PARTISAN REVIE.W
his nephew, and he swore
to
reward her. The Republic was unjust to
the admiral. He taught at a very low salary in the naval academy. The
commandante served under Franco in Morocco and is now head of
a military school. He has the reputation of being a great disciplinarian,
the sisters inform me rather proudly. They themselves were educated
in a convent.
The rest are middle class, people who must be well connected to
be able
to
afford a pension as good as this one, beneficiaries of
enchufismo
or civil-service patronage-literally, the
enchufe
is an electric socket.
An
ordinary civil-service job-and one must be, politically, as faultless
as a sacrificial lamb to get it-carries a salary of five or six hundred
pesetas a month, or roughly twenty dollars, and since
desirable
things
are approximately American in price (higher, in many cases; a pound
· of black-market coffee costs two and a half dollars) a man needs
enchufes
to live comfortably.
If,
through family influence or friends high in the
church or the army, he has several jobs, he makes the rounds of the
ministries to sign in and sign out. Occasionally he may be required
to do a little work and he does it
para cumplir,
to acknowledge the
obligation, but as hastily as possible. This is in part traditional. All
Spanish regimes have used the same means to keep the educated classes
from disaffection. "Modem" government programs receive great pub–
licity. Recently a social-security system modeled on the Beveridge plan
was announced, and Sir William himself was invited for consultation.
But the real purpose of these programs is to extend
enchufismo,
for
the actual benefits to the sick or unemployed worker under this insurance
scheme amount to about three· pesetas a day, hardly enough for a loaf
of bread. Franco has great-state ambitions, like Mussolini's, but Spain
is too poor; the cost of staying in power is too high for him to realize
them. The buildings called the New Ministries which were to have
gone up monumentally at the foot of the Castellana stand in scaffolding,
uncompleted, and apparently abandoned.
For middle-class families without
enchufes,
the difficulties are ter–
rible. One must wear a European suit, a shirt that costs two hundred
pesetas, a tie, and to appear in the rope
alpargatas
of the people is
inconceivable. It is essential to have a maid. And then one's wife has
to be properly dressed, and the children dressed an educated. One
must cling to one's class. The fall into the one below is measureless. Its
wretchedness is an ancient fact, stable, immemorial, and understood
by everyone. The newer wretchedness, that of keeping one meager suit
presentable, of making a place in the budget for movies in order to
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