Visor de obras.

On 27 December 1870, General Juan Prim y Prats, the leading figure of the September Revolution and the President of the Council of Ministers, was shot by a band of assassins in the Calle del Turco, in the center of Madrid.⁶² His death three days later profoundly affected Spanish political development: the constitutional monarchy of Amadeo I was deprived of its main pillar of support; the rivalries set in motion by the removal of Prim led shortly to a split of the progresistas into the conservative wing under the leadership of Sagasta and the partido radical headed by Ruiz Zorrilla, a scission marked by such personal antagonisms that a two-party system of constitutional government proved impossible. The obviously political nature of the assassination and the suspicion that the authorities were interested in concealing evidence (witnesses met violent deaths; important documents disappeared) have spurred historians' efforts to solve the mystery. However, despite numerous arrests and the accumulation by judicial investigators of some eighteen thousand folios⁶³ concerning the case, the identities of the assailants and their employers remain to this day unknown. The principal and most obvious suspect was José Paffi y Angulo, a former friend of Prim and extremist republican revolutionary. Paúl was of notoriously violent disposition, had openly threatened Prim's life in his newspaper El Combate, and disappeared from Madrid on the day of the assassination.⁶⁴ Paúl, however, always denied the accusation and charged Montpensier and Serrano with conspiring to assassinate not only Prim but also Sagasta and Ruiz Zorrilla.⁶⁵ Other suspects, suggested by serious historians or the merely malevolent, have ranged from Cuban slave-owners and voluntarios to Queen Isabel, Serrano, and the Duke of Montpensier's aide, Felipe Solís.⁶⁶

Prim's death and the circumstances surrounding the crime are described by Galdós in España trágica (1909), a novel of unusual interest for in it Galdós relates incidents which took place during his own youth in Madrid. Certain elements of Galdós' novelistic interpretation of the events of 1870 -the references to evil omens, the overwhelming sensation of confusion, tragedy, fatality⁶⁷- were already present in the impressionistic account of Spanish reaction to the murder given by Galdós on the first anniversary of Amadeo's arrival in Madrid:

However, whilst the broad outlines of Galdós' earlier mythological vision of the mysteries surrounding Prim's death remain unchanged in España trágica, no such fidelity can be observed in Galdós' treatment of individual historical figures. When considering the possible identities of the murderers of Prim, Galdós revises in large   —64→   part the opinions which he had expressed in the 1870s. To reflect his changed ideological position, he distorts, and at times suppresses, the testimony of historical sources; to fit historical events to the literary ends of the novel, evidence against individuals and dynastic or political groups is presented in a deliberately ambiguous manner. The purpose of this paper will be to illuminate certain aspects of Galdós' interpretation of Spanish history in the later episodios by an examination of Galdós' treatment of three historical figures whose names were mentioned in connection with Prim's death -Paúl y Angulo, the Duke of Montpensier, and Ruiz Zorrilla.

The obvious suspect for the murder of Prim in España trágica is at first sight Paúl y Angulo. Galdós gives frequent examples of Paúl's violent, irresponsible behavior, characterizing Paúl as «un iluminado, un poseído, un epiléptico, a quien no se debe permitir que ande suelto por el mundo» (III, 991). Paúl is termed an expert marksman. His demented threats against Prim's life are documented, for example: «Yo inicié la revolución de septiembre, yo traje la libertad, y Prim la vende... ¿No es un miserable, no es un bandido? ¿Estoy o no cargado de razón cuando digo: hemos de matar a ese hombre?»⁶⁹ References to Caesar and Brutus are associated with Paúl's violent hatred of Prim.⁷⁰ Significantly, it is the novelistic character who supposedly knows the identities of Prim's murderers -Segismundo García- who cryptically warns Paúl's crony Tachuela against the dangers of involvement with Paúl.⁷¹

Nevertheless, the evidence presented by Galdós against Paúl is inconclusive. There is no affirmation of Paúl's guilt; only in a later novel, Cánovas, does Galdós even mention popular suspicion of the Federal Republican: «...Paúl y Angulo, de quien se dijo que tuvo que ver en la muerte de Prim» (Cánovas, III, 1324). Paúl is not presented in a totally unfavorable light. Prim expresses a measure of sympathy for him⁷²; Segismundo García considers him to be «hombre de talento y de corazón» (III, 976). Paúl, after the attack by Ducazcal's band, treats the wounded Halconero with kindness and Halconero now feels «menos odio que lástima» for the madman (III, 991).

However, only by comparing Galdós' treatment of Paúl with that of contemporary historians can one fully realize the extent to which Galdós has modified and suppressed in España trágica evidence of Paúl's complicity in Prim's murder. One of Galdós' sources for the account of the crime was almost certainly Ricardo Muñiz' Apuntes históricos sobre la revolución de 1868.⁷³ According to Muñiz, Bernardo García, the editor of La Discusión, had denounced ten conspirators, including Paúl y Angulo, prior to the crime; also, the wounded Prim had declared to Muñiz that the voice of Paúl was among those of the assassins.⁷⁴ In España trágica, Galdós alludes to Muñiz' receiving a list of conspirators and follows Muñiz' account closely. However, the novelist has the fictional Segismundo García⁷⁵ deliver a second list to Halconero, and, adding mystery where none exists in Muñiz, Galdós reveals no names from either list to the reader. Moreover, Galdós deforms Muñiz' testimony to replace Paúl's name with a mystifying and unexplained «su» in Prim's denunciation of the murderers: «Moreno Benítez y Ricardo Muñiz declaraban que al entrar don Juan en su residencia, dijo a su esposa y a los amigos: -Oí su voz bien clara» (III, 1002). Also, Galdós distorts historical accounts in another scene of the novel for, when describing Prim's conversation with Federal Republican deputies on the night of the crime, Galdós leaves the reader with the impression that the conversation ended affably; he omits all mention of the notorious threat against Prim's life uttered by one deputy on that occasion: «Mi general, a cada puerco le llega su San Martín.»⁷⁶

Galdós further diminishes the force of the evidence against Paúl by presenting in the episodios another suspect for the crime. Popular opinion in Spain had also accused the Duke of Montpensier, whose secretary, Felipe Solis, was briefly arrested in 1873 for possible complicity in the murder. Galdós, in España sin rey, portrays Montpensier as spending millions in bribes to generals and deputies to forward his candidacy to the throne. The historical Felipe Solís and the fictional montpensierista Don Juan Urriés finance and foment the disturbances of both Carlists and Federal Republicans: «Angulo, Solís y Urriés salieron de Barcelona con objeto de ver si en el revuelto río federal era fácil pescar alguna trucha que pudiese comer tranquilamente el señor duque» (España sin rey, III, 882). Urriés is portrayed by Galdós as totally corrupt; his trifling leads ultimately to murder, that of Nicéfora at the hands of the over-idealistic Fernanda. Don Wifredo, the quixotic Carlist who possesses the gift of vaticination, goes so far as to foretell Prim's murder by Montpensier's henchmen: «Y si [Prim] no aceptara, los de Montpensier se encargarán de matarle... Esto he pensado yo...; que lo maten los de Montpensier» (España sin rey, III, 801). Veiled accusations against Montpensier continue in España trágica: the three Ecuménicas, the harbingers of misfortune, are observed entering Montpensier's house (III, 918); the montpensierista Ángel Cordero, on reading Pafil's attack on Prim, implicates his party in the future death of the Marqués de los Castillejos: «Nosotros los montpensieristas nos lavamos las manos, y a su tiempo se verá si la soberanía nacional se lava, no las manos, sino el rostro, con la sangre del tirano.» (Galdós' italics) (III, 988).

Although in the episodios Galdós affirms neither the innocence nor the guilt of the Duke, his suggestion of Montpensier's involvement was not intended as a serious accusation. Indeed, some years after the crime, at the death of Montpensier, Galdós raised the issue of the Duke's complicity to exonerate him completely: «Algunos maliciosos relacionaron la trágica muerte de don Juan Prim con el despecho del candidato desairado; pero nada hay que justifique semejante sospecha, y por tanto, no admitimos pueda existir tal borrón en la personalidad del duque del [sic] Montpensier.»⁷⁷

A further example of Galdós' linking of persons of widely differing political beliefs with the crime is the tenuous suggestion, throughout España trágica, of the involvement of fanatical religious elements in the murder of Prim. The General is portrayed as the bulwark preserving Spain from the rule of the camarillas: «...Prim era la clave de la libertad y del porvenir de España, y que si aquel hombre faltase, volveríamos tarde o temprano al reino de las camarillas, bajando de tumbo en tumbo hasta ponernos otra vez debajo de las tocas de Sor Patrocinio y del solideo del padre Claret. Lo que parece vencido y muerto no lo está, y a cada momento sentimos el resuello del fantasmón que quiere volver a darnos guerra y a metérsenos en casa» (III, 945). The Carlists, in the persons of the Ecuménicas, are connected with the murder: Donata, as well as Paúl, is an associate of the discoverer of the identities of the assassins, Segismundo; Domiciana foretells and finally announces the death of Prim. In the closing lines of España trágica, Galdós proclaims that it is the reactionary institutions of the past which benefit from the crime: «Las devociones reaccionarias y frailunas rezaron por el muerto con esta dulce letanía: '¡Vivir para volver!'» (III, 1008).⁷⁸

Whilst Paúl, Montpensier, and the Carlists are all possible, if undeclared, suspects for the murder of Prim in España trágica, Galdós avoids almost any reference in the novel to the activities of Ruiz Zorrilla, the President of the Cortes throughout 1870.⁷⁹ The omission is curious, for Ruiz Zorrilla had created a considerable stir in political   —66→   circles in the month preceding Prim's death with the puntos negros, a vehement attack on the «inmoralidad» of Spain's leaders. The speech was widely interpreted as revealing Zorrilla's discontent with Prim's régime and his ambitions to seize from Sagasta the leadership of the progresistas.⁸⁰ Although no modern historian has attempted to implicate Zorrilla in the conspiracy against Prim, at least one contemporary writer whose work was known to Galdós, Ángel Maria Segovia, alluded openly to Zorrilla's activities against the General in the days preceding the murder: «Ruiz Zorrilla, sin declararse abiertamente en contra del general Prim, hacía causa común con los descontentos de este hombre de Estado, y no sólo hacía causa común con ellos, sino que los capitaneaba y dirigía con el solo propósito de elevarse a la categoría de jefe, y oponer una bandera cualquiera a la del caudillo valeroso a quien ni amigos ni adversarios podían disputar lealmente el importante puesto gubernativo que ocupaba.»⁸¹

The absence in España trágica of any discussion of Zorrilla's attitude is all the more startling when we realize that two journals edited by Galdós, El Debate and the Revista de España, had, in the year following the crime, indicated the advantages to Zorrilla of Prim's death. For example, a vicious anonymous attack in the editorial columns of El Debate accused the «Maquiavelo de Tablada», Zorrilla, of hostility to Prim and of profiting from the General's death: «Si cuando un crimen odioso y nunca bastante execrado privó de la vida al marqués de los Castillejos [Zorrilla] cambió súbitamente de sistema hasta el punto de resistirse tenazmente a formar parte de un ministerio de conciliación, es porque la catástrofe inesperada abrió a su ambición y a su envidia más dilatados horizontes»⁸². A few months later, in the Revista de España, Albareda indicated that Zorrilla alone stood to gain by the death of Prim: «[Ruiz Zorrilla]... la única persona a quien debía reportarle ventaja la desdichada muerte del marqués de los Castillejos...»⁸³ Shortly afterwards, the argument of cul bono is again used against Zorrilla by José Ferreras who, after the attempt on the life of Amadeo, demanded: «¿A quién podía aprovechar el asesinato del rey?» Ferreras, trying to implicate the Republicans and even Ruiz Zorrilla, then sarcastically linked the attack on Amadeo to the mysterious attempt on the life of Zorrilla in January 1871 immediately after the death of Prim: «¡Aquí pasan cosas tan raras que podía haber ocurrido en la calle del Arenal [site of the attack on Amadeo] algo de lo que ocurrió en la calle de San Roque cuando quisieron asesinar al Sr. Zorrilla, según él nos ha contado, por más que la causa instruida haya tenido que sobreseerse por falta de luces claras y de datos ciertos! Repetimos que esta última hipótesis, la tenemos por absurda y declaramos a fuer de hombres rectos, que el crimen de la calle del Arenal en nada se parece al de la calle de San Roque, y que por lo mismo nunca hemos prohijado las murmuraciones que sobre este particular circulan...»⁸⁴

Why, then, has Pérez Galdós in España trágica raised the red herring of Montpensier's possible complicity in the crime, a complicity in which Galdós did not believe, deliberately weakened the evidence against Paúl by obscuring Muñiz' testimony, and avoided all mention of the dubious activities of Ruiz Zorrilla? Part of the answer lies, I feel, in Galdós' tardy conversion to Republicanism in 1907. In the episodios written after La de los tristes destinos (1907), Galdós, revising his earlier attitudes, understandably interprets the past in the light of his new beliefs; the result is that Republican heroes are portrayed in more favorable terms than those previously employed. The change in Galdós' interpretation of history is most readily apparent in his treatment of the Republican paladin, Ruiz Zorrilla. In the early 1870s, Galdós, as   —67→   editor of Albareda's Revista de España, vehemently attacks Ruiz Zorrilla for splitting the progresista party and for forming an «immoral» coalition with Republicans and Carlists. Much later, in 1885, Galdós, no longer with the excuse of being obligated to follow Albareda's conservative ideology,⁸⁵ disparagingly describes Zorrilla for La Prensa of Buenos Aires: «El señor Ruiz Zorrilla es un tipo muy extraño. Carece en absoluto de toda brillantez intelectual. No es orador; no entiende de teorías ni de filosofías... La falta de atractivos intelectuales está compensada en él por el don de la astucia que posee en altísimo grado... Una de las cosas que mejor demuestran la marrullería de este sectario furibundo es la obstinación con que sostiene su ostracismo. Niégase a entrar en España, porque conoce que su prestigio depende del misterio en que se envuelve... El señor Ruiz Zorrilla es como esos cocos que dejan de imponer miedo cuando se les saca a la luz del día».⁸⁶ The following year, Galdós does not hesitate to involve Zorrilla in the abortive rising of Villacampa, slanderously suggesting that Zorrilla had provoked the rebellion to forward the affairs of financial speculators.⁸⁷ Even in La de los tristes destinos, the last episodio to be written before Galdós' adherence to Republicanism, Zorrilla is presented in unfavorable terms: «Era un hombre voluntarioso, contumaz, carácter forjado en los odios candentes del bando progresista, nutrido con los amargores del retraimiento, que fue como un destierro para la vida pública, y como un largo ejercicio en el arte de la conspiración.» (La de los tristes destinos, III, 717.) But after Galdós' conversion, in Amadeo I (1910), Zorrilla is eulogized: «...don Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, el más valiente de los hombres de la revolución, popular cual ninguno por mirar de frente a los intereses del pueblo, voluntad firme, corazón que ardía en el amor romántico de una España redimida... Ruiz Zorrilla trajo a la política oxígeno abundante y frescura de reformas, por las que suspiraba el envejecido ser de la Patria... De aquel Gobierno se dijo que era una República con rey. ¡Lástima que no hubiera sido cierto, y que no durara lo bastante para que se consolidase la utopía y se hiciera verdad de carne y hueso!» (Amadeo I, III, 1028).

Galdós' suppression of details concerning Paúl's role and suggestion of the involvement of others in the death of Prim can, however, only in part be explained by the desire to present fellow Republicans in a more favorable light than the evidence would warrant. A further explanation must be sought in the nature of Galdós approach to history in the later episodios. Galdós did present contemporary reaction to the events described; hence the importance of gossip, which gave the immediate popular interpretation,⁸⁸ and of proteísmo⁸⁹ which, with its temporary enthusiasm for all viewpoints, momentarily enabled the novelist to suspend judgment and avoid the risk of hindsight. However, too great an attention to detail would, as Segismundo declared to Halconero, prevent true understanding of historical events: «¿Tú, que has leído tanta Historia, no lo ves así, o es que a fuerza de leer has llegado a embotar tu entendimiento, y éste acaba por ser pura curiosidad que se deleita en la superficie pintoresca de los grandes hechos humanos?» (III, 975).⁹⁰ Galdós is less concerned with accuracy of detail⁹¹ than with reaching beyond the faits divers of history to present an impressionistic vision of the salient features of the period described. Novelistic intrigue reflects Galdós' characterization of an epoch; hence the role of fantasy, mythology, and deliria in the episodios dealing with the period following the Revolution of 1868. In the case of España trágica, the deliberate mystification of the reader⁹² with regard to the role of the Federal Republicans and Paúl in the murder of Prim enables Galdós not only to convey the impression of conspiracy and   —68→   confusion received by any historian who tries to disentangle the events of this period but also, by emphasizing the presence of irrational forces, strengthens Galdós' vision of the tragic madness⁹³ which seized hold of Spain after 1868. Paúl, therefore, is characterized as madman rather than as criminal, and his madness becomes a symbol of the insanity of Spain: «Sobre el jerezano [Paúl] hizo Halconero observaciones muy atinadas. En él veía la representación personal de la fiebre o locura que en aquel año fatídico padecía la sociedad española.» (III, 991). The exaggeration of the mysterious nature of the assassination, the portrayal of the principal suspect as a representative figure of Spain, and the suggested involvement of persons of widely differing political beliefs enable Galdós more easily to propose as culprit no single individual or ideology but rather to suggest that Spaniards collectively are guilty of the death of Prim and hence must share the responsibility for the failure of the ideals of the September Revolution⁹⁴: «...para que tenga su natural desarrollo la epopeya hispana del siglo diecinueve hemos de sacrificar altas vidas; que estas vidas han de ser inmoladas para dar cumplimiento al trágico designio de la fatalidad histórica... Y ésta nos dice con acento de oráculo infalible: ¡Españoles, matad a Prim!» (III, 975). Thus Galdós, far from merely chronicling events, in España trágica emphasizes, even at the risk of altering historical facts, those elements of mystery, irrationality, and tragedy which he believes stamp the period in question. As Balzac, an early influence on Galdós, wrote: «La mission de l'art n'est pas de copier la nature, mais d'en figurer le mouvement et la vie.»⁹⁵

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