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El Cortes Espanolas, late fall, 1949. Conservative, Opposition Wing.
The Cortes-General, controlled, for the first time since the civil war and the subsequent overthrowal of the UCD by left leaning parties and military leaders, by a coalition of communist, anachrosyndicalist, and left leaning parties. Echague and the ACFN, became the formal leaders of the opposition, and thus the leading voice of the right-of-centre parties.
Excerpts from Juan-Vincento Ochimarez, parliamentary of the ACFN, before the half-empty Cortez on November 24, 1949, 21:15
" I am, for several reasons, very skeptical as to whether Spain will even be allowed to join NATO - Especially under this government. "
"I wouldnt expect of the Prime Minister to comply with an invitation to the bloc, even if such is received, as it would be a direct 'spit in the face' of 70% of his voter base, of left-wingers, anarchists, communists and Stalinists."
"The only way I expect to see NATO soldiers is in the course of an International Intervention to counter a communist insurgency, or a communist government cooperating with the Soviet Union"
"Spain is tired of War. Spain is tired of armies. Spain, should keep out of the affairs of mainland Europe, for meddling in them has already caused our country so much grief."
When you do submit orders, by the way, please remember to choose a Winter of Discontent effect in addition to the two orders and the NATO invitation.))
I would like to, first and foremost, extend my thanks and salutations to the steadfast people of Spain, who have endured civil strife and civil war, who have endured a world war and foreign occupation, and who have endured after all that the terrorism of the state. We salute those who were martyred for the sake of freedom, we salute their families and loved ones, we salute all who aided them in their noble struggle, and we salute those who did not forget them and did not look away from their suffering. Spaniards all over the nation must always be prepared to lunge upon tyrannical regimes, must always be prepared to bring the power of the people to bear against any who seek to restrict freedoms and put limits on the power of the people.
In history, it is very rare indeed that the authoritarian systems in place permit the democratic introduction of the revolution into a society. The revolution is born in violence - and so we have always been led to believe. But in Spain we have seen the regime stumble and totter, attempt to galvanise its forces under a new banner so as to prevent the people from taking charge - and so the revolution won out not through violence but through the flawed system in existence. The system, fellow Spaniards, that I pledged to destroy. And its destruction is at hand!
We have longed for democracy, but we never got democracy. We only got a dictatorship of the representatives. Even now these representatives screech in the Cortes and think they have any power to decide on behalf of the people, or to bring the people's grievances before the government. They have no credibility. The Cortes has no credibility. Only the people have credibility.
And so, as I pledged to you, the Cortes shall be dismantled and all those who sit in it - doing near enough to nothing - will become useful members of their various communities, taking part in true, local, democracy. This government shall, first and foremost, restructure the government system of Spain into one that is directly democratic. Cities shall have assemblies open to all permanent residents of the city, while rural communities shall likewise have these assemblies. Decisions of consequence to each community shall be made by that community through its assembly without any interference from any higher 'authority'. The people, through their assemblies, are the only authority.
I pledged also that this government shall oversee the complete redistribution of wealth across Spain, and this shall be done. Arable land all across the country shall be redistributed and irrigation projects shall be undertaken, livestock shall also be redistributed and grazing land distributed to communities. Our foremost goal is for each community to achieve food autarky. Communities that produce more than they need will provide communities that cannot do so. This government believes that this will resolve Spain's food shortages and enable the people to work towards the greater development of Spain in future years.
As for NATO, this government is not prepared to put the sovereignty of the Spanish people at the mercy of international organisations that cannot be held accountable. The Spanish people voted in the revolution, they voted in absolute sovereignty, and this government is in no position to undermine that.
Order 1: Dismiss the Cortes and establish local assemblies for direct democracy. These assemblies will decide the affairs of each community in a manner more or less independent of any central authority. These assemblies will manage things like local taxation (if any), local policing and law enforcement, amongst other things. This measure is hoped, amongst other things, to raise approval, decrease corruption, and reduce crime.
Order 2: Complete redistribution of wealth - land, property, livestock etc. are to be redistributed so that communities can get to work on producing their own food needs. Volunteers are to be called up in each community to partake in irrigation projects in their localities. Communities that overproduce food etc. are to supply those that underproduce. This measure is hoped to remove many ills - amongst them inequality, food shortages etc.
((The second order is arguably economic, but the first order is definitely political. You cannot play political orders this turn because the Nemesis played Scorched Earth Politics last turn, so you'll have to submit a different order.
Edit: To clarify, the second order is fine, but you need a different first order.))
Order 1: Inflation is high, debt is high. One way to reduce both is to invest in Spain's gold deposits. The Bank of Spain had, in 1936, the fourth largest gold deposits in the world, and Spain's mining sector is not in its best form. The government sets out on an expansion of the mining sector, particularly gold. Gold miners are to be paid based on their productivity, each miner being permitted to retain 20% of the gold they mine daily while 80% goes to the state towards backing up Spanish currency (thus reducing inflation) and reducing debt.
Order 2: Complete redistribution of wealth - land, property, livestock etc. are to be redistributed so that communities can get to work on producing their own food needs. Volunteers are to be called up in each community to partake in irrigation projects in their localities. Communities that overproduce food etc. are to supply those that underproduce. This measure is hoped to remove many ills - amongst them inequality, food shortages etc.
((Okay. Since the President does not wish to join NATO, Order 3 is not subject to a vote, but the other two orders are, so we have to vote on them. If it's okay with you guys, I'm going to cut this down to a 3 day vote so I can write the consequences on Saturday. Voting is now open.
Sample Ballot:
Gold Mining: Yes/No/Abstain Redistribution of Wealth: Yes/No/Abstain
You have three days to vote, until 10/21, which is Saturday.))
" Spain is bare of any wealth - 10 years of civil war have seen to that. There is no more wealth to rob from the rich, nor much gold left in the mines - the measures set in place by the government will outdo the taxes brought in by the gold they are suppoed to regulate. Spain has an interesting history with gold. Once already it was responsible for the downfall of the Spanish economy - remember the gold mines in Peru that ended bring us so much of this inflation we are trying to combat.
These measures bring us closer and closers to peril and perhaphs even communist dictatorship. I urge parliamentarians to block these measures, especially the latter. They want to bring genocide upon our people, by starving the farmers of their own food, by forcing them to give their last grains to the government. This will bring a famine Spain has never seen before, not even at the end of the second great war. Santillan claims to represent the workers and peasants - yet he takes by force and not by trade what the miner mines and the farmer farms. Colleagues, please, consider this before ratifying it - I plead before the ruling coalition to not to take the only wealth our people have left. This will bring riots, starvation, and, may god protect us from whatever comes after that."
One government after another has washed its hands of the problems Spain is facing, has attempted to ignore them and hope they would go away. And when the people attempted to rise up and fix matters, they were brutally repressed and massacred. The age of the aloof government is over. The people have taken charge and will, with their own strength, with the untapped potential that each individual Spaniard holds within himself, take up the mantle of saving Spain.
They tell us Spain has no wealth left! Curse them! They tell us Spain has no hope! Curse them! They tell us, 'lay your head upon the road and do nothing as we hammer your head into a bloody pulp!' Curse them! Spain is mighty so long as the people will it, Spain will endure and fix at every turn what war, strife, and corrupt governments have left us with. But we can only do this together! We can only do this as one, united people! People of Spain!- rise up all together and work for national salvation. Take charge of Spain's fate, uncover the vast wealth that Spain hides in her earth for us.
Spain has no wealth, they say. Curse them! Curse them! Curse them!
Once again the milita rich Northern Pyrenees city of Pamplona - birthplace of the Carlist Cause - sends shockwaves throughout Spain and makes the spirit of Western European peace shudder. Falanxa Tradicionalista - a union with an eerily similair name to Mola's FET y de la JONS - the political backbone of the '37 coup - succeeds in organizing the largest right leaning mass demonstration since the times of Sanjurio. 50,000 right wingers have been, over the week, pouring into the mountain flanked town this week - greeted by an uncommonly receptive police force and populace, and catching whiff of the roaming militia bands basing themselves in these homely hills, so far away from Madrid. (Including the so called 15th Guard Division, a band of around 100-1000, claiming descent from the Barbarossa-hardened Friendship Legion)
The demonstrations will go on for 5 days and 5 nights - culminating on Sunday, the 142nd anniversary of the Dos de Mayo ...
...
According to the organizers, including Raimundo Fernandez-Ximenlla, the people there have gathered to first - reject the government, unconditionally, and second, try to revive the flames of their long-dead ideology by pronouncing opposition to the controversial land, wealth, and mining reforms introduced by the far-left Santillan coalition. Could this be the beginning of a major, nationalist backlash across Spain - perhaphs, even across Europe. Only time will tell.
/end-quote/
/quote/
REVOLUTION BEING PREPARED
- BALLESTEROS, 1936 - FOR MY SPARTANS
But it was not wholly in the Cortes that this situation existed. Madrid's mass of workingmen, almost entirely immersed in Communism, was at the ready to erupt into revolution. Little work was done in factories. Hours on end they held meetings and councils; mostly about politics rather than work. We found ourselves systematically sabotaged, according to plan and by command: "break, destroy machinery, create the state of general material misery which leads to the eruption of revolution." And indeed, the more this command was obeyed, the more the misery spread, hunger threatened menacingly and rebellion grew in the souls of the multitudes. Every three or four days on the streets of Madrid there were huge communist demonstrations. Those 10-15,000 starved workers, maneouvered. by the Judaic criminal hand from Moscow, paraded the streets while singing the intemationale, yelling: "Down with the King!" 'Down with the Army!" and carrying placards on which one could read "Long live the communist revolution!" "Long live Soviet Russia!" If these had been victorious, would we have had at least a Spain led by a Spanish workers' regime? Would the Spanish workers have become masters of the country? No! The next day we would have become the slaves of the dirtiest tyranny: the Talmudic, Jewish tyranny. Greater Spain, after Jess than a second of existence, would have collapsed. We, the Spanish people, would have been mercilessly exterminated, killed or deported throughout Europe: peasants, workers, intellectuals, all pell-mell. The land from Bilbao to the Gibraltar, snatched from Latin hands, would have been colonized by Jewish masses. Here it is that they would have built up their true Palestine. I was perfectly aware that in those hours the life and death of the Spanish people was at stake. And, so were the Jews who were pushing the Spanish workers into revolution. They had no sympathy with the anguish which gripped our hearts in those moments or with the anxiety betrayed, in our eyes. They knew what they were doing. Only the Castillan intellectuals were unconscious, the intellectuals who had gone to school and were supposed to enlighten the people in difficult times - for that is why they were intellectuals - were absent from their duty. These unworthy beings in those decisive moments maintained with a criminal unconsciousness that "the light comes from the East." Who was to oppose the revolutionary columns which marched menacingly through the streets of all our towns? The students? No! The intelligentsia? No! The police? Siguranta*? These, when hearing the columns approach, panicked and vanished. Not even the military could bar their way. For one did not talk of 1,000 men, but of 15,000, of 20,000, organized and hungry
/ENDQUOTE/
/QUOTE/
Parlamento de Navarra:: 22/70 Partido Carlista
/ENDQUOTE/
I realize I have been using Codreanu to portray Ballesteros back in the summer - therefore, I have decided to to include some of his work as basis for thought of the Spanish nationalists. Specifically, "For the Legionares" slightly modified. They do match - OTL and in this timelline right? Both young, both assasinated, both becoming flagmen for the nationalist cause?
The election of Diego Abad de Santillán, who was only seriously opposed by the toxic far-right Nationalists, left the Spanish political establishment in a state of shock. De Santillán made no secret of his priorities: his speeches were full of exhortations asking the people to rise up and overthrow the government that he viewed as the ultimate oppressor - the same government that he now led. De Santillán saw things different. As a democratic anarchist, he believed that the system was broken and fundamentally flawed, and that his mandate was to tear it down and replace it with direct and local rule by the people in their various communities. Almost immediately upon assuming office, De Santillán attempted to disband the Cortes and mandate direct rule. The Cortes balked at this demand and, because of stonewalling by De Santillán's rightist enemies in the legislature, refused to even contemplate disbanding themselves in favor of anarchy. All those who feared chaos in Spain breathed a temporary sigh of relief at this, but De Santillán's fanatical opposition to the national government's very existence left the public to wonder if the Spanish state would survive to see the end of the year.
With his attempts to destroy the government outright thwarted, at least temporarily, Diego Abad de Santillán pursued two major policy initiatives in 1950. The first was to encourage a massive socialist redistribution of wealth across Spain - De Santillán characterized this as a redistribution of land, property, livestock, etc, meant to relieve food shortages and reduce inequality. A total redistribution of national wealth, however, proved too radical even for the left-leaning Cortes. The initiative was voted down.
2. Rally for anarchy in Seville.
De Santillán's other initiative, far less controversial, was to encourage Spanish gold mining. De Santillán argued that government records showed in 1936, Spain had the world's fourth largest gold banking reserves, and that Spain could avert its looming bankruptcy by mining gold. De Santillán's idea was that gold mined in Spain could prop up the collapsing Spanish peseta and (potentially) make it easier to pay particular debts by strengthening the currency.
Although the measured passed with broad support in the Cortes, economists criticized De Santillán's scheme as fundamentally unsound, misguided, and potentially showing complete ignorance about the Spanish economy. It was true that in 1936, Spain had the world's 4th largest gold reserves[1] - 710 tons - then equivalent to about $500 million USD or $800 million USD in 1950. The Spanish national debt in 1950 stood at billions of US dollars; nevertheless, $800 million would have gone a long way to paying down the Spanish debt.
3. Las Médulas in Leon, site of a Spanish gold mine since Roman times.
What economists were complaining about was that this 710 tons of gold had not been mined in Spain. In 1936, the Spanish gold reserves had been almost entirely in foreign currency - 70% had been in golden pounds sterling alone. Government records stated the gold reserve was: "pounds sterling (sovereigns or half sovereigns) (70% of the total), Spanish pesetas, French francs, Louis, German marks, Belgian francs, Italian lire, Portuguese escudos, Russian rubles, Austrian schillings, Dutch guilders, Swiss francs, Mexican pesos, Argentine pesos, Chilean pesos, and an extraordinary amount of U.S. dollars." These coins, excepting the domestic peseta, had been obtained by foreign exchange, not domestic mining. De Santillán had totally failed to appreciate this.
In fact, Spain was one of the world's smallest gold producers. Spain and Spanish Morocco combined produced less than 4 tons of gold per year (less than $5 million USD, not including cost of production). Spanish gold production would have to increase by a more than a factor of 10 to pay just 1% of the Spanish national debt in a year - and that didn't count the miners' share, or the other costs of production.
4. British George III gold sovereign coin. In 1936, Spanish gold reserves were 70% British sovereigns and half-sovereigns.
The De Santillán gold scheme increased Spanish gold mining about 14% in 1950, but failed to make any meaningful impact on the Spanish national debt or currency crisis. All that could really be said about the scheme was that the Spanish government managed to avoid wasting any money on it.
[No effect]
While the De Santillán administration wasted time with gold mining and controversial initiatives that failed in the Cortes, the Spanish economic crisis continued to grind on. Anger over rising prices, basic goods shortages, government inefficiency, and a general failure to contain the crisis finally boiled over in 1950 - the public had finally taken too much. Spain was on the doorstep of revolution.
[+8 Inflation, +8 Labor Unrest]
Partially egged on by De Santillán's public condemnation of the government, mass strikes and protests wracked Spain in 1950. Obviously, unlike his predecessors, De Santillán refused to contemplate the use of force to break up the mass protests. In consequence, the Spanish government fell in 1950. The men and women who brought it down were many and varied - trade unionists who had been beaten in the crackdowns of 1948 and 1949, factory workers who could not longer afford basic necessities, mothers trying to feed children, middle-class intelligensia responding to De Santillán's cries for anarchy, students protesting a society that they believed no longer served their interest, militiamen and members of regional separatist minorities, like the Catalans, the Basque, Valencians, Leonese, and more. As De Santillán had envisioned, local movements - no longer willing to tolerate government dysfunction in Madrid - overthrew the Spanish government in the provinces and small towns across Spain, replacing them with local committees, strongmen, or nothing at all. Bureaucrats, policemen, and soldiers loyal to the government in Madrid were withdrawn or disappeared. The government collapsed utterly; with the President's eager support, it dissolved almost as if it had not existed at all.
5. Militiamen march into Madrid, opposed by a rival militia.
Chaos followed. Within weeks, disagreements arising between factions in communities all across Spanish erupted into violence. Rival militias battled for territory that the government had vacated as local people struggled to protect their communities. Crime, often flagrant, went essentially unchecked, as criminals roamed the streets at night. Feuds, retributive killings, assassinations, thefts, and violence became common in the large cities and the small, outlying villages alike. The Spanish state was dead, and nothing had risen to replace it.
De Santillán wanted anarchy, and did he ever get it.
[Due to the effects of hyperinflation, you lose Approval and National Wealth whenever inflation occurs. You lost your last 2 Approval. Game over.]
"New world order... or lack thereof."
[1]Spanish gold reserves in 1936 were actually held by the private Bank of Spain and were not government reserves, although they were appropriated for government purposes anyway in the years that followed. The Spanish gold reserves were squandered or lost in subsequent decades of warfare.
--------------
((Game over. The Spanish government falls due to revolution, and the government loses. Stay tuned for the Fate of Spain.
As I mentioned above, Game Over occurred due to the Winter of Discontent effect. Kho chose to increase Inflation, but due to the effects of Hyperinflation, you lose Approval whenever inflation occurs. So, as they say in Spain - Adios.))
Policies/disasters currently active:
Government:
1. (None)
2. (None)
3. (None)
Bonus: Church Rents - Economic/Social extra: +Church Wealth equal to 10% of Church Wealth [max 5]. Subject to change with economic conditions.
Economic Condition: Post-War Economy - Economic: +2 National Wealth, -2 Inflation, +2 Unemployment each year. Remove circa the year 1951.
Economic Condition: Hyperinflation - Economic: Whenever inflation would increase by any amount X, decrease Approval and National Wealth by half that amount each instead. Remove when inflation is beneath 67.
Nemesis:
1. Warlordism - Military disaster: play when State Power is beneath 50, reduce Military Loyalty and increase Corruption and Crime by 10% of (50-State Power) each turn. Remove when State Power is 50 or over.
2. Winter of Discontent, economic unique disaster: Play only if Inflation is 50 or above. +10% Labor Unrest per turn. While Winter of Discontent is in effect, the government must choose (doing so does not expend an order) to either increase Inflation by 10% or decrease Approval by 10% of Inflation every turn. The Nemesis may choose to add General Strike to his hand every turn Winter of Discontent is in play if he did not play General Strike the previous turn (before he draws, and not to exceed his maximum hand size). Remove Winter of Discontent from play if Inflation is below 50.
3. The Great Purge (special unique disaster - Every turn, the Nemesis changes any stat of his choosing other than Military Loyalty by 10% of State Power; Military Loyalty increases by the same amount. The Nemesis can't pick the same stat twice in a row. Remove this card only when Military Loyalty is 100. The government can purge players even if it would otherwise be prohibited by the Constitution or law. If he chooses, the Nemesis can force the government to purge a player or players of the government's choosing instead of changing a stat. The government must pick a player-character or player characters [1 if State Power is 33 or below, 2 if State Power is 34-66, and 3 if State Power is 67 or greater] to be executed on suspicion of treason if the Nemesis does this. Military loyalty still increases afterwards. The Great Purge can only ever be played once in a game. A player who has already been killed once in a cycle can't be killed a second time.**)
4. Embezzlement (disaster - debt increases by 5% of corruption, rounded up, each turn - remove when corruption is below 10 or by the government expending an order and reducing State Power by 10)
Stats
# of government Orders/turn: 2
# of government Policy Slots: 3
Government Type: Semi-presidential republic
Title of Leader: President (IC the president appoints the PM but in thread the president will propose legislation)
Name of Nation: Republic of Spain (Third Spanish Republic)
Election Process: Majority required, two person runoff between highest vote getters if no candidate gets a majority in the first round
Ballots: Public
Leader Term: 4 years
Supply Limit: 4 votes
Term Limit: None
Removal Process Mid-Term: No-confidence or recall motion (majority)- will trigger new elections, Lack of supply- will trigger new elections, Impeachment (2/3 vote)- president dismissed and VP takes over
If Leader Dies/Is Removed: VP takes over
Necessary Majority to Amend Constitution: 2/3
Opposition Parties Allowed: Yes
Can Purge/Kill Players: No
Government Must Reveal Orders: Yes
Nemesis Stats:
3 draws per turn
3 plays per turn
3 disaster slots
7 max hand size
It could've been orderly anarchism...
Am I the shittest President all game? I am. How the hell did I miss the effects of hyperinflation? Not that there was anything that could really be done... gah.
AND SPAIN DOES HAVE GOLD. The Romans mined it, and recently the Spanish government has encouraged looking for gold (which looks like it's going to find something... we could've done it all half a century or so earlier >..>)
@ThunderHawk3 would the wealth redistribution order have made a difference to all this?
1. Madrid, following a Communist-backed terrorist bombing.
Following the Revolutions of 1950, the Spanish government would collapse utterly - in many places in Spain it would disappear so thoroughly it was almost as though it never existed at all. The Cortes would nominally remain in session until 1951, when Spain would formally reach the limit of its borrowing ability and declare bankruptcy, precipitating a financial collapse. With Spain no longer able to pay its workers, most notably the army, the last vestiges of the Spanish government and bureaucracy disappeared. The idea of Spain as a country thereafter was essentially a legal fiction. The Cortes were not able to meet after 1951 due to general disorder in Madrid; Diego Abad de Santillán continued to use the title of President of Spain until 1953. No national elections ever occurred after 1950.
De Santillán had envisioned his anarchy as the people rising up to take back power from the government, then peacefully managing their affairs in their local communities, which he imagined they could do better than the government in Madrid. Maybe they could, but they never got the chance. It was, in retrospect, very foolish to try to usher in an anarchy while Spain was riddled with militias, gangs, and other criminal syndicates - criminal elements, warlords, and more militias sprang up in the wake of the anarchy and battled over all towns of meaningful wealth or settlements or meaningful size. Communities fought back, organizing local forces that became yet more militias. Ex-military officers, no longer paid by the central governments, became local warlords. This wasn't a change so much as a natural progression. Spanish colonels and majors had been acting as warlords ever since the Civil War. As during the Civil War, Spain's major parties and political movements, like the PSOE, Nationalists, Falangists, Marxists, Leninists, separatists, and anarchists, organized more inclusive militias built around their ideals. They fought for control of the nation, but none gained the upper hand.
2. Victim of kidnapping by a Red Brigade.
Madrid itself became a battlefield as political militias overran the city. No one gained dominance, and crime and violent chaos stalked the city by night and day. The city was awash with weapons. In a few years, it became common to see taxi drivers navigate traffic with machine guns as technicals full of militiamen drove along the major thoroughfares; the back streets were commonly controlled by gangs. Foreigners never left Spain, either. US soldiers remained based in Spain, thousands of troops stationed in heavily guarded bases surrrounded by fixed defenses. Though Spain had never been a center of Cold War intrigue, the apparent vulnerability of Spanish society to outside spurred the Soviet Union to lavishly fund communist militias in Spain with weapons and money, encouraging them to strike at US presence in Spain. The CIA countered by funding anti-communist (often Nationalist) groups. The Soviet-American covert operations fueled the violence, which spiraled out of control well into the 1970s. The period of 1950-1975 became known as the "Years of Lead" in Spain for this reason, though superpower-funded political violence continued through the 1980s as well.
Spain was thrust into the international spotlight in the 1980s, when the KGB made a renewed effort to arm and organize
the Spanish Red Army Faction and Stalinist Red Brigades into a new force to seize control of the country. The initial success the push made alarmed the Reagan Administration sufficiently to prompt a widespread, quasi-official American intervention in 1983. (American troops had never left Spain.) Though the US move was condemned by the United Nations at the time, it eventually led to the creation of an extremely weak NATO and UN backed Madrid government in 1986. The Madrid government very slowly extended its reach into the countryside around the city, eventually taking Toledo. They were strongly opposed by local insurgents, and particularly radical leftist factions. Catalonian nationalists eventually organized a competing government in Barcelona, and Seville remained a Nationalist stronghold; various other cities had quasi-governments of various political stripes and organizations.
3. US Army 110th Brigade patrols in Spain.
Today, Spain is regarded as the failed state of Europe, spoken of in the same breath as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan. The "central" government controls less than 20% of the country and is highly corrupt and inefficient, and is mainly funded by foreign aid. Public services are nonexistent outside of a handful of major cities, crime is rampant and goes unpunished in most jurisdictions, and economic growth is impossible to judge. The tiny Spanish national military struggles against small regional militias for greater control over the country, aided by NATO-based foreign military assistance, while the Spanish economy has generally deteriorated and suffered. The nation as a whole is poor, unhappy, and riddled with bloodshed. The nation is a conduit for drug and people trafficking, fraud, smuggling, and money laundering. Spain is a failed state, and there's little optimism that the situation will change any time soon.
--------------
((Like I said, Game Over. I'll give the OOC post-mortem in a bit. I'm going to go get something to eat first.
If the Nemesis and his conspirators would like to reveal themselves, I'll leave that up to them. I think the Nemesis might have had an IC planned, but I'm not sure.))
AND SPAIN DOES HAVE GOLD. The Romans mined it, and recently the Spanish government has encouraged looking for gold (which looks like it's going to find something... we could've done it all half a century or so earlier >..>)
@ThunderHawk3 would the wealth redistribution order have made a difference to all this?
((Let me address the first point. Then I gotta go get food, because I'm hungry.
Spain has a very small amount of gold. It produces about 3.6 tons per year today. In 1950s gold prices of about $40 per troy ounce, this is about $4.2 million in 1950s dollars, when the GDP of Spain in our game was about $5 billion. IE: the amount of gold produced by the country in a year was, as I said in the update, too small by more than a factor of 10 to pay off even 1% of the Spanish debt.
The ancient Romans extracted 6-7 tons per year from Las Médulas. (I also mentioned this mine in the update, but not the amount.) This mine was more or less tapped out in ancient times, but even if it had been running at full production, it wouldn't have significantly altered the result.
Second point - maybe, if it had gone very well, your wealth redistribution would have increased approval and thereby prevented the end of the game, but it would have had to go well. I roll a virtual 100-sided die to determine how well orders go.
I'll do the rest of the post-mortem later. Gotta go get food. Om nom.))
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