Reconstruction in Spain While the Catalan question still causes anxiety
at Madrid the Provisional Government is strengthening itself in another direction by its agrarian reform programme. Details of the new Land Bill are still awaited, but the principle of compensation is recognized, though that in itself may mean a good deal or very little. Everything depends in such cases on whether the payment made is adequate or illusory. The measure is calculated to increase the popularity of the administration, for while most of the landowners who will suffer expropriation under it were hostile to the Government anyhow, the new tenants will be under an obvious obligation to it: Spain is notoriously under-cultivated, both in matter of area and in matter of efficiency, and while the breaking-up of great estates usually results in a temporary drop in productivity, conditions are by no means unsuitable for the development of a system of individual holding's. But the unemployed peasants it is sought to establish on the land will need education in farming generally and a training in co-operative methods in particular. It is significant of the tension between Barcelona and Madrid that Col. Macia, the Catalan leader, remains undecided to the last moment whether to go to Madrid himself to present the new Catalan Statute to the Cortes in spite of the risk of hostile demonstrations.
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