Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when
there is a bull-fight in the town.

These conditions excited the indignation of a Spanish educator by the
name of Francesco Ferrer. He founded what he called a "modern school",
in which the pupils should be taught science and common sense. He
drew, of course, the bitter hatred of the Catholic hierarchy, which
saw in the spread of his principles the end of their mastery of the
people. When the Barcelona insurrection took place, they had Ferrer
seized upon a charge of having been its instigator; they had him tried
in secret before a military tribunal, convicted upon forged documents,
and shot beneath the walls of the fortress of Montjuich. The case was
thoroughly investigated by William Archer, one of England's leading
critics, a man of scrupulous rectitude of mind. His conclusion is that
Ferrer was absolutely innocent of the charges against him, and that
his execution was the result of a clerical plot. Of Ferrer's character
Archer writes:

Fragmentary though they be, the utterances which I have
quoted form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last
we see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible
idealist. His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them
fanatical; but it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate
of self-interest and self-seeking. As he shrank from
applying the money entrusted him to ends of personal luxury,
so also he shrank from making his ideas and convictions
subserve any personal ambition or vanity.

#The Menace#