine. If you and I should reach agreement, both of us will have betrayed our
ideals and our followers."

Martinez Barrio's government collapsed within the day and President Azana then invited
Snr. Jose Giral y Periera, another Freemason, to form a government. Giral immediately
proceeded to distribute arms to the workers militias and, with that, the effective control
of the war effort passed from the hands of the government.

On the 19 July also, General Franco arrived in Morocco to take command of the Army
of Africa. He was faced with the immediate problem of how to transport his army to the
mainland, for the naval flotilla which been sent for that purpose had been taken over by
its crews and the officers killed. Indeed, in one day, the Spanish navy lost 75% of its
officers, killed by the crews who remained loyal to the Republic. For the moment, the
Republic commanded the sea between Morocco and the mainland. Nothing daunted,
Franco requested and obtained nine Italian bombers. He then embarked as many
soldiers as possible in a motley fleet of tramp ships and trawlers which, escorted by two
decrepit old gun boats and under the air cover of the Italian bombers and every airplane
that could be found, headed for the mainland. The German battleships Deutschland and
Scheer, both on a courtesy visit to Morocco, screened the armada. The Italian bombers
flew straight for the battleship Jaime Primero and its escorts and forced them to turn tail.
Franco's armada reached the mainland without the lost of a single man. German
bomber-transports arrived within days to transport the bulk of Franco's army in what
was the first major airlift of troops in history.

Although the Army of Africa's initial numerical strength on the mainland was quite small,

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its ruthless efficiency and the superior quality of its troops was to have immediate effect.
Having relieved General Queipo del Llano's beleaguered forces at Seville, the Army of
Africa moved off in three-columns, each comprising a bandera of Legionaires and a
tabor of Moroccan regulares. Each column had its own artillery and air support and was
fully motorized, the troops riding in commandeered trucks. The objective was to conquer
western Spain and link up with the Army of the North. Under the command of Lt. Col.
Yague, this crack-force advanced with lightning speed through western Spain and,
having sealed off the border with Portugal and having linked up with forces from the
north, turned east and drove towards Madrid. The Republican forces, though greatly
superior in number, were repeatedly outflanked and forced to retreat. But General
Franco ordered the Nationalist forces to divert to relieve the garrison of Toledo and this
gave the Republic some breathing space. When the Nationalist forces reached Madrid,
this time commanded by General Jose Varela Iglesias, the Republicans had received
reinforcements of anarchist and communist militias, from international brigades
comprising communists and socialists from all over the world and from the Soviet Union,
which sent tanks, planes and military advisors. Under the command of General Jose
Miaja Menant (Freemason), the Republican forces were able stalemate the Nationalist
attack on Madrid and General Franco shifted his offensive to northern Spain.

There were then two Spains. Northern and western Spain was firmly held by the forces
of General Franco who by then had been proclaimed Generalisimo or commander-in-
chief of the Nationalist forces and Head of the Spanish State. Central and eastern Spain
remained nominally in the hands of the Republican government but in reality control
was in the hands of fractious left-wing political groups and the autonomous
governments of Catalonia and the Basque Country. A state of terror reigned in these
sharply contrasting zones of control.

In the Republican zone, anarchist, communist, Marxist and socialist militias were a law
unto themselves and took revenge on those whom they saw to be the enemy. The
Catholic Church was a conspicuous target with the murder of 13-bishops, 4,184-priests,
2,365-members of religious orders and 283-nuns, some burned to death in their
churches with reports of crucifixions, rapes, castrations and disembowelment. Scores of
church buildings were burned to the ground or wrecked. In addition, thousands of
middle-class people and those suspected of being supporters of the Nationalists were
killed and in many cases their property confiscated. Some 2000-prisoners were shot by
the Republicans when General Franco's forces were at the gates of Madrid and in all
some 38,000-people were killed by the Republicans in their zone during the war.

In the Nationalist zone the army imposed strict martial law and carried out a program of
organized terror designed to cow the population into docility and to eliminate all
communists, anarchists, socialists and Freemasons. In every village, town and city in
the Nationalist zone, lists were made of all such persons and also of peasants who had
illegally occupied land, of those who stood accused of crimes and of people who were
suspected of being supporters of the Republic or who withheld support from the
Nationalist cause. Prime targets were government officials, union leaders, intellectuals,
teachers, doctors and office workers who had worked for them. Forty-members of the

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Spanish Cortez were captured and shot. No less than 2000-people in Grenada and
another 2000 in Rioja were executed and in Teruel over 1000 were shot and their
bodies dumped in wells. Eight-thousand persons were killed in Seville, another 2000 in
Huelva and the horrendous total of 10,000 on Cordoba, a tenth of the population of that
city. In Badajoz 1200-people were massacred in the bullring by the soldiers of General
Yague and as many as 12,000 were killed in the surrounding province. These examples
of atrocities occurred at the very start of the Civil War. As General Mola said "You are
either for us or against us". In most cases, those captured were shot, either by the
roadside or against the cemetery wall.

Many atrocities were committed against Freemasons in the Nationalist zone. We have
already mentioned the execution of 200-Freemasons at La Linea on the first day of the
Civil War. In Huesca 100-people accused of being Freemasons were shot in spite of the
fact the local Lodge had less than a dozen members. In Spanish Morocco all
Freemasons who were found were shot, likewise in Cordoba and in Cadiz Freemasons
were tortured and killed. In Granada all those whose names were on Masonic records
were forced to dig their own graves and then shot whilst standing in them. In Malaga 80-
Freemasons were garroted to death. The same pattern was repeated throughout the
Nationalist held areas, imprisonment being the least a Freemason could expect if
captured. Franco's troops destroyed Masonic lodge rooms and confiscated Masonic
property, even the private property of Freemasons. Again, most of the excesses were
committed early in the Civil War and General Franco, once he was in full control did at
least, in 1938, stop most of the bloodshed by making imprisonment rather than death
the punishment for membership of the Craft in most cases.

The Spanish Civil War was fought with conspicuous, almost reckless bravery on both
sides but with a ferocity, a brutality and a ruthlessness which shocked the world and we
must ask ourselves how and why Spain came to such a parlous state and why the
Nationalist faction identified the Spanish Freemasons as being every bit as much the
enemy as the communists and anarchists and therefore to be eliminated. Why, indeed,
the Nationalists believed in the existence of the contubernio, the Judeo-Masonic
Communist conspiracy theory.

*Contubernio* is a Spanish word meaning secret alliance or liaison. A word used to

describe the supposed Judeo-Masonic-Communist anti-clerical conspiracy or plot
against the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchy.

The Spanish Civil War is usually described as a struggle between democracy and
fascism and as a prelude to the Second World War but, whilst it was certainly perceived
as such at the time by the Republican faction and their supporters, such an
interpretation is not only misleading but also inaccurate. The war was, as we have seen,
provoked by officers of the Spanish military and, led by General Franco, the military
remained in control of what became known as the 'National Movement' throughout the
Civil War and indeed until Franco's death in 1975, General Franco was a military
dictator and the National Movement was, at least in theory, the expression of the
ideology he represented. Indeed, the National Movement was the artificial creation of

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Franco himself, a political movement created during the Civil War out of the broadly
right-wing factions that supported the military uprising. These factions stemmed from
different traditions and their ideologies varied markedly, but Franco amalgamated them
into one body by decree and placed himself at the head of the Movement. The factions
within the National Movement were described as 'families' and Franco played one off
against the others as he deemed from time to time necessary. They were united by a
belief in Hispanidad or the Spanish way entailing strong, centralized government,
Catholicism and patriotic political and cultural attitude and deemed communism,
anarchism, socialism, liberalism and freemasonry as foreign manifestations of anti-
Spanish attitudes.

Out the outset of the Civil War the majority of right-wing minded Spaniards were
supporters of CEDA, the Spanish Catholic Party, or else monarchists. The monarchists
were divided into two factions, either they were those who supported the return of the
exiled King Alphonso or else they were Carlists, those who supported an alternative
Borbon dynasty. Supporters of the Catholic Party were not necessarily opposed to the
idea of a republic. Then there was the small quasi-fascist party, the Falange Espanol,
founded in 1934 by Jose Maria Primo de Rivera which modeled itself on the Italian
fascists but with a Spanish flavour. Even within the Falange there were left and right
wing factions. At the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, the Falange had no deputies
in the Cortez and their leader, Primo de Rivera, was in prison, later to be executed by
the Republicans. Franco, however, saw to it that the Falangists gained prominence so
long as he needed the help of the Germans and Italians but, as soon as he saw that
Germany and Italy were going to lose the war, he reconstituted the Cortez and
progressively reduced Falangist influence and power.

The rebel military officers were representative of the right-wing factions. Of the senior
officers, only Lt. Col. Yague and Col. Augustin Munoz Grandez were supporters of the
Falange. Colonel Varela and Col. Jose Solchaga Zala were Carlists, General Queipo de
Llano and General Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer (Freemason) were republicans, most of
the rest were either Alphonsine monarchists or simply conservative Catholics. All felt
that the Popular Front government could not maintain peace and good order. As for
General Franco, it is true that he adopted the external trappings of fascism so long as
he needed German and Italian assistance, but he kept Spain out of the Second World
War and clearly changed tack as soon as he could see that Germany and Italy were
going to lose the war. It was said of Franco that "not even his collar knows what he it
thinking."

Apart from the radical leftist wing of the Falange and the Carlists who drew much of
their support from the small freehold peasantry, the Nationalist leadership and their
supporters were from the small but influential Spanish middle-class and the cement
which bound them together was their adherence to the Catholic Church. These were
people who had greeted with fear and trepidation the words of the firebrand socialist
leader Francisco Largo Caballero when he pronounced -
"When the Popular Front breaks-up, as break-up it will, the triumph of the proletariat
will be certain. We shall implant the dictatorship of the proletariat. That does not

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 mean the repression of the workers, but of the capitalist and bourgeois classes!"

These were people who feared the growth of the anarchist movement and who could
not see what possible benefit anarchist ideology could be to Spain. These were people
who feared the growth of the communist and Marxist movements would mean a class
war against the Spanish middle-class and the destruction of a whole way of life and
good Catholic values. These were people who were alarmed and frustrated by the
incessant strikes, political murders and violent clashes between political factions and
the general breakdown of law and order which the Liberal-led government seemed
powerless to prevent. These were people who were angry and disgusted by the burning
of churches and intimidation of clergy by leftist-thugs and the systematic undermining of
the power and influence of the Church by the government, indeed, the Catholic Church
was the very embodiment of the attitudes of the Nationalist faction. It is with some
justification that it has been often stated that the Nationalists fought for traditional
Catholic Spain. These were people, moreover, who believed that by virtue of better
education they had a superior sense of the history, culture and destiny of Spain and that
all these political movements they feared and despised were imported, foreign
ideologies and essentially anti-Spanish, bent on tearing the country apart. These were
people who had no difficulty in believing that the communists took their orders from
Moscow or that the Freemasons took their orders from Paris or Geneva, or that the
whole leftist-movement was part of a Judeo-Masonic plot. What's more, they were
people who were frustrated by the inertia of the democratic system and had seen how
Italy under Mussolini had survived the great economic depression in its stride and how
the Italian fascists had taken a weak and chaotic country and turned it into an efficient,
modern, stable and law abiding state which was growing in prosperity and had a strong
voice in world affairs. There was a strong feeling that what Italy could do, Spain could
do better.

General José Millan Astray y Terreros

But the broad range of left-wing political movements

which made up the Popular Front were also largely led
by middle-class people. These were people who
harboured a strong passion for social justice and
change and who, for the most part, desired a complete
break from the past and especially from the haphazard,
fruitless and enervating cycle of revolution and
repression which had marked Spanish politics for nearly
two-centuries. They believed in a wide range of
ideologies, from left-leaning Liberalism, democratic
socialism, radical socialism, communism, anarchism,
syndicalism and regional autonomy and all of these
ideologies claimed to have to policies to solve to the
huge socio-economic gap which existed between the
rich and the poor in Spain. Moreover, these people regarded the Church as being the
church of the rich, the opiate of the poor and a major obstacle to social change. These

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people believed in a brave new world in which the workers and peasants would rule and
in which capitalist greed and bourgeois selfishness would be abolished to make way for
a Utopia for the proletariat. For these middle-class intellectuals, the Nationalist General
Millan Astray invented the slogan "Death to intelligence".

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote "Little Spaniard who is coming into this world,
may God protect you. One of the two Spains will freeze your heart." Two Spains, the
Spain of the rich and the Spain of the poor, the Spain of the owners of property and the
Spain of those who own little or nothing. As Machado also said, "There is the Spain that
dies and the Spain that yawns". In 1936, these two Spains came head to head, the
moderates were brushed-aside and the country was given-over to that extremism which
has often been cited as a feature of the Spanish character. But, in truth, the concept of
the two Spains is in itself an oversimplification.

The very geography of Spain has had a divisive effect on the development of Spanish
society. Separated from the rest of Europe by the massive mountain barrier of the
Pyrenees, Spain itself is dominated by a vast, arid central plateau and is intersected by
rugged, inhospitable mountain ranges which form formidable barriers between widely
separated terrain suitable for productive human habitation. Consequently, although
Spain is the third-largest country in Europe in geographical area, its population density
is comparatively low. It is therefore a country of widely-separated communities and it is
a feature of Spanish society that Spaniards tend to identify themselves, their loyalties
and interests with village or town first, district or province second and then perhaps with
Spain.

The first known inhabitants of Spain were the Basques, a race which spoke a non-Indo-
European language, but who otherwise appear to be of prehistoric European stock and
who still inhabit extensive districts of northern Spain and south-western France. The
Basques were joined in prehistoric times by the major migration of a race described as
the Iberians who appear to have originated in the eastern Mediterranean and may be
related to some of the peoples of North Africa. During the first millennium BC the
Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks developed trading settlements on the coast of
Spain and established zones of influence but the next major migration into Spain was
that of the Celts from central Europe arriving in two great waves in the 9th and 7th
centuries BC. In central Spain the Celts and Iberians mixed freely to form a new race,
the Celtiberians. Inevitably the Romans cast eyes on Spain and, starting in 218 BC,
fought a series of hard and bitter campaigns which eventually brought the whole of
Spain under Roman control.

The breakdown of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD saw the arrival in Spain of
migratory Germanic peoples, notably the Vandals and Suebi , the latter of which had
no-sooner taken control of most of Spain when the Visigoths arrived in great strength
and it was Visigothic Spain which was overwhelmed by the Muslim hordes. Starting in
711 AD, like a tidal wave, the Muslim armies took only eight-years to overrun Spain and
advance into France but almost as soon as the great defeat of the Muslims at Poitiers in
AD 732, the small Christian Visigothic and Basque enclaves in northern Spain began to

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force the Muslims back. This process was known as the Reconquista, the Christian re-
conquest of Spain. From small beginnings, the Christians gradually but inexorably
regained more and more territory from the Muslims. At every stage of the conquest, new
counties were created and in time these counties coalesced into a number of small
kingdoms. These kingdoms in turn coalesced until eventually, under the monarchs
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, the last Muslim bastion of Grenada fell and
Spain was unified under a single monarchy.

Apart from the political unification and Christianizing of Spain resulting from the
Reconquista, another lasting effect of this protracted process was the forging of a very
close community of interest between the monarchy, the nobility and the Church. As
each province or district was prized-away from the Muslim rulers, so the Spanish
monarchs, nobles and clergy divided-up the spoils, all in accordance with the feudal
system of governance. This alliance of interest, amounting in the course of time to a
power-bloc of conservative reaction against the development of liberal ideology, was to
last into the modern era and found its ultimate expression in the authoritarian Franco
regime. That is why an understanding of the implications of triumphant feudalism in
Spain is so important to an understanding of the social polarities which developed over
a long period of gestation into the Spanish Civil War, in which Freemasonry found itself
lumped with one side and not the other.

Feudalism is in essence a system of governance of a territory and its resources by a

hierarchical warrior class or nobility, whereby lords and vassals are bound to each other
by mutual and formal obligations based on revenue-producing land-ownerships known
as fiefs. This warrior class assumed the right to impose this system by virtue of their
own armed-might as a reward, as it were, for their protection of a territory and its
people, which we may call a commonwealth, against external and internal threats to its
peace and security and for their services in providing the force of law and order. The
system is therefore essentially autocratic, a system which is imposed by persons
possessing armed-might upon those who do not possess such power. In classic
feudalism the ultimate ownership-of and right to rule all territory and its resources was
vested in a prince, this right deriving from inheritance or conquest. The prince in turn
would grant fiefs of revenue producing land estates to his closest supporters in return
for their allegiance comprising military support when called-upon. Beneath these barons
or tenants-in-chief of the prince were the knights who received fiefs on a smaller scale,
either direct from the prince or from a baron. At the bottom of the feudal pyramid were
the small free farmers and the villagers or villains, both of which were secured in rights
of occupation by providing payment or services or kind to their feudal superior or lord. At
the very rock bottom of the pile were those who had no rights at all in landed property,
the labourers or serfs who worked for subsistence only.

Feudalism was successful enough when applied to rural land but not to the larger towns
and the cities. There is a German phrase to the effect that town air makes for freedom,
freedom from the bonds of feudalism, and it alludes to the marked degree of self-
government most towns and cities were able to achieve. The wealth of the nobility was
derived from the agricultural production, forestry, quarrying and mining associated with

9
land but the towns and cities contributed nothing significant to that source of wealth.
The population of towns consisted principally of merchants, small traders and master
craftsmen and their employees and families, in fact of a multitude of trades and what we
call today service industries. Many towns contained sizeable populations of Jews and
others who had a tendency to have contacts outside Spain, notably in Europe and
Africa. Such persons were not only involved in the exchange of trade but also in the
exchange of knowledge and ideas. Towns also tended to be a haven for any class of
person, such as gypsies, beggars and vagrants who had managed to escape from
feudal bondage or who did not easily fit into the feudal system or who were useless to it.
In theory these people had no rights to their own destiny and could be sent back to their
native village or deported entirely but they seldom were.

The government of towns and cities was invariably in the hands of rich merchants and
wealthy master craftsmen, legal professionals and the like, usually in some sort of
conjunction with a noble family of the district and/or the local bishop in a power-sharing
arrangement which was peculiar to that town and which was frequently confirmed by a
fuero or chartered constitution granted by a prince. These fueros were fiercely protected
and adhered-to by the recipient communities, the more so because fueros usually
confirmed the rights embodied in their ancient laws and the right to make new laws
pertaining to their own interests. Thus the governing-class in the towns and cities of
Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, were increasingly the emergent middle-class or
bourgeoisie, people who were successful in life due to their education, skills, business
acumen and management ability and it was this class that increasingly sought for
themselves more control over the affairs of city, province and nation. Moreover, it was
the middle class that participated more than any other social group in the advances in
science, culture and mercantilism permeating from the Renaissance. It was from the
Spanish middle class that Freemasonry in Spain emerged.

The third-great beneficiary of the Reconquista was the Church. The Reconquista was,
after all, a crusade or Holy War fought against the infidel. Knights from all countries
joined in it and many of the knights formed themselves into military religious orders,
such as the Order of Calatrava. The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers,
international crusading orders, were also to feature in the Reconquista. And, as the
Reconquista progressed, the Church moved-in to the conquered lands to reap the
harvest of souls, just as the lords and peasants moved in to reap the harvests from the
soil. The Church however was rewarded with conquered property as well as with
spiritual gains so that it became one of the greatest landowners in Spain and a fully-
fledged component of the feudal system. Thus, like the knights and nobles, the Church
had a close community of interest with the monarchy and became the second vital
component in the centralized Church and State concept of Hispanidad. That, in 1936,
the Nationalists under Franco fought, in their minds, a Holy War to restore traditional
Catholic Spain and Hispanidad, is testimony to the enduring quality of the concept.

The reign of the joint monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, which
lasted from Isabella's accession in 1474 until Ferdinand's death in 1516, not only saw
the completion of the Reconquista with the conquest of Granada in 1492, but also the

10
consolidation of a politically-united Spanish state. However, the two monarchs were not
so unwise as to image that their inheritance was anything more than a group of
culturally dissimilar regions fiercely protective of their own interests, customs and
languages and which, in the case of Catalonia in particular, were markedly reluctant
components in a Spain dominated by Castille. In a process known as The Pacification
of Castile a Holy Brotherhood was set-up, men used as a judicial police force and to
replace the courts, the monarchs created a Royal Council and appointed chief
magistrates to govern the towns and cities. As the loyalty of these newly-created
officials to the monarchy was crucial, only those who could show purity of blood were
appointed. Jews and Muslims were barred from holding public office.

Not content with political unity alone, the so-called Catholic Monarchs instituted the
Spanish Inquisition in 1478 in an attempt to flush out 'crypto-Judaism' amongst the
conversos or Jews who had supposedly adopted Christianity in order to avoid
persecution. The Spanish Inquisition was a tribunal under direct control of the
monarchy. Again, not satisfied with having ordered the segregation of religious
communities, the monarchs - by the Alhambra Decree of 1492, gave the Jews in Spain
four-months to convert completely to Christianity or leave the country. The same policy
was later adopted towards the Muslims and Gypsies, but the Gypsies simply refused to
go!

The year 1492 also saw the expedition of Christopher Columbus to the Americas and
the start of a great empire for Spain. Under Ferdinand's successor Charles, a Habsburg
prince, Spain was to conquer huge territories in the New World and under Charles also,
Spain entered the mainstream of European politics. The gold and silver from the
Americas and the Spanish fighting men were to be the lynchpins of Habsburg dynastic
ambitions in Europe, both under Charles and his successor Phillip II. Moreover, with the
onset of the religious reformation, Spain bolted the door shut to Protestantism at the
Pyrenees and its armies became a bulwark of defense of the Catholic Church. But, such
was the drain on wealth and manpower caused by its foreign entanglements that by the
end of the reign of Phillip II, Spain was all but bankrupt and went into a long and painful
period of decline, increasingly insular and out of touch with developments in the rest of
Europe.

One cannot leave the subject of this great period of, from the mid 15th century to the
first-two-decades of the 17th century, without mentioning the decline in chivalry, that
being the code conduct befitting and indeed expected of a person of knightly or noble
rank. Chivalry, with its emphasis on the duty of a knight to his superior lord and to his
lady and his companions, was part and parcel of the feudal system but it must be
stressed that chivalry was only expected of knights and nobles, in whom it was
inculcated, not of other classes. In a sense, chivalry embodied a code of behavior,
acceptable the Christian principles of the Church, applied to a class of person involved
by virtue of their vocation and duty in violent activities and other activities the Church
might deem sinful. But increasingly, by the end of the Middle Ages and with the rise of
the powerful monarchical nation states of Spain, Portugal, France and England,
knighthood and other titles were increasingly bestowed as a reward for service or

11
achievement, rather than as a status which entailed a bonded military duty in exchange
for privileges such as fiefs of land. The recipients of knighthood were increasingly from
the bourgeoisie, people who did not have fighting in their blood and were not inculcated
with the chivalric code, neither was it expected of them. As a consequence, warfare
became more total and ruthless, with economic warfare and unbridled terror-tactics
bringing misery and death to untold thousands of innocent civilians. With the
considerable success of the Protestant reformation in western Europe, with its
emphasis on salvation by faith alone rather than by good works, the moral monopoly of
the Church of Rome was broken and with it the code of chivalry which it had helped to
nurture. Although by virtue of their isolation and resistance to the Reformation, Spain
and Portugal managed to preserve the chivalric code to a greater extent than the rest of
Europe, their rough-handling at the hands of such unscrupulous and unchivalrous
Englishmen as Sir Francis Drake caused the much grief.

By the turn of the 18th century, the dust of ages had gathered on the tapestry of eternal,
changeless Spain, still languishing in its long sunset of decline, still governed by its
remote, absolutist monarchy through its army of bureaucrats, still answering to the toll of
the fundamentalist tone of the Catholic church bell and to the chant of the Mass. Then
came something new, but like most things new to Spain it was taken-up with fervour by
some - but stamped-on like some intrusive cockroach by others. That something new,
was Freemasonry.

On 15 February 1728, a Lodge named The Lodge of the Lilies was formed in the
apartments of the Duke of Wharton in the French Hotel on the Via San Bernardo in
Madrid with Charles de Labelye as Master. The Grand Lodge of England was petitioned
for a Warrant on 17 April 1728 and this was granted on 29 March 1729, the Lodge being
placed on the Roll as No. 50. Phillip, Duke of Wharton, is one whom Freemasonry looks
back to with some embarrassment for his personality was the least Masonic imaginable.
Wild, tactless, extravagant, and a habitual attention seeker, the Duke of Wharton was
nevertheless a powerful orator and a formidable political opponent of the government of
Horace Walpole. At a highly irregular and chaotic meeting in 1722, he manipulated
several London Freemasons into declaring him Grand Master. Thanks to the kindness
of the then regular Grand Master, the Duke of Montagu, Wharton's election was made
regular and he held office until 1723. Soon after becoming bankrupt and to escape an
indictment for treason, Wharton escaped to the Continent and was appointed Jacobite
ambassador to Austria by the Old Pretender. Having incurred the almost immediate
dislike of the Austrians, Wharton arrived in Spain in 1727 and in 1728 became a Roman
Catholic. He died in a monastery, penniless in 1731, aged only 33.

In the same year, 1728, the Lodge of St. John of Jerusalem was constituted at Gibraltar
and placed on the Roll of the Grand Lodge of England as No. 51 and in 1731, Captain
James Cummerford, then serving with the British Army in Gibraltar, was appointed
Provincial Grand Master for Andalusia, by which was meant Gibraltar and adjacent
places. Gibraltar had been, since 1713, under British control and although this
Provincial Grand Lodge of Andalusia went on to form lodges in southern Spain against
great opposition from the local clergy, this jurisdiction is not within the scope of this

12
paper.

Freemasonry in Spain first attracted ex-patriots from Britain and France but Spaniards
soon joined and, as elsewhere in Europe, the knowledge of the formation of Lodges
began to arouse the suspicions and hostility of the Church and the secular authorities
especially, but not exclusively, in the Catholic countries. The first to prohibit
Freemasonry was Grand-duke Gian Gastone of Tuscany just before his sudden death
in 1737. An inquisitor sent by Pope Clement XII made several arrests but the parties
were set at liberty by the new Grand-duke, Francis of Lorraine, who declared himself
patron of the Order. On 28 April 1738, Pope Clement issued his Bull entitled In eminenti
condemning Freemasonry and forbidding Catholics to join or aid Freemasonry under
pain of excommunication. This was followed by an edict from the Cardinal Secretary of
State dated 14 January 1739 pronouncing the death penalty on Catholics who were
members of the Order. In Spain the Bull received the royal exequatur and the Inquisitor-
general Orbe y Larreategui published an edict dated 11 October 1738, claiming
exclusive jurisdiction on the matter and called for denunciations within six-days under
pain of excommunication and a fine of 200 ducats. The edict was read in churches and
affixed to their portals. This was followed by an edict in 1740 from the Spanish Monarch,
Philip V, under which a number of Masons were sent to the galleys. In 1744 the Madrid
tribunal sentenced Don Francisco Aurion de Roscobel to abjuration and banishment for
Freemasonry and in 1756 the same tribunal prescribed reconciliation for Domingo de
Otas and, in 1757, a Frenchman named Tournon was sentenced to a year's detention
and deportation.

Further, in 1751, Pope Benedict XIV, published the Bull entitled Providas which sought
to justify to a greater extent the Church's opposition to Freemasonry and which
prohibited Catholics from joining any Masonic group. This new denunciation sparked a
new round of persecutions and this period is famous for the actions of Father Torrubia,
a censor and revisor of the Inquisition, in allegedly attempting to carry out a plan to
exterminate all Freemasons in Spain. In order to achieve this, he made use of the vast
network of spies available to the Inquisition and - using a false name - joined the Order
himself and was thus enabled to draw up a list of 97 lodges then in existence. It is
alleged that he obtained from the Papal Grand Penitentiary a dispensation to join the
Order under a false name and to break his Masonic oath taken on the Bible. Fr.
Torrubia handed over his list to the Inquisition in Madrid and this led to the arrest of
thousands of Freemasons. The King, Ferdinand VI, decreed the prohibition of
Freemasonry throughout the kingdom. Finally, the Cardinal Vicar decreed the death
sentence for all Freemasons.

In spite of virtually continuous persecution, Freemasonry in Spain survived. In 1767, the

Gran Logia Espanola was formed and Spanish Freemasonry declared itself
independent from England. The first Grand Master was the Count d'Aranda, Prime
Minister of Charles III. In 1780, the name of this body was changed to the Grande
Oriente Espanola and adopted the French system. It is known that many of the
ministers of Charles III were Freemasons along with an impressive list of prominent
Spanish nobles and high officials. That Spanish Freemasonry was able to survive this

13
sustained period of persecution is testimony not only to the courage and determination
of the brethren but also to the fact that, try as they might, the Spanish Church and civil
authorities could not isolate Spain from the growing momentum of the 'Age of
Enlightenment' and its socio-political articulation in the form of liberalism, of which
Freemasonry was an integral part. Indeed, in no small measure due to the character of
the monarch, the reign of Charles III was notable for its taking-on the spirit of the
Enlightenment although little was done to carry-out the necessary land reforms other
than the confiscation of some Church property. It is the anti-clericalism of the reign of
Charles III, which included the expulsion of the Jesuits, and which was put into effect by
a government that included several Freemasons in key positions, that helped cause the
permanent mindset that Freemasonry as an institution was involved in plotting against
the Church. However, it must be stressed that, although the Spanish governments
under Charles III (1759-88) and Charles IV (1788-1808) contained many Masons in
prominent roles, the laws against Freemasonry remained in force although evidently
somewhat abated whilst the influence of the Count of Aranda remained in the
ascendency.

The 'Age of Enlightenment' can be seen as a continuation or 'second wind' of the

Renaissance, which had been slowed-down by the onset of the religious wars in the
second decade of the 17th century. German scholarship made little contribution to the
fund of human knowledge in the thirty-years the war raged over German territory but in
England, France, Italy and Spain - the development of new ideas in the liberal arts and
sciences continued but at a slower pace until the more politically stable era of the late
17th century opened up the whole of Europe once more for the exchange of ideas. This
extraordinarily vital period, spanning from the mid-17th century to the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, saw discoveries and improvements
in virtually every field of human endeavor, including astronomy, mathematics, chemistry,
physics, biology, mechanics, engineering, navigation, metallurgy, medicine, anatomy,
agriculture, horticulture, linguistics, antiquities, history, geography, exploration,
architecture, marine design, manufacturing, music, the fine arts and philosophy and this
whole dynamic process was undertaken and driven mainly by members of the
bourgeoisie or middle-class although not without the enthusiastic patronage of many of
the nobility. The Church, however, was often hostile towards scientific or philosophical
propositions which it deemed contrary to Christian dogma or scripture.

Developing in parallel with the Age of Enlightenment was the rise of Liberalism as a
socio-political movement. Liberal thinking was concerned with the rights of individuals
and the concept that the state should exist to protect the rights-of and lawful interests of
individual citizens with especial emphasis on equality of opportunity and equal justice.
The principal pillars of Liberalism were freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and
speech, the rule of law and equal treatment of all citizens by the justice system, equal
rights, limitations on the powers of government, transparent government, and individual
right to private property. The concept that individuals are the basis of law and society
and that society exists to further the ends of individuals without favour to any particular
class or rank was, of course, close to being the opposite to the state of affairs that
existed in most European states during the 18th century, being that of the absolutist

14
monarchical system where the individual citizens served and supported a paramount
prince and his elite coterie of nobles and grand bourgeoisie. It is therefore not surprising
that Liberal thought attracted the hostility of the established authorities including the
Roman Catholic Church, itself a land-owning power of some importance and an
institution which had a hand-in-glove relationship with the nobility. Not only that, but the
Church feared that Liberalism would deprive the Church of its monopoly on education,
its self-assumed right to impose its moral mores on the private lives of individuals and
its claim to ultimate and unchallengeable authority on all matters of conscience and
religious belief - God forbid, indeed, that citizens should make their own laws or even
think freely! Not only that, but many a Liberal thinker had begun to question the
established system - especially the cost of maintaining extravagant monarchies and
supporting pointless wars through taxes. Neither did the Church escape the cold eye of
reason when Liberals began to question the cost of maintaining a top-heavy and non-
productive religious institution. Clearly, Liberalism was on a collision course with the old
order.

As with the scientific and cultural enlightenment, Liberalism was born-along on its
course in the hearts and minds of the middle-class, with some support from the more
enlightened members of the nobility, and it was a middle-class which, in every country,
was increasingly in the executive control of commerce, trade, manufacturing, law, the
military, the civil service and indeed the day to day management of society as a whole.
But, with Britain being a notable exception, Liberalism was not spread and organized
through political parties during the 18th century simply because few countries had a
parliament or popular forum in which political parties could flourish without fear of
persecution. Instead, Liberal ideas were communicated by way of the customary means
of communication used by the middle-class, namely through personal contacts or, in
modern parlance, through networking. Apart from personal introductions, middle-class
people increased their circle of friends and useful acquaintances in a number of ways
and, during the 17th and 18th centuries, it became the vogue to meet in taverns, coffee
houses and tea houses and all manner of clubs and societies sprang-up in addition to
the social salons of the nobility and gentry where presentable, mannerly and talented
middle-class gentlemen were made welcome.

One such society was the Freemasons and from a study of the times in which
Freemasonry initially grew and flourished it is clear that it represented a society of, in
the main, middle-class men thoroughly imbued with the spirit and philosophy of
Liberalism. Not only that, but Freemasonry was the very embodiment of the Liberal spirit
and in its organization a model of the Liberal ideal of government. Freemasonry was,
and is, in effect a parallel society to that of everyday society. In everyday society a
man's standing and his social acceptance, his prospects, his circle of friends and, more
particularly, his treatment by society were conditional on his station in life, his religion,
his politics, his nationality or race, his material worth, his social skills, his occupation, his
achievements or lack of them, even his family - but within Freemasonry he was treated
unconditionally as an equal and his acceptance as a brother depended only on his
adherence to the code of moral and ethical conduct befitting a Freemason.

15
Moreover, Freemasonry was an autonomous, self-constituted society which neither
sought nor obtained permission for its existence from either prince or priest. It made its
own laws and enshrined its code of conduct and rights of members in a constitution and
its system of self-government was democratic, based on equal rights and obligations for
all members and a spirit of harmonious decision-making, free from confrontational
factionalism which might be caused by differences in the personal beliefs of members.
No member was judged or discounted or held to account for his personal beliefs only in
so far as he might transgress the code of conduct befitting a Freemason. What is more,
Freemasons applied these principles, being no less than the fair and just way to treat a
friend and neighbour, to society as a whole - not merely to their brethren in
Freemasonry. Clearly, Freemasonry was the antithesis of the autocratic and unjust form
of government by a select few over the lives of the vast majority of mankind represented
by the monarchical / ecclesiastical alliance prevalent in most of Europe in the 18th
century.

The last quarter of the 18th century was to see two-revolutions which were to herald
sweeping changes to the political life of Europe, the American Revolution of 1775 and
the French Revolution of 1789. Both revolutions were dominated by Liberal thinking,
produced liberal constitutions and both revolutions produced republics although this was
not the original intention in either case. Significantly, individual Freemasons featured
prominently in both revolutions, once-more fuelling the mindset that Freemasonry was
bent on the destruction of the traditional order of society founded on the alliance of
Church and monarchy. This mindset, however, fails to recognize that Freemasons were
also prominent in the forces opposing revolution and that all French lodges were forced
to close until 1792.

In Spain the reign of Charles IV saw the rise of the opportunist minister and court
favourite Manuel de Godoy and the eclipse and eventual banishment of the Count of
Aranda. Aranda was replaced as head of the Grande Oriente by the Count of Montijo.
Once again, the laws against Freemasonry remained in force but, as in the previous
reign, there was little in the way of forceful persecution of Freemasonry. Nevertheless
there is some indication that Freemasons were active in political opposition to the
government as evidenced by the republican conspiracy of 3 February 1795 on the Hill of
San Blas where the Freemason Snr. Juan Mariano Picornell y Gomila was a prominent
leader. It is known that arms were collected in the Respectable Lodge of Spain before
the demonstration which included at least six-members of that Lodge in addition to Snr.
Picornell. All of them were arrested and sentenced to death but the sentence was later
reduced to one of life imprisonment at Laguayra in Panama from whence they managed
to escape. In 1797 these republicans organized another conspiracy in Caracas in
Venezuela. This conspiracy, attributed by Venezuelan historians to the Freemasons,
failed and most of the leaders were executed but Snr. Picornell and another of the
original San Blas conspirators, Snr. Manuel Cortes, survived to link-up with fellow
Freemason, Francisco de Miranda, to raise the flag of rebellion in South America. Both
Picornell and Cortes were prolific writers of revolutionary material and were clearly
influenced by the Jacobinism of the French Revolution. Picornell was especially noted
for his translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

16
The year 1808 was a pivotal one for Spanish Freemasonry, starting with the Mutiny of
Aranjuez resulting in the capture of the unpopular Prime Minister, Manuel De Godoy
and, following Godoy's formal dismissal, the abdication of the King. This extraordinary
court mutiny was organized by none other than the Grand Master of the Grande
Oriente, the Count of Montijo, and further resulted in the accession of Fernando VII but
after little over a month in power the new king was forced to abdicate in favour of
Napoleon Bonaparte who in turn appointed his own brother Joseph as King of Spain.
The French Army was able to initially invade Spain with little difficulty as a considerable
number of Spain's best troops were actually on loan to France and stationed in
Denmark! The French, however, were unable to take Cadiz and it is there that the
Spaniards formed a parliament or Cortes to organize resistance against the occupation.
Other cities and regions also organized resistance and gradually the remnants of the
Spanish army were joined by local militias in a guerilla war which tied-down a French
army of 250,000 and which inflicted enormous casualties upon them.

The reign of Joseph Bonaparte was, however, very beneficial for Spanish Freemasonry.
Joseph himself had been Grand Master of the French Grand Orient since 1806 having
been made a Freemason at the Tuilleries in 1805. It is alleged that Napoleon Bonaparte
himself was made a Mason in the Army Philadelphe Lodge sometime between 1795
and 1798. Be that as it may, Joseph Bonaparte was an avid Freemason and quickly set-
about supporting the craft in Spain starting with the disbanding of the Inquisition and the
annulment of all laws prohibiting Freemasonry. Under his auspices a Grand Orient
subordinate to the French Grand Orient was set up in the very building once occupied
by the Inquisition. Snr. Jose de Azanza was installed as Grand Master of this Grand
Orient. New Lodges were chartered in Madrid (7), San Sebastian, Vitoria, Santander,
Zaragoza, Salamanca, Santona, Talavere de la Reina, Almagro, Figueres, Gerona,
Manzanares, Barcelona and Sevilla. This was followed by a Supreme Council for the
Scottish Rite. In 1810 a Grand Consistory of the 32nd Degree was constituted at Madrid
subordinate to the Supreme Council for France. In 1811, de Grasse-Tilly organized a
Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree and this body then constituted a Grand Orient of
Spain and the Indies consisting as its nucleus of the Respectable Lodge of the Star, and
the Lodge of Charity and Santa Julia. Several Freemasons held important posts in
Joseph's government, including Snr. Jose de Azanza as Chairman of the National
Government and there can be little doubt that the brethren of the Lodges constituted
under the Napoleonic regime in the French controlled areas can be counted among the
afrancesados, those who favoured the re-constructuring of Spain on the liberal, French
model. To other Spaniards, however, the afrancesados were regarded as collaborators
and traitors and we can readily perceive another module in the anti-masonic argument,
that Spanish Freemasonry was anti-Spanish and controlled by foreign interests. This
was one of General Franco's favourite accusations against Freemasonry.

On the other side of the coin Freemasons were active in support of the Assembly or
Cortes of Cadiz and were especially active in the formulation of the celebrated liberal
and democratic Constitution of 1812 which was to be a landmark document in the future
constitutional history of Spain and of the emerging Hispanic republics of Central and

17
South America. This constitution is widely regarded as having been largely inspired by
the Masonic deputies to the Cortez, including Snr. Diego Munoz Torrero, Snr. Augustin
Arguelles, Snr. Jose Maria Calatrava and several others. The presence of several
Masonic deputies and the predominance of liberal deputies did not, however, prevent
the Cortes from confirming on 19 January 1812, the old order of 1751 forbidding
Freemasonry in Spain.

The overthrow of French domination in Spain in 1813 saw the restoration of Fernando
VII to the throne. Despite the fact that the Cortes of Cadiz was ostensibly a government
of regency in his name, he was determined to reign as an absolute ruler and duly
dissolved the Cortes and refused to accept the Constitution of 1812. In 1814 he
reinstituted the Inquisition and permitted the return of the Jesuits. On 4 May 1814 he
declared the Freemasons guilty of treason and, on 15 August 1814, Pope Pius VII
issued a decree against Freemasonry prescribing both spiritual and corporal
punishments for involvement in Freemasonry. This decree was approved by Fernando
VII and was embodied in an edict of the Spanish Inquisition of 2 January 1815 which
offered a Term of Grace of fifteen-days during which penitents would be received
pending which the full force of the canonical and secular laws would be enforced. The
response was inconsiderable and the term was subsequently extended until 14 May
1815. King Fernando in the meantime had ordered the secular laws enforced and on 14
September 1814 some 25-arrests were made for suspicion of Masonic membership.
Amongst those arrested, tortured and imprisoned were the General Alava, who had
been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, the Marquis de Tolosa, Dr. Luque,
physician to the king, and the prominent scholar Mariana. Strangely, the parish priest of
San Jorje in Coruna, was prosecuted by the Inquisition in 1815 for having reported the
existence of a Masonic Lodge to the civil authorities but not to the Church and in several
cases in 1817 the Inquisition super-added a prosecution and punishment of its own on
top of the sentence handed down by the royal courts. One of the most unusual cases
was that of the priest, Vicente Perdiguera, who was actually commissioner of the Toledo
tribunal of the Inquisition who, when tried by the Madrid tribunal, was found guilty of
involvement in Freemasonry of which he made no secret and escaped with the mild
penalty of being deprived of his office and insignia of the Inquisition. But, in spite of the
alleged strength of Freemasonry in Spain in those days and the vigour of the Inquisition
the number of cases that came before the Inquisition can be regarded as surprisingly
small. Between 1780 and 1815 there were only 19-cases, then a sudden increase to 25
in 1816 reducing to 14 in 1817, 9 in 1818 and 7 in 1819. To this may be added cases in
the civil and military courts which did not reach the attention of the Inquisition but overall
the Masonic purge of Fernando VII was far from achieving its objective even though the
Grand Master, the Count of Montijo, was held in the secret prison of the Inquisition.

In 1818 the Spanish Freemasons took some steps to rationalize the somewhat
confusing state of the craft in that country when Col. Rafael de Riego and Snr. Augustin
Arguelles amongst others organized the merging of the two-supreme councils of the
Scottish Rite with de Riego as Grand Master and it was Riego who led the rebellion of
troops awaiting departure to fight in America which in turn led to the popular uprising
which forced Fernando VII to accept the Constitution of 1812, abolish the Inquisition and

18
expel the Jesuits by which all imprisoned Freemasons were set at liberty. Amongst
those released was the Count of Montijo, Grand Master of the Spanish Gran Oriente.
The Count of la Bisbal, who had been sent to crush the rebellion was himself a
Freemason and declared for the Constitution and the Freemason, General Ballestaros,
was responsible for releasing prisoners held by the Inquisition.

The short-lived freedom of the Spanish Freemasons came to an end in 1823 when
Fernando VII solicited the military aid of France to overthrow the liberal government and
restore his absolute powers. Riego was shot and on 1 August 1824 the king issued a
new edict by which all Freemasons who failed to renounce the society within thirty-days
were on discovery to be hanged within 24-hours without trial. The King alleged that
Freemasons had taken part in the revolution of 1820 and he was no-doubt mindful of
the leading role played by Freemasons such as Francisco de Miranda and Simon
Bolivar in the liberation of the Spanish colonies in the Americas, a bitter blow for Spain.
To the allegations of anticlericalism, revolutionary republicanism and foreign dominance
the Spanish Freemasons were to be accused of complicity in the loss of the Spanish
Empire in the Americas. Indeed, there is some evidence that Freemasons were
proactive in this regard, Francisco de Miranda having formed a lodge in Cadiz at the
time of the Cadiz government called the Lodge of Rational Knights of Lautoro for the
specific purpose of promoting the independence of the American colonies. Since 1821,
the newly independent state of Mexico had been ruled by Masonic political parties
representing the York Rite and Scottish Rite respectively.

On 9 September 1825 the new edict was put into effect when a lodge at Grenada was
surprised and seven of its members were executed without delay whist a candidate was
sentenced to eight-years hard labour. In the years following several others were victims
of this harsh law. In the Antilles the Marquis de Cavrilano and Ferdinand Alvarez de
Soto Mayer were sentenced to death, likewise in Spain one Antonio Caro was hanged
and in Barcelona the Master of a Lodge, Lieutenant Colonel Galvez was hanged and
two members of his lodge condemned to the galleys for life. This period of savage
repression of Freemasonry occurred in spite of the fact that the King Fernando's own
brother the Infante Francisco de Paula de Bourbon had, since 1823, been Grand Master
of the Grand Orient of Spain.

The death of King Fernando in 1833 ushered in the regencies of Maria Cristina (1833-
1840) and Baldomero Espartero (1840-1842) and the reign of Isabella II (1843-1868)
and a complicated period in Spanish politics beset by civil wars initiated by the Carlist
faction and a series of military political interventions know as pronunciamentos. The
Carlist factor was caused by Fernando himself when, shortly before his death, he issued
an edict whereby his daughter Isabella would succeed him in contravention to Spanish
custom whereby the eldest male heir such succeed, in this case his younger brother
Carlos. The edict was an immediate cause for civil war upon the King's death and the
declaration of the regency of Queen Maria Cristina in favour of the infant Isabella,
Prince Carlos gaining powerful support from the ultra-Catholic faction with a strong
power-base amongst the peasant smallholders of Navarra.

19
Throughout the era of the regencies and of the reign of Isabella II Spain there was a
constitutional monarchy which saw the government of Spain in the hands of Liberals
comprised of three-main factions, the Moderates, Progressives and Radicals which
corresponded respectively to Right, Centre and Left political alignments within the broad
Liberal philosophy. The differences between them were more to do with constitutional
theory rather than socio-economic ideology for all of the Liberal factions agreed on the
need for laissez-faire economics, that private business should be as free as possible
from government controls and interference. This touches upon what might be called a
crisis of identity for Liberalism brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of
Capitalism. The Industrial Revolution can be truly said to have commenced in late 18th
century Britain with the introduction of steam engine-powered machines which brought
mass production techniques to the manufacturing and textile industries The scientific
mind turned to invention, the business mind turned to how to make money from the
inventions through manufacturing and marketing and the commercial mind turned to
how to make more money from the money invested in industry.

Capitalism is quite simply the private control of industry and commerce for a profit and
obviously, no Liberal worth his salt could be any other than a supporter of Capitalism.
The effect of the capitalist-driven Industrial Revolution made a hugely detrimental socio-
economic impact on the working class of Britain and Europe. Not only the workers but
the peasants also - as the steam engine was put to work in the fields and as more and
more arable land was converted to sheep and cattle pasture. In Britain there was a
massive demographic shift in population from the countryside to the cities and towns
and the same but somewhat lesser process was to be felt in most of Western Europe,
Spain included. Social and workplace conditions for workers was often dire. Slum areas
sprang up everywhere, with the workers forced to pay capitalist landlords high rents for
substandard living quarters. The 19th century was a century of misery for the working
classes of Europe and with the Liberal and Conservative politicians offering few
beneficial solutions to the workers because of their reluctance to interfere with private
industry, the workers turned increasingly to socialism in its various forms. It was no
different in Spain, middle-class Liberal society, to which most Spanish Freemasons
belonged, lost touch with the working class. This was to have dire consequences in the
lead-up to the Spanish Civil War. Even so, due to limitations on franchise and factional
disorganization on the part of the socialist parties, the progressive wing of the Liberals
received the support of the majority of the urban masses until well into the 20th century.

A peculiarity of Spanish politics of the 19th century was the role of the army. Each
political faction had a following in the army, in particular amongst the senior officers who
were referred to as swords and it became a feature of Spanish politics for a senior
officer to lead his men on to the streets with the aim of toppling the government of the
day. A pronuciamento or declaration of principles would be made, the government
would hopefully peacefully bow out and a new government installed, following which the
army would dutifully return to barracks. From time to time the officers themselves would
place themselves at the head of government. This almost ritualistic process was unique
to Spain.

20
In spite of Liberal dominance in government, the laws against Freemasonry remained in
place and the Craft was forced to conduct its affairs in the strictest secrecy. Even so,
the Craft went from strength to strength but with increasing complexity as a number of
new jurisdictions were formed. The Grand Master of the Gran Oriente, Don Francisco
de Bourbon, managed to amalgamate the Ancient and Accepted Rite 1829 so that for
awhile there was a single jurisdiction but an anonymous Grand Orient announced itself
in 1843 and renamed itself the Grand Orient of Hesperique in 1848. The Grand Lodge
of Ireland formed a lodge at Algeciras in 1843 but the lodge was closed in 1858. The
original Grande Oriente established Orients at Madrid, Burgos, Badajoz, Barcelona,
Saragossa, Valencia, Corunna, Santander, Bilbao, Seville, Granada and Malaga.
Security was tight with only those personally known to the Grand Master admitted as
visitors. No lodge was permitted to keep written documents and a new password was
issued to all lodges each month.

In 1848 fresh persecutions broke out under the administration of Marshall Narvaez. Don
Francisco de Bourbon was excommunicated by the Pope and fled the country,
delegating authority to Charles Magnan. In 1853 the Lodge of St. John of Spain,
chartered under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of France, was betrayed by its
treasurer and closed by the Minister of Police. All members were arrested and Master,
Aurel Eybert, was sentenced to seven-years imprisonment, twelve others to four-years.
All were subsequently pardoned by Queen Isabella. Queen Isabella herself seems to
have turned a blind eye towards Freemasonry for her consort, Don Francisco d'Assissi,
was allegedly the Master of lodge in the palace itself. Several members of the royal
household were Freemasons, including the queen's preceptors, Snr. Quintana and Snr.
Ventura de la Vega, her tutor Arguelles and the palace manager Snr. Martin de los
Heros. Certainly, there were many Freemasons in the government and the army during
her reign. During this reign the Lodge of Morality and Philanthropy No. 1024 was formed
at Cadiz under the United Grand Lodge of England and there was also a lodge for
English-speaking Masons in Madrid. The Grand Orient of France warranted a lodge at
Minorca in 1860.

The reign of Queen Isabella came to an end with the Revolution of 1868 the prelude to
which was the uprising in Cadiz carried-out by Generals Pierrad, Moriones and
Contreras and supported by the political leaders Malcampo, Sagasta, Dulce, Prim, Ruiz
Zorilla and Mendez Nunez, all of whom were prominent Freemasons. Isabella was
replaced as monarch by Amadeus of Savoy, himself a Freemason but he abdicated
after a reign of only three-years and a republic was proclaimed. An immediate result of
these political developments was the removal of laws and restrictions on Freemasonry
but this led to even more confusion in the Spanish Masonic jurisdictions. Calatrava's
Grand Orient Hisperique was revived as the National Grand Orient of Spain in 1869.
The Grande Oriente Espanol under Magnan was also given new life. In 1870 however,
Magnan left for Santander and his office was transferred to Manuel Ruiz Zorilla. The
Grand Orient Lusitania (Portugal) also started warranting lodges in Spain, more or less
on the excuse that it could not fathom-out which of the Spanish Grand Orients was the
legitimate one. It is claimed that the Grand Orient Lusitania warranted as many as 83-
lodges in Spain compared to the 496-lodges of the Grande Oriente Espanol. This

21
seems to be an extraordinarily large number of lodges and the figure possibly includes
'side order' chapters. Also, the membership of lodges seems to have been quite small,
often no more than 30-members, which would have made it far easier to hold meetings
undetected by the authorities. Grand Master Zorilla was prime minister during the reign
of Amadeus and during that time he managed to conclude a Masonic treaty with the
Grand Lodge of Lusitania granting reciprocity of jurisdictions. On the abdication of
Amadues, Zorilla resigned as prime minister and as Grand Master and Magnan
resumed command, immediately to resign in favour of Snr. Carvajal. This caused a
schism when several Brethren seceded and elected General La Somera as Sovereign
Grand Commander who resigned after twelve-months in favour of Praxades Sagasta.
This body became known as the Grand Lodge of Spain and absorbed the Iberian Grand
Orient with 39-lodges, constituted by the Grand Orient of Portugal, rival to the Grand
Orient Lusitania. Add to that the National Grand Orient of Spain under the Marquis de
Seone and there were four-grand jurisdictions in Spain at that time. There was another
schism yet to come when, in 1875, one Juan Antonio Perez created a further body
known as the Regular Grand Orient. Also, in 1879, two-lodges withdrew from the Grand
Orient Lusitania and formed a Grand Central Masonic Consistory 32 deg at Malaga. A
further 13-lodges withdrew from the Grand Orient Lustania and formed themselves into
the Masonic Confederation of the Congress of Seville. The Seville Freemasons then, in
1881, divested themselves of all control over Freemasonry and essentially became an
allied order and on the same date members of the Craft erected the Grand Spanish
Independent Symbolic Lodge with jurisdiction over the three-Craft degrees only. In 1874
the Iberian Grand Orient was revived and in 1876 it reduced the 33 degrees to seven,
thus forming the Spanish Reformed Rite.

By 1888 the Spanish Masonic jurisdictions had resolved into the following institutions:

Grand National Orient of Spain (Grande Oriente National de Espana) under Grand
Master Jose Maria Pantoja.

Spanish Grand Orient (Grande Oriente Espanol) under Sovereign Grand Commander
Pio Vinader.

Spanish Regular Grand Orient (Grande Oriente Espanol Regulare) under Sovereign
Grand Commander Juan Antonio Perez.

Symbolic Grand Lodge of Spain (Gran Logia Simbolica Espanola) under Grand Master
Jose Lopez Padilla.

Masonic Iberian-American Confederation under Grand Master Jaime Marti.

Sovereign Grand Council of the Rite of Memphis and Misraim under Grand Master
Ricardo Lopez Salaverry.

A Catalan-Balearic Symbolic Grand Lodge had also been established in Barcelona in

1886 on strongly Catalan political lines but this Lodge adopted a national structure in

22
1921 and was renamed the Spanish Grand Lodge (Gran Logia Espanol).

In the following year, 1889, the Grand National Orient of Spain merged with the Spanish
Grand Orient (Grande Oriente Espanol) under Sovereign Grand Commander Professor
Miguel Moyrayta and within a few years had gained widespread international
recognition from other jurisdictions, notably the Grand Lodge of Scotland but not the
United Grand Lodge of England which applied the same criteria for regularity as it did
for the Grand Orient of France, that it did not approve of a Masonic jurisdiction governed
by the Antient and Accepted Rite. The first amendments of the Constitution of the
Grande Oriente Espanol was enacted in 1902 to mark the legalization of Freemasonry
in Spain and the amendments restructured the obedience on a federal basis according
to the traditional kingdoms of Spain in order to achieve a spread of regional Masonic
organizations. The federal structure, equivalent to state, provincial or district Grand
Lodge structures in some other countries was slow to get off the ground in Spain but in
a Grand National Assembly on October 1923 a reorganization was agreed-to which
created a Grand Lodge in Central Spain based on Madrid, one in the Northwest based
on Gijon, Northeast based on Barcelona, East or Levante in Alicante, South in Seville,
Southeast in Cartagena and of Morocco in Tangier. In the same year Snr. Miguel Primo
de Rivera y Oraneja seized power in a military coup and the persecution of the Spanish
Freemasons began anew.

Over the period following the abdication of King Amadeus in February 1873 and the
short-lived First Republic which lasted only until December 1874 and the period of the
restoration of the monarchy up until the advent of the Primo di Rivera dictatorship the
government of Spain remained dominated by the Liberals, power alternating on an
almost yearly basis between the Moderate and Progressive factions, each of them
consisting of an representing the interests of the middle-class elite. Although, as
Liberals, these politicians were not insensible to the need for social justice and reform,
their desire to maintain the status quo and their reluctance to interfere and to apply
government control of private interests rendered them inadequate to redress the
increasing socio-economic injustices present in Spanish society which affected the
working class and peasants in particular and to combat the powerful new political
ideologies which claimed to have the answers. Perhaps the black American activist
Stokely Carmichael summed up Liberalism best when he said "What the Liberal really
wants is to bring about change which will not in any way endanger his position."

The political movements that in the later quarter of the 19th century sought to galvanize
the Spanish workers and peasants to revolutionary action can all be broadly defined as
socialist. The social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE - Partido
Socialists Obrero Espanol) was formed in 1879 and in 1888 came along the General
Union of Workers (UGT - Union General de Trabajadores) which tended to work in
close cooperation with the PSOE as the industrial arm of the social-democratic political
movement. And, in Spain, the anarchist movement attracted a strong following,
resolving itself in 1910 into the National Confederation of Workers (CNT - Confederation
National del Trabajo) and the International Association of Workers (AIT - Association
International de los Trabajadores), with the eventual formation in 1927 of the Iberian

23
Anarchist Federation (FAI - Federation Anarquista Iberica) Following the Russian
Revolution of 1917 the Spanish Communist Party was formed in 1920 (PCE - Partido
Comunista de Espanol) and in 1935 the anti-Stalinist Workers Party of Marxist
Unification (POUM - Partido Obrero de Unification Marxiste). Common to all socialist
movements was the aim of state control of industry, power to the workers and a more
equitable distribution of wealth. The anarchists had no time for central government and
envisaged all aspects of Spanish society run by local committees. Indeed, the local
committee concept in all socialist movements was popular with the workers who felt
they could be involved directly in a truly democratic process, but in reality it was not
difficult for party bosses to control committees through their hard-core party members. It
was such men who increasingly organized the workers to militant action, not only by
strikes in the workplace, but also in acts of street demonstrations and violence. The
Church, long thought-of by the workers as the "Church of the Rich" was a particular
target, with church-burnings not uncommon. Likewise, it was not difficult for the socialist
party leaders to drum-up a portrayal of the middle-class as a whole as the oppressors of
the working classes. The notion of 'class warfare' in which the workers would triumph
and establish the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' became and increasing ideological
platform for the socialists.

For the Spanish Freemasons the period was one of mixed fortunes. On the one hand
numerous individual Freemasons achieved notability and were active in positions of
power and influence in central government and throughout Spain and their reputations
reflected lustre upon the institution of Freemasonry at a time when they were no-longer
inclined to be secretive about their membership. Such men as Professor Miguel de
Morayta, Snr. Bernardo Orcasitas, Mayor of Madrid; and Snr. Praxedes Mateo Sagasta,
seven-times Prime Minister of Spain - were amongst the many who attracted admiration
both of themselves and Freemasonry. Spanish Freemasonry went from strength to
strength and was successful in attracting numerous members from the ranks of the
armed forces, the civil service, politics and academia.

On the other side of the coin was the continued opposition to Freemasonry from the
Catholic Church and its supporters. Catholic opposition was fueled by the dismissal of
Isabella II and the disastrous outcome of the First Republic in which numerous
Freemasons were deeply involved. Later, in 1898, the Freemasons, especially Premier
Sagasta, were blamed for the loss of Spain's remaining colonies, the Philippines, Cuba,
Puerto Rico and Guam as a result of the war against the United States of America. The
Unification of Italy, completed in 1861 and spearheaded by the Freemasons Giuseppe
Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, which saw the loss to the Vatican of the Papal States
incurred the particular animosity of the Catholic Church towards all Freemasons, not
just the Italians. In 1865, Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Multiplices Inter accused
Freemasonry of conspiracy against the Church and with fomenting revolutions and
uprisings and, in 1884, Pope Leo XIII released his famous encyclical Humanus Genus
which remains the strongest condemnation of Freemasonry to date and which was the
first of several vociferous condemnations from that Pope. It was also Leo XIII who, in his
encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891, called for political Catholicism to counter what he
considered to be the anti-clericalism of the Liberal and socialist movements. Of

24
particular concern to the Church was the increasing secularization in Western Europe of
government, of education and the care of the sick and poor, the beginnings of the
welfare state. The Church accused Freemasonry of trying to take-over the minds of the
young and of imposing its values on society. In Spain the Carlist movement rallied to the
Catholic cause and the new parties Popular Action and Catholic Action were eventually
united in 1933 under the banner of the right wing Spanish Confederation of the
Autonomous Right (CEDA - Confederacion Espanola de Derechas Autonomas). A
feature of Catholic thinking came to be a belief in the existence of the Contubernio, the
supposed Judeo-Masonic-Communist-Liberal plot against the Church in order to
achieve world domination. This myth was fuelled by two-notorious hoaxes, the Leo Taxil
hoax breaking-in the 1890's and the publication of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
in 1903. Both hoaxes were exposed but gained traction nevertheless and are to this day
widely believed amongst anti-Masonry groups. Thus the Spanish Freemasons, as
always predominantly Liberal and middle-class in outlook, found themselves in the last
quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, wedged between the
burgeoning socialism of the working classes which ultimately was unlikely to show any
tolerance of bourgeoisie institutions such as Freemasonry and the Catholic
traditionalists who had been opposed to Freemasonry from the outset.

The dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera from 1923 to 1930 held the increasing
polarization of Spanish political trends in a state of suspension. He tried to solve Spain's
problems with his own brand on non-partizan common-sense and he achieved much
progress but the effects of the Great Depression of 1929 and popular dissatisfaction
with the Rif War in Morocco which went on until 1926 resulted in a dive in his popularity
and military plots against him and he resigned in disillusionment. Spanish Freemasonry
suffered because it became clear to the dictator that the Craft in Spain had become
politicized and was opposed to his dictatorship. Consequently, Masonic meetings were
repeatedly banned and, in 1928, some 200-Freemasons were arrested for plotting
against the State, including the Grand Master of the Grand Orient, Snr. Demofilo de
Buen Lozano. In 1927, General Primo de Rivera spoke of "Freemasons, Communists
and professional politicians who are capable of wavering in their love of Spain". But
there was confusion in the legal rules and inconsistency of application so that whilst, for
instance, a Masonic assembly forbidden in Madrid was allowed to proceed in Barcelona
by the military governor of the city. Freemasonry continued to grow with Grand Orient
register showing 85-lodges for 1927 up to 105 and a membership of 5000 for 1931 and
the Spanish Grand Lodge up from 10 in 1922 to 52 and a membership of 1800 in 1931.

The fall of the dictatorship which led to the stepping-down and self-imposed exile of
Alfonso XIII in 1931 was followed by the declaration of the Second Republic and the
election of a Liberal republican led government under Snr. Manuel Azana Diaz. Azana
was made a Freemason in 1932. Not only that but the Freemasonry accounted for 17-
Ministers, 5-Deputy Secretaries, 15-Directors General, 183- out of 470-Deputies to
Parliament, 5-Ambassadors, 9-Generals of Division and 12-generals of Brigade.
Amongst those who were to play leading roles in the future of Spain were Snr. Alejandro
Lerroux y Gracia, Minister of State; Snr. Diego Martinez Barrio, Minister of War and Snr.
Jose Giral, Minister of the Navy. Not to mention Snr. Jose Salmeron, Director General

25
of Public Works and Mountains. The Mayor of Madrid, Snr. Pedro Rico Lopez was a
Freemason, as was Snr. Jaime Ayguade, Mayor of Barcelona. The former Grand
Master, Snr. Demofilo de Buen was Counselor of State. Indeed, a sizeable proportion of
the membership of Spanish Freemasonry were in a position of power and influence
during the Second Republic.

The Azana government embarked on a program of reforms which was remarkably like
the declaration of principles recommended for the new republican Constitution by the
Grand Lodge of Spain which included freedom of thought and conscience, separation of
Church and State, universal suffrage, free and compulsory education, free justice and
trial by jury, civil marriage and divorce laws, abolition of the death penalty. The Grand
Lodge called on those who favour 'the Progress of Humanity' to 'form Masonic nuclei in
their respective places of residence.'

The government accordingly granted the vote to women, disestablished the Church and
appropriated property belonging to religious orders amongst other reforms. These
measures offended large sections of the public tending to Catholic traditionalism whilst
at the same time the government dealt severely with socialist attempts to disrupt the
state. Rightists accused the government of being party to a supposed Judeo-Masonic
Communist conspiracy, socialists became ever-more restive. Catalan and Basque
separatists kept up unrelenting pressure for the granting of regional autonomies. The
army, smarting from expenditure cuts and forced retirements, began a long process of
planning a possible coup should the state descend into chaos.

The 1933 election saw a big swing to the right and it was Freemason Alejandro Lerroux,
leader of the Radical Republican Party of the Liberal centrist bloc who was asked to
form a government, rather than Snr. Gil Robles and CEDA. Gil Robles nevertheless
pledged the support of the rightist bloc. But the socialist / anarchist left-wing bloc was in
outrage, clearly unable to accept democratic outcomes which did not suit them. The
involvement of Snr. Diego Martinez Barrio, former Grand Master of the Spanish Grand
Orient, and huge numbers of other Freemasons in government brought fresh
accusations that Freemasonry had become politicized. In 1934 Mauricio Karl published
a book entitled "The Enemy: Marxism, Anarchism, Freemasonry", and in the following
year a sequel entitled "Assassins of Spain: Marxism, Anarchism, Masonry". Francisco
Luis published "Masonry against Spain".

In December 1933 a new dynamic was added to Spanish politics with the foundation of
the Falange by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the former dictator. Based on
the Italian fascism of Benito Mussolini, the Falange advocated a centralized state
headed by an autocratic but reformist government, a corporate state run on military
lines in the interests of efficiency and modernization. The grievances of all classes
would be addressed but the interests of the individual would be subjected to the
interests of the state, behind which all citizens were expected to unite. Fascism was
anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist at the same time, a right-wing authoritarian movement
but with a marked socialist slant to its ideology, it has been described as 'middle-class
socialism.' Spanish and Italian fascism was strong on nationalism but without the race-

26
hatred of Nazism and the totalitarian intrusion of both Nazism and Stalinist communism
into the religious life of the people. The Falange attracted support from affluent middle-
class youth who were urged by their leaders to take violent measures against the
socialist factions. For them, it was fun to be fascist as they toured the streets gunning
down 'Chicago style' the workers leaders. During the Civil War the Falange formed the
eyes and ears and the internal police of the Nationalist cause, building dossiers of
thousands of names of socialists, communists, Freemasons and anarchists, in effect a
'death list' of those doomed for extinction or punishment in Nationalist Spain. This is
what General Mola meant when he said he had a 'Fifth-Column' working inside
Republican held Madrid.

The Larroux government soon found itself the target of a revolution from the Marxist left,
especially from the armed and dangerous miners of Asturias and Generals Goded,
Lopez Ochoa and Franco were called-in to put down the insurrection, which they did in
an efficient and ruthless manner. General Batet put paid to Catalunya's bid for
autonomy for the meantime. Franco was made Chief of Staff of the Army which he
hoped to modernize but it was not long before the Larroux government was caught in a
gambling and corruption scandal in which Larroux, Gil Robles and other party leaders
as well as several Freemasons in government were implicated. New elections in 1936
saw a narrow victory for the leftist Popular Front over the rightist National Front with the
Liberal centrist parties holding the balance. The centrists decided to support the Popular
Front and another government under Manuel Azana was formed, but this time Azana
could make no headway against the socialists who clamoured for an all-out social
revolution. Foremost in the drive to radicalize Spanish socialism was Snr. Francisco
Largo Caballero, the so-called 'Spanish Lenin' who claimed to have planted 'communist
cells' everywhere and who thundered-about creating the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'
Largo in effect declared class warfare and, in the shape of an army-led rightist rebellion,
he got it.

The rightist-rebellion, which became known under General Franco's leadership as the
National Movement, consisted of monarchists, Carlists, Falangists and Catholic
conservatives, led by roughly half of the Army of Spain which had risen in rebellion. The
Catholic Church was quick to proclaim its support for the Nationalists and the rebellion
took on the guise of a 'Crusade' to liberate Spain from the Marxist, Anarchist, Masonic
Contubernio, the anti-Spanish atheist conspiracy. Members of these groups were
hunted-down and summarily executed in the early stages of the war, their persecution
continuing under a system of 'kangaroo courts' once Franco decided he needed to show
the world the 'legality' of Nationalist justice. A magazine based in Seville was typical of
many Nationalist propaganda organs in publishing lists of Masons, whilst the newspaper
El Defensor de Cordoba ranted "Let us fight to form a single national front against Jews
and the Masonic Lodges." A Falangist newspaper called for a 'crusade' against
Freemasonry and another wrote of "the damage that this pernicious society has caused
Spain".

The Catholic Church was vociferous in its condemnation of Freemasonry. Cardinal

Isidro Goma y Tomas, Primate of Spain, proclaimed that the nationalists were fighting

27
against the "bastard soul of the sons of Moscow" - the "Jews and the Masons" and
"Jews and masons poisoned the national soul with absurd notions". The Bishop of
Salamanca Enrique Pla y Deniel issued his pastoral letter entitled 'The Two Cities'
demanded the reversal of all anti-clerical laws brought-in by the republic and
condemned Freemasonry and called for a crusade against it. "Let their seed be
stamped out!" cried a priest in Burgos. During 1937, one Father Jean Tusquets started
work in the National Press Service and together with Franco's personal chaplain, Father
Jose Maria Bulart, in their capacity of members of the Delegation of Special Services
compiled and index of 80,000-suspected Spanish Masons, even though there were no
more than 5000 spread across all jurisdictions, many of them by that time dead,
imprisoned or exiled. The mere suspicion of Masonic affiliation was enough to incur the
firing squad or worse. In one case, it was reported that Masons were hurled into the
working engines of steam trains. Lodge buildings were torched or destroyed by artillery
fire, more and more lists of members were obtained and the executions went on. By
December 1937, all Masons who had not escaped zones under Nationalist control were
deemed to be dead. The oppression was so ruthless that senior German and Italian
officers fighting on the side of the Nationalists were shocked into voicing their concerns
to the Nationalist High Command. Their pleas were blandly ignored. It is reputed that
over 10,000-Spaniards were arrested for alleged Masonic membership during the
Franco regime.

From the outset the Nationalist army was led by officers who were, or had been,
Freemasons. Such men were General Jose Sanjurjo Sacanell, nominal head of the
Nationalist Spanish State who was killed in a plane crash at the very beginning of the
war. Another was General Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer, the Chairman of the Committee of
National Defense, who handed-over to General Franco. These men, along with
Generals Mola, Goded, Ochoa and Queipo del Llano had been members of the Military
Brotherly Union formed in 1925, in all 21- out of 23-divisional generals on the active list.
Most of these divisional generals had subsequently resigned from the Craft, but some
remained but were powerless to prevent the persecution of their Brothers. Of the two
generals who had refused to join the Military Brotherly Union, one Francisco Franco
Bahamonde had formed an obsessive aversion to Freemasonry and single-handedly
prevented the re-establishment of Freemasonry in Spain until his death in 1975.

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born on 4 December 1892 in the coastal town of El
Ferrol in the north-western province of Galicia. The son of a naval officer, he was
originally destined for a naval career, but cuts to the intake of officer cadets to the Naval
Academy denied him that opportunity and he entered instead, at the age of 14, the
Infantry Academy at Toledo, graduating after three years as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was
transferred to active service in Morocco in 1912 at the age of 19 and in 1913 was
promoted to 1st Lieutenant in an elite regiment of native cavalry. In 1915 he became the
youngest captain in the Spanish army but was wounded in the abdomen the following
year and was transferred to Spain to recover. In 1920 he was chosen as second in
command of the newly formed Spanish Foreign Legion under command of the
legendary Lt. Col. Millan Astray, who coined the phrase "Death to Intelligence, Long
Live Death". Franco succeeded to full command of the Legion in 1923 and in the same

28
year he married the beautiful young aristocrat Carmen Polo y Martinez Valdez whom he
had courted for ten-years. The couple were well-suited and during a happy marriage
only broken by Franco's death in 1975 there was not a breath of scandal attached to
either of them. With Franco in command, the Legion played a crucial part in the war
against the Moroccan rebels and Franco became a national hero when he led his troops
in the final victorious campaign. In 1926, at the age of 33, he was promoted to
Brigadier-General and in 1928 was made director of the new General Military Academy
in Saragossa. In 1931 the Academy was dissolved and Franco was demoted but with
the change of government in 1933 he was recalled and promoted to Major-general and
in this capacity put-down the Asturian miner's strike of 1934. In 1935 he was appointed
Chief of Staff of the Spanish Army but with another change of government in 1936, he
was appointed military governor of the Canary Islands from whence he joined the
Nationalist rebellion of 18 July, initially as commander of the Army of Africa. He was
proclaimed Generalisimo or commander in chief of the Nationalist forces on 1 October
1936, at the same time proclaimed Head of State. From that point on, Franco never
allowed opposition to his rule to develop.

From the outset of his military career he gained a reputation for being a thoroughly
professional, hard-working, brave and meticulous officer, a strict disciplinarian with,
however, a genuine concern for the welfare of his men. He was a shrewd and careful
tactical planner who instilled in his officers and men the need to know and understand
the terrain so as never to be taken by surprise. Although polite and cordial he was
introverted by nature, somewhat prim, and took little part in the social life of the army,
making few close friends but, at the same time, no enemies. He had no time for
sycophants and flatters, neither was he one himself. Above all, he was possessed of an
unflappable, calm self-confident personality which inspired confidence in him from
others. Although frequently photographed with a spontaneous beaming smile, he was
essentially unemotional, detached, analytical, seemingly dispassionate and possessed
of great patience. It was said of him that not even his collar knew what he was thinking.

Franco is usually described as a fascist dictator, but this is altogether a too simplistic
and misleading description. Franco certainly adopted the visual trappings of fascism at
a time when he needed German and Italian support and the cooperation of Spain's
homespun quasi-fascist Falangists but during World War 2 he gradually disowned the
Germans and Italians and emphasized his anti-communist stance. At home he merged
the Falangists with the other right-wing parties to form one big political party known as
the National Movement with himself at its head. The only Falangist policy he adopted
was the syndicalist system of trade union organization known as the 'vertical trade
union'. Effectively, Franco absorbed the Falangists into the Spanish oligarchy and
systematically reduced their power. He did the same to the Carlists, thus eliminating the
extreme elements within the National Movement. It is true that he authorized the
Falangists to form a division to fight alongside the Germans on the Eastern Front but he
forbade them to fight against the western democracies and it was a very good way of
getting rid of several thousands of avid and restless young fascists from Spanish soil.
Franco was at heart a monarchist with a belief that Spain had been a great country
under strong monarchs but weak under Liberal parliamentary rule. He believed that the

29
monarchy and the Catholic Church together were the cement which bound traditional
Spain together. On the other hand, when the Second Republic was proclaimed he
exhorted his cadets to remain loyal to the government and he personally cooperated
fully with the republican ministers in spite of misgivings about the ability of the Republic
to maintain law and order without the help of the army. His military colleagues were
unsure until the last moment of Franco's willingness to join a military rebellion. Above
all, he was intensely patriotic and regarded communism, anarchism, federalism and
Freemasonry as foreign ideologies which were bent of the destruction of traditional
Catholic Spain. He believed in the Contubernio, the existence of a Judeo-Masonic-
Communist plot for world domination using Spain as a crucible for revolution.

Franco appears to have had a obsessive hatred of Freemasonry judging by what

amounted to a personal campaign against it. On 18 July 1937 he made a radio
broadcast from Salamanca in which he referred to the interference of 'foreign powers
and lodges' and he criticized the military Masons within the Nationalist ranks of
vacillation at the same time referring to Diego Martinez Barrio's peace overtures of 1936
as "the treason of the lodges". In a press interview later that year he stated that the
leaders of the republic were for the most part Freemasons and that "before their duty to
their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient". He accused Freemasonry as
being "the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain" and
responsible for the murder of Calvo Sotelo on the orders of the Grand Secretary of
Freemasonry in Geneva."

In 1938, Franco decreed that all symbols associated with Freemasonry be erased from
the gravestones of Masons buried in Spain and in 1939 he banned Freemasonry
completely and made it a criminal offence for any man to have ever been a member of
the Craft. This did not, however, apply to his fellow army officers, such and General
Cabanellas and General Queipo de Llano, neither of whom suffered the slightest
disadvantage to their careers even though they were both of republican sympathies as
well as former Freemasons.

In March 1940 Franco issued a decree banning communism and Freemasonry on the
grounds that these movements had been responsible for the loss of the Spanish Empire
in the 19th century and had been the cause of the Civil War. Article 1 decreed that it was
to be a felony to be a communist or belong to a Masonic Lodge. Article 2 decreed that
all monies and properties belonging to those organizations was to be confiscated.
Article 4 defined those considered to be a Mason as those who had been initiated into
the Order and not expelled but excluding those expelled to protect them from the law.
Article 5 decreed that Masons and communists will be liable to be imprisoned for a
minimum of 12-years and one-day but the penalty could be aggravated by
circumstances described in Article 6 which specifies Masons who had obtained degrees
from the 18th to 33rd, had taken part in Annual Communications or had been part of a
committee or board of the Grand Orient of Spain. Article 7 requires all Masons and
communists to declare their affiliation within two-months of the date of the decree and
Article 8 decrees that Masons shall be removed immediately and indefinitely from
Government jobs, Public or Official Corporations, managerial and advisory positions

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with private companies and any other job of a confidential nature. In the same year a
special military court was created to suppress Freemasonry and it is estimated that
about 2000-men were imprisoned for up to 30-years. A more detailed summary derived
from Grand Lodge of Spain records lists 1608-Brethren sentenced to 12-years and one-
day imprisonment, 285 to 16-years and one-day, 133 to 20-years and one day and 159
to 30-years, all with loss of civil rights. On the other hand, Franco's Minister of Justice
claimed that 950-Freemasons had been imprisoned, of which 500 had been released by
1945.

Franco even went so far as to have a Masonic Lodge constructed in Salamanca in order
to demonstrate the supposed evils of Freemasonry and it was originally intended to be
part of a museum of Freemasonry. In the event this lodge room was never opened to
the public and is today part of the Spanish national archives. Also, according to authors
Xavi Casinos and Josep Brunet in their book Franco Contra Los Masones Franco had a
female spy known as 'Anita de S' feeding him covert information about the identity and
intentions of Spanish Freemasons exiled in Portugal. She was apparently married to a
leading Mason. In July 1943, Franco announced to three of his senior military chiefs that
a Masonic plot to restore the monarchy had been uncovered and this probably reflected
his awareness of a monarchist lobby group within Nationalist High Command, possibly
headed by General Andres Saliquet Zumeta.

Even after World War 2 ended, by which time it must have been abundantly obvious
that he faced no internal threat from Freemasonry, Franco continued wage war against
the imagined Masonic enemy. In an address to the Women's Section of the Falange he
punned to have 'disorientated Freemasonry' and have thwarted the 'Masonic super-
state', claiming that hostility to his regime from the foreign press were due to the
'devilish machinations of Freemasons hostile to God.' He said it was necessary to
eradicate Freemasonry in order to restore Spain. In that year 11-men were sentenced to
between 12- to 16-years for having written a pamphlet favourable to Freemasonry and
in 1946 one Mario Blasco Ibanez was sentenced to 12-years imprisonment for having
once belonged to a Masonic lodge, in spite of the fact he was blind, deaf and paralyzed.

Franco blamed Spain's exclusion from the United Nations was due to the fact that
Secretary-general, Mr.Trygve Lee and other prominent international diplomats were
high ranking Freemasons. These and other allegations against Freemasonry he
expounded in a series of 49-articles for the Falangist publication Arriba under the alias
Jakin Boor. Franco convinced himself that the alias concealed the true identity of the
author but it was fairly obvious to both Spaniards and foreigners. The articles were
published in book form in 1952. Franco was assisted in his attacks on Freemasonry by
his close friend Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco and when, on 20 December 1973, Carrero
Blanco was assassinated by Basque separatists, Franco claimed privately that it had
been a Masonic revenge killing, a claim later made in 1986 in a book by Leo Ferraro
entitled El Ultimo Protocolo - Las Secretas de Sionismo Mundial (The Last Protocol -
The Secret Keys of World Zionism). Even in his farewell address to the Spanish nation
on 1 October 1975, Franco made claim that Communism and Freemasonry were
enemies of Spain and that the European Economic Community was a left-wing Masonic

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conspiracy.

It has been claimed that Franco's antipathy towards Freemasonry was due to his having
been refused initiation into a Masonic lodge in Morocco, one to which his brother,
Ramon Franco, belonged. On the other hand, General Mola, in his book "Tempestad
Calma Intriga Y Crisis" stated that Franco had been one of two generals who had
refused to join the 'Military Brotherly Union' sometime after 1925. It is possible that both
accounts might be correct. The initial refusal might well have offended Franco enough
to explain his refusal to join Freemasonry at a later stage in his career but it is also
possible that he was anxious for the sake of his career ambitions to avoid being
associated with a politicized group of any kind. Franco was an ambitious officer who
worked hard to gain promotion as recognition of ability and achievement rather than by
use of contacts. Moreover, he did not seem to have extended his aversion to
Freemasonry to a personal level. His brother Ramon was a Freemason, his father was
allegedly favourable to Freemasonry and Franco was on good terms with fellow officers
and politicians who were either Freemasons or former Masons although no doubt wary
of them.

A more likely explanation of Franco's obsessive aversion is simply, that he believed in

the existence of the Contubernio, the Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy. Franco
was an avowed Roman Catholic and belief in the Contubernio was well established in
Catholic circles by the time Franco had finished his education. Like most conspiracy
theories, the Judeo-Masonic-Communist theory provided an explanation as to why
worrying developments were happening in the world, especially to a Catholic world
retreating before the advance of secularism, anti-clericalism, science and critical
examination of dogma. Also, like most conspiracy theories, the credence of the
Contubernio was embellished with so-called evidence. A new disaster only had to
involve a Jew, a Mason or a Communist for one more proof to be added to the
conspiracy theory. Jew, Mason and Communist were inextricably linked together in a
trinity of scapegoats designed by the Catholic mindset. And not only Catholics, the
Contubernio was widely believed by people representative of a wide range of political
and religious affiliations throughout the world. Hitler was a believer.

From the outbreak of the Civil War, if not before, Franco was increasingly surrounded
by clergy who promoted the idea of the military-led, right-wing rebellion as a 'crusade'
against the Godless Freemasons and Communists and Franco undoubtedly espoused
that concept. After all, on the face of it the rebellion was nothing less than an act of
treason against a democratically-elected government but the notion of a 'crusade' to
liberate the Spanish people from the wicked Communists and Masons lent justification
and noble purpose to the rebellion and provided the Church with justification for
supporting it. It was powerful magic which served a double purpose for it was powerful
enough magic to convince the USA, Britain and France (under pressure from Britain) of
the need to stay out of Spanish affairs and powerful enough to attract military aid from
Germany and Italy. Franco could not have hit upon a more effective magic potion. The
anti-communist stress was the key to it.

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It is likely that Franco never truly believed in the Jewish element in the Contubernio.
During World War 2 he allowed Spain to be used as an escape route and safe haven for
Shepardic Jews escaping from Nazi occupied Europe and he is generally considered to
have been free of anti-Semitic sentiment. It has also been pointed-out that both his
paternal and maternal surnames - Franco and Bahamonde - were popular surnames
amongst the conversos, or Christianized Jews of Spain. Be that as it may, Franco
gradually dropped the inclusion of the Jews in his conspiracy allegations but for the rest
of his life linked the Freemasons and the Communists together in a conspiracy against
Spain, consistently using them as convenient scapegoats to explain any crises and
setbacks to Spain's fortunes. For consumption by the western democracies during the
Cold War, Franco portrayed himself as a champion in the fight against Communism and
this policy eventually paid-off.

From the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War a few-hundred Spanish Freemasons made
their escape into exile and made their way to Mexico where they founded the Grande
Oriente Espanol in exile under the auspices and hospitality of the Grand Lodge of the
Valley of Mexico. Some lodges in North Africa under the jurisdiction of the Grande
Oriente Espanol continued to meet. The Spanish Grand Lodge did not survive.

Following the death of General Franco in 1975, the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, in
conjunction with senior Francoist, politicians put in motion a return to democracy and
this presented the opportunity for the Gran Oriente Espanol to re-establish itself on
Spanish soil and negotiations were commenced with most of the European grand
jurisdictions with a view making representations to the Spanish government to confirm
the legality of Freemasonry in Spain. The position of the King with regard to
Freemasonry was not clear at that time. The first positive step, resulting from the 27th
Convention of the Supreme Councils of the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite which met in Paris in May 1977, was a declaration of intent by the Grand
Master of the Gran Oriente Espanol, Jaime Fernandez Gil de Terradillos, to return the
jurisdiction to Spanish soil. The declaration was made with the prior authorization of the
surviving members of the Grand Federal Symbolic Council in Mexico. Subsequently, a
Grand National Assembly of the Grande Oriente Espanol was held in Madrid on 2
November 1977 which set-up a Permanent Committee of the Grand Federal Symbolic
Council and on 4 November 1977 the exile of the Gran Oriente was declared over. The
Grande Oriente Espanol was unilaterally declared as having full sovereignty as the
Regular Masonic Power of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. On 2 November
1977, the Grande Oriente Espanol set up a Board of Administration chaired by the
Grand Master and consisting of six-other most senior officers of the Order. This Board
commenced negotiations with various ministers of the Spanish government ending with
a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, Snr. Rodolfo Martin Villa, concerning the
formal legalization of Freemasonry in Spain. On 14 November 1977 a memorial was
issued expressing the wish to keep 'fraternal relationships' with the Church.

On 29 November 1977, the Grand Master accompanied by several members of the

Board of Administration held a press conference at which they released a communiqué
setting out the principles, aims and organization of the Grande Oriente Espanol in which

33
was made special reference to desire to maintain contacts of mutual respect with the
Catholic Church, claiming that Canon 2335 of the Code of Ecclesiastical Law did not
apply to the Grande Oriente since it did not "plot against the Church". There have been
significant developments in Canon Law detrimental to the Catholic Church's position as
to Freemasonry since that time.

The tenor of the above communiqué in seeking respectful relations with the Catholic
Church and in pledging loyalty to the Spanish Monarchy offended some staunch
republican members of the Grande Oriente enough for them to form the Grand United
Spanish Orient and, in 1979, the Grand Symbolic Spanish Lodge under the jurisdiction
of the Grand Orient of France was formed. The Grand National French Lodge also
commenced chartering Lodges in Spain resulting with the constituting of the Grand
Lodge of Spain on 6 November 1982.

Once again Spanish Freemasonry had become fragmented and this weakness and
confusion had a detrimental effect on the progress of government procedures towards
legalizing the Craft. As a result the Grande Oriente commenced litigation against the
State in order to resolve the legal deadlock. This resulted in victory in the first instance
before the National Audience and, after an appeal by the State Solicitor, were
successful against before the Fourth Court of the High Court (La Sala de lo
Contencioso-Administravo de la Audiencia National) on 10 May 1979, the sentence
being ratified by the Supreme Tribunal (No. 47,103) on 3 July 1979. The Director
General of the department of the Interior was instructed to register the Grande Oriente
Espanol on the National register of Associations (No. 32,886). By resolution of the
Supreme Tribunal of the Spanish Supreme Court (La Sala de lo Contensio-
Administravo de la Audiencia National) dated 21 October 1991 (No. 1141/1989) the law
against communism and Freemasonry of 1 March 1940 was revoked, thus removing all
vestiges of Francoist law against Freemasonry.

Although the Grande Oriente Espanol received wide international recognition, the
United Grand Lodge of England with held recognition due to its longstanding objection
to Masonic jurisdictions organized under a Grand Orient structure governed by a
Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree. Other Grand Lodges in the British Commonwealth
followed suit. The United Grand Lodge of England instead kept a watchful eye on the
progress of what it had reason to believe was 'regular' Freemasonry in Spain, the
Lodges formed under the jurisdiction of the Grand National French Lodge (Grande Loge
National Francais) which started with four-Lodges meeting in Catalonia as part of the
Provincial Grand Lodge of Occitania. In December 1980, these Lodges were formed
into the District Grand Lodge of Spain and by 1982 a further six-Lodges had been
chartered enabling the constitution of the Grand Lodge of Spain (Gran Logia Espanola)
on 2 July 1982. The Grand Lodge of Spain was recognized by the United Grand Lodge
of England and other mainstream European jurisdictions in 1987. This recognition of the
Gran Logia Espanol as the recognized 'regular' obedience in Spain was a severe blow
to the Grande Oriente, resulting, as it did, with a steady stream of its members
transferring to the Gran Logia. As a consequence, at a Grand General Extraordinary
Assembly held in Madrid on 31 March 2001, the Gran Logia Espanol and the Grande

34
Oriente Espanol merged into a single obedience under the name of the former, with
Tomas Sarobe as Grand Master. The jurisdiction is divided into six-Provincial Grand
Lodges under their own Provincial Grand Masters.

In spite of this happy union of jurisdictions and Masonic traditions, Spanish

Freemasonry still features a number of irregular Grand Lodges and Lodges. The
irregular Grand Lodge of France still has three-chartered Lodges in Spain. There exists
a Symbolic Grand Lodge of Spain (Gran Logia Simbolica Espanola) with about 27-
lodges and a small Federal Grand Lodge of Spain (Gran Logia Federal Espanola)
based in the Canary Islands. Of mixed or adoptive Masonry there exists a Spanish
District of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry - Le Droit Humain and there are
lodges in Spain chartered by La Grande Loge Feminine de France.

Ironically, General Franco was party to allowing quite large numbers of foreign
Freemasons into Spain during from the 1950's onwards. In 1953, Franco concluded
negotiations which allowed the USA to establish military bases in Spain and by 1969
there were five-Military Lodges meeting in these bases in spite of the fact that the bases
were at least nominally commanded by Spanish officers under the Spanish flag. All of
these Lodges were chartered by the French National Grand Lodge and in 1969 were
constituted into the GLNF Continental District Grand Lodge together with other GLNF
military lodges in the Netherlands, France and Belgium. All of these military lodges have
now merged into the John J. Kestly Lodge No. 60 meeting at the Rota naval base. The
Saints John Lodge No.35 of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts meets in
the same premises. Another Franco initiative was the tourist drive of the 1950's which
kicked-off when Franco and his wife provided their support to the Major of Benidorm,
Snr. Pedro Zaragaza's tourism plans which included permitting the wearing of bikinis on
the beaches. The Benidorm experiment rapidly spread to the whole of the Spanish
Riviera and attracted many-thousands of tourists, mainly British and German, many of
whom have bought properties in recent years and become permanent or semi-
permanent residents. As a consequence there are now as many as 26-lodges working
the Emulation Ritual in the English language and others working the Schroeder
(German), Swedish and Dutch Rites.

Masonic research in Spain is conducted by the Logia Duque de Wharton No. 18 at

Barcelona and Logia Athenor No. 47 in Madrid. There is a Centre for Historical
Research into Spanish Freemasonry (Centro Estudios Historicos de la Masoneria
Espanola) in Zaragoza and the Iberian centre for Masonic Studies (Centro Iberico de
Estudios Masonicos) in Madrid. The Centre for Historical Research into Spanish
Freemasonry was founded by Professor Jose Ferrer Benimeli of the University of
Zaragoza. In 1983, the Centre began hosting international academic conferences which
have featured scholastic papers on Masonic subjects from historians worldwide.

Spanish Freemasonry has not been entirely free from attacks from anti-Masonry
sources since its re-establishment. Apart from Leo Ferraro's book mentioned above, in
1979 Cesar Casanova in his book entitled "Urgent Manual on Zionism in Spain"
(Manuel de urgencia sobre el sionismo en Espana) claimed that global events were

35
unfurling as predicted in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1881, Franco's book
entitled Masoneria was republished under his own name. In recent years supporters of
the Catholic Church have linked Spanish Freemasonry with policies of the Spanish
Socialist Worker's Party (PSOE), such as abortion and same-sex marriages which are
contrary to the Church's moral position. Cesar Vidal claimed in his publication entitled
"The Freemasons: History of the Most Powerful Secret Society" (Los masons: la historia
de la sosiedad secreta mas ponderosa) that "Freemasonry is responsible for the spread
of laicism." Indeed, the communications revolution created by the Internet (World Wide
Web) has enabled some Catholics to revisit and promote their anti-masonic theories in
the public arena. Typical of such material is the interview of Monsignor Vincente Corcel
Orti by Wlodzimierz Redzouich entitled "The Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War" in which,
harking-back to the Civil War era, Corcel Orti claims that Freemasons "played a major
role in the making of anti-Catholic laws and in defamations against the Church." Of
course, one only has to do or say something the Church does not like to be plotting
against it or defaming it in the Church's eyes. Echoes of the Contubernio have arisen.

We must never forget that all Freemasons share the same tenets of Freemasonry as
their Spanish brothers, the same standards for human justice and behavior, the same
hope for humanity. But we who have lived our lives under the protection of liberal
democracies have not experienced the same internal suppression of personal
freedoms, especially freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom to voice
opinion and the right to equal justice but, again, we must never forget that Freemasonry
was amongst the foremost of those enlightened movements which won the freedoms
we now enjoy from the culture of autocracy. It has been a so much harder struggle for
the Freemasons of Spain and one cannot but admire and wonder at their courage and
fortitude. It would have been much easier to have walked away, but they did not.

But we are not so cosseted by our democratic utopia here in New Zealand as to be
insensible to numerous attempts over the years to undermine our democratic freedoms,
amongst the most recent of these being the politically-inspired culture of 'political
correctness' whereby politicians and public servants attempt to control, divert or
suppress debate or opinions by means of a system not unlike traffic control, figuratively
using directional arrows and road blocks. Political correctness is nothing short of a
system which aims at specifying the confines within which an individual is permitted to
voice his or her opinion and is therefore undemocratic and severely hinders the scope
of investigation and debate to the detriment of truth.

Likewise, Freemasonry is not insensible to the strident and slanderous attacks upon it
emanating from obscurantist and homophobic religious extremists, those who have
closed their minds to any further or alternative theological or philosophical opinion or
debate, to any further scientific knowledge and to any further revelation. Those who say
they have seen the light and know the truth. The problem with these people is not the
beliefs that they have chosen for themselves but that they are so intolerant towards the
beliefs of others, that they demand blind faith and obedience from others and work for
the destruction of those who will not concur and obey. In this, they are in breach of the
fundamental law of humankind, that every man should treat others as he expects to be

36
treated himself. That is the fundamental law of humanity upon which all true and equal
justice is based, upon which all human cooperative effort is dependant, the basis is
human understanding, the fount of human compassion and benevolence and without
which human society cannot ultimately exist. It is only by adhering to this fundamental
law that mankind can not only survive but live in peace and build a better world. This
fundamental law is the bedrock of Freemasonry which was founded to uphold that law
and which exists to uphold it.

At the Festival of the Spanish race, held under the auspices of the University of
Salamanca on 12 October 1936, the rector of the University, Professor Miguel de
Unamuno, distressed that the proceedings had been blighted by raucous outburst of
Falangist fanaticism and in contemptuous response to the cry of "Death to intellectuals"
(Mueran los intellectuales), concluded his address by telling the Nationalist audience:
"You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not
convince. For to persuade you will need what you lack: reason and right in your
struggle."

Who can say that the struggle between the voice of reason, tolerance and human
cooperation, on the one hand, and the forces obscurantist, dictatorial blind faith on the
other, is yet over."

Martin I. McGregor. 19 July 2009. Invercargill, New Zealand.

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