Chapter 251: Public Health And Environmental Reform

1879 was a busy year for everyone. While the British were mired in the Zulu War and the Anglo-Afghan War, Spain was also undergoing a new round of reforms. Of course, compared to the comprehensive reforms promoted by former Prime Minister Primó, the current reforms were only small-scale and targeted ones.

The reforms were proposed by the Spanish Workers’ Party, with the goal of improving the working environment for workers in Spanish factories and providing them with some living conveniences.

As mentioned before, hygiene was not highly valued across Europe. Feces and garbage could often be seen on the bustling city streets, let alone in the dark corners inside factories.

Workers toiling in such environments suffered double torment both physically and mentally.

In addition, the living conditions of some workers were quite poor, with dozens of people crammed into a single small room, making it difficult even to turn over while sleeping.

This was a common phenomenon for workers of the era; Europe’s industrial progress was essentially a history of workers’ suffering, which ultimately gave birth to trade unions, organizations dedicated to securing welfare and better living conditions for workers.

The proposal to improve workers’ working and living environments sparked heated discussions within the Workers’ Party and also attracted the attention of Carlo, the party’s behind-the-scenes controller.

After comprehensive consideration, improving workers’ working and living environments was still very necessary. Only in a cleaner and more hygienic environment could workers have sufficient emotion invested in their work.

At the same time, only with adequate rest and relaxation could workers have enough energy to work.

The method to improve workers’ working and living environments was quite simple. The factory working environment could reference the governance of Madrid streets: by building public toilets and implementing a fine system, cleanliness and tidiness inside factories could be ensured.

As long as there were nearby public toilets for convenience, most workers would choose to go to the toilet to solve it rather than find a dark corner inside the factory.

At first, some workers might be fined due to old habits, but as time progressed, the vast majority of workers would adapt to the existence of public toilets.

At the same time, improving workers’ living environments could also boost their morale and prevent dissatisfaction from arising due to changes in systems.

The way to improve living environments was also simple: build a large number of wooden houses around the factories.

With the development of African colonies, large amounts of cheap timber were shipped back to the Spanish Mainland. Both the Guinea Colony and the Congo Territory possessed abundant timber.

Building a wooden house for workers to live in required only low costs and a short time, but the effect could be making the entire working class more satisfied with the government.

Improving workers’ working and living environments was also a great opportunity to win popular support from the worker groups.

After formulating a detailed plan, Carlo summoned Prime Minister Cánovas, presented the entire detailed plan, and required the government to rectify workers’ living and working environments according to the plan.

Upon receiving Carlo’s order, Prime Minister Cánovas attached great importance to it and immediately issued the relevant orders to various departments.

The Spanish Government’s actions were swift; the next day, it issued a related announcement stating that it would begin rectifying workers’ living and working environments in factories from that day onward, requiring all factories in Spain to cooperate with the government’s actions and rectify the environments inside the factories.

Considering that improving workers’ living environments would entail a significant expenditure, the factories’ owners would not bear the entire cost; the government would also provide a portion of subsidies for various factories to purchase materials for building houses.

Once this announcement was issued, the Spanish Government immediately began the related reforms and rectifications. The government’s attitude was clear: this was not a negotiation with those factory owners; the government had made the decision, and factory owners and capitalists only needed to cooperate.

The Spanish Government had sufficient confidence. Because it pursued state capitalism, several large factories in Spain were controlled by the Royal Family and the government.

Privately controlled factories were basically small and medium-sized ones; these factory owners had no ability to resist government policies and could only comply reluctantly.

Moreover, the government’s and Royal Family’s factories had already taken the lead in making changes; if these small factories stubbornly resisted, wouldn’t that prove they were completely opposed to the workers?

In such a situation, the Spanish Government didn’t even need to act; the angry worker groups alone would be enough to destroy these stubbornly resistant factories.

Facts proved that if workers’ strength was properly mobilized, its political influence was boundless. For factories that outwardly complied but covertly resisted government policies, simply mobilizing workers to strike would make these factory owners obediently cooperate.

After all, a factory strike meant losses to the factory owners’ interests. In the context of Spain’s massive construction, every day a factory halted operations meant one less day of income for the factory owners.

With the Spanish Government’s announcement, the work to improve workers’ working and living environments was proceeding vigorously.

Major newspapers also followed up with related reports, all praising the new Cabinet Government and King Carlo for their attention to workers and commoners, exclaiming that this was the government people needed and the king people should love.

Wooden houses were built quickly, of course; these houses were certainly not as sturdy as those made of cement and steel.

But for Spain at present, wooden houses were sufficient; improving workers’ living environments was the main purpose.

As the first batch of wooden houses were completed and put into use, Spanish factory workers’ living environments changed from dozens of people crammed into one house to ten people per house, with each person’s bed slightly larger, at least allowing them to turn over freely.

Overall, Spanish workers were quite satisfied with the new worker dormitories. With the construction of the new dormitories, the Safety Water Project was also activated simultaneously.

The so-called Safety Water Project actually involved large water companies providing drinking water to cities, towns, and factories.

Currently, in major cities like Madrid and Barcelona, water companies existed. But in suburban factories and more remote towns, there were no water companies.

People generally relied on groundwater wells for drinking water, and some directly fetched water from rivers and drank it straight.

When Spain had no industry, river water was relatively clean. But even clean water had bacteria, and Carlo himself did not advocate drinking raw water.

Moreover, with Spain’s industrial construction, some rivers had already been polluted.

This was not the later era that advocated sustainable development; existing industrial technology could not achieve low-pollution industry.

It was no exaggeration to say that the industry of this era was high-pollution industry. To make the country’s industry powerful, it was necessary to bear the risk of land and water sources being polluted.

In such a situation, ensuring that the public’s drinking water was filtered and disinfected became extremely important.

When deciding to rectify workers’ living and working environments, Carlo also thought of using tap water to replace the previous drinking methods of the Spanish people, having formal companies uniformly supply water to them.

Of course, making all Spaniards’ drinking water tap water would be a very long process.

Carlo decided to use Madrid and Barcelona as pilots; these two cities already had small water companies, and due to their large populations, they could serve as the first step in promoting tap water across Spain.

Of course, the factories in the suburbs of the two cities would be the first to fully provide tap water.

Building wooden houses uniformly for workers was a good opportunity to simultaneously provide them with tap water, replacing the previous methods of fetching from wells and rivers.

The Industry Department even issued specific regulations: all factories in the suburbs of Madrid and Barcelona must provide tap water to workers; once it was found that workers’ drinking water was river water or well water, the factory would be penalized.

Considering that the two cities did not have enough water plants to supply all factories, before the water plants’ output met demand, factories could use boiled well water as a substitute for tap water provided to workers.

The Safety Water Project was still very necessary; at least it could reduce the Spanish people’s disease rate.

Drinking boiled water and tap water could not completely prevent Spaniards from getting sick, but drinking river water and well water would certainly cause Spaniards to contract corresponding diseases.

To make Spaniards accept the concept of drinking boiled water and tap water, Carlo specifically had various newspapers publish a large number of articles on disease transmission, drinking water, and hygiene environments, achieving very good results.

Workers shifted from initially not accepting boiled water to urging factories to provide it and even pressing the government to build water plants soon to supply tap water to factories.

Due to pressure from workers, factory owners could no longer avoid providing boiled water. Once they refused to provide boiled water to workers, workers would label them as deliberately spreading diseases, and factories even risked shutdowns as a result.

In such a situation, factory owners dared not refuse to cooperate. Fortunately, providing boiled water was simple and did not require significant expenditure from factory owners.

With the government’s successive promulgation of these two policies, Baron Angelo Orcajo, the overall person in charge of the Barcelona Industrial Base, immediately became the busiest person in all of Spain.

At the beginning of this year, the third phase of construction of the Barcelona Industrial Base had been successfully completed, merging into the Barcelona Industrial Zone.

As the overall person in charge of the Industrial Base, Baron Angelo Orcajo naturally became the first Regional Governor of the Barcelona Industrial Zone.

As an industrial zone Spain was vigorously developing, the Barcelona Industrial Zone’s political status was equivalent to that of a city, even possessing its own council and regional government.

Baron Angelo Orcajo’s position as Regional Governor of this industrial zone was more important than that of mayors of Spanish cities.

Only the mayors of the two major cities, Madrid and Barcelona, surpassed Baron Angelo in status and importance.

From family decline to becoming the Regional Governor of the industrial zone, Baron Angelo Orcajo naturally knew who had helped him.

Therefore, after the government issued the policies, Baron Angelo Orcajo immediately mobilized all departments of the industrial zone’s regional government to supervise all factories in the industrial zone to complete the reforms.

The good news was that, since the Barcelona Industrial Zone had been established not long ago, the living and working environments of most factory workers were already at a qualified level.

Baron Angelo Orcajo only needed to pay extra attention to those small factories, ensuring they dutifully executed the government’s orders.

Factories able to relocate to the industrial zone basically had some strength. These factories were capable of completing the government’s reform policies, which Baron Angelo Orcajo was quite confident about.

In addition to completing the government-issued policies, Baron Angelo Orcajo also set up a large number of large trash bins in the industrial zone to collect garbage generated in workers’ daily lives and concentrate it for destruction.

This had already been implemented on some streets in Madrid. Spain’s power plants could also burn this garbage for power generation; although the exhaust from combustion would pollute the environment, it was better than letting the garbage pile up randomly in the corners of the industrial zone.

The downside was that regularly clearing these trash bins required some manpower, representing an additional expenditure.

Fortunately, the industrial zone was not short of money; bearing this expenditure alone was no problem. According to Spain’s tax system, all factories in the industrial zone had to pay taxes to the industrial zone’s regional government on time.

The industrial zone’s regional government would retain a portion as its fiscal budget, with the remainder directly transferred to Spain’s Finance Department.

In this regard, the industrial zone’s regional government’s fiscal level was equivalent to that of regional governments. Ordinary cities’ tax revenue was handed over to regional governments, which then aggregated all cities’ taxes before handing them over to the Kingdom government.

Because regional and municipal governments’ fiscal budgets came from a portion of the government’s fiscal revenue, this also led to completely different fiscal situations for regional and municipal governments.

Major cities like Madrid and Barcelona, or large industrial zones like the Barcelona Industrial Zone, had quite ample fiscal budgets.

But some small cities and regions with smaller populations were not so fortunate; without the Cabinet Government allocating funds to support these regions with lower fiscal revenue, they probably couldn’t even complete basic construction.

Last year, Spain’s total fiscal revenue reached 9 million pesetas, of which nearly 80 million pesetas were distributed to regional governments, helping regions with smaller populations or weaker economies alleviate financial pressure.

It was expected that funds distributed to regional governments this year would be even more, after all, rectifying workers’ living and working environments required significant expenditures.

Fortunately, the development of Spain’s twin star cities and the Barcelona Industrial Zone was going quite smoothly; otherwise, Spain couldn’t afford such large expenditures.

Currently, Spain could be said to be fully developing the twin star cities and one industrial zone; the development of these two cities and one industrial zone related to the overall development situation of Spain.

Only by ensuring adequate development of the two cities and one industrial zone, under the model of the first-rich leading the later-rich, could other regions of Spain develop.

Without focused development targets, allowing regions to develop blindly, none of Spain’s regions would develop.

This plan, placed within the governments’ regional development, still had hope of realization. After all, with the Cabinet Government regulating from the center, these regions that got rich first couldn’t hoard; they would help other regions develop as much as possible when capable.

As for other situations, it was hard to say; after all, human nature was always greedy, and not everyone was willing to use their own funds to help others.

Carlo had plans to adjust Spain’s existing administrative divisions.

Spain, with only 506,000 square kilometers and fewer than 20 million population, had 16 region-level administrative divisions.

Among these 16 region-level administrative divisions, only 6 had populations over one million; the remaining 10 regions varied in population scale, even including regions with just over 100,000 or 200,000 people.

In Carlo’s view, such administrative divisions were truly unnecessary. What role did regions with 100,000 or 200,000 people serve? They merely added another layer of government system and a regional council.

Apart from creating more officials and members of parliament, there were no benefits for Spain. These extra officials and members of parliament would increase Spain’s financial burden; why did a region with only over 100,000 people need so many officials?

In Carlo’s view, Spain’s 16 region-level administrative divisions ultimately needed to be reduced to around

These 12 region-level administrative divisions would also include the Madrid region and the Barcelona region.

Yes, Carlo planned to establish Barcelona as a separate region, separating it from Catalonia.

There were two reasons for establishing the Barcelona region separately. First, Barcelona’s population was approaching 500,Note that this only counted the Barcelona urban area’s population.

If suburban populations and industrial zone workers were included, Barcelona’s population would exceed one million, becoming Spain’s most populous city.

Barcelona urban area’s population already exceeded some regions, which was one reason it qualified for region status.

As for the second reason, it was naturally Carlo’s purpose of weakening Catalonia’s influence. Barcelona was extremely important to Catalonia; if Barcelona could be established as a separate region, Catalonia’s importance would also be weakened, and Catalans would pose no major threat.

If suburban and industrial zone populations were included, the proportion of Catalans in Barcelona had already dropped below half. When Barcelona existed as a region-level administrative division, it could radiate the entire Catalonia region like Madrid radiated all of Spain, ensuring stability across the entire Catalan region.

In the future, Madrid and Barcelona would become Spain’s two brightest pearls. Madrid would be Spain’s cultural center, political center, and economic center. Barcelona would be Spain’s largest seaport, secondary economic center, and industrial center.

The two cities would complement each other, compete with and help each other, enabling Spain’s industry and economy to develop faster.

Officials Carlo valued in the future would also be assigned to these two cities to examine and train their abilities.

Although Spain’s prime minister election conditions only required being a member of the Lower House, actual elections were not that simple.

Without a brilliant political record or outstanding work experience, becoming Spain’s Prime Minister was impossible.

Although the Spanish Prime Minister position did not require overly outstanding ability, Carlo did not want the Spanish Government’s leader to be an incompetent fellow.

Whenever Carlo issued policies, he needed a smart person who could cooperate with him to lead the Spanish Government in fully executing Carlo’s orders.

In summary, for the Spanish Prime Minister’s tenure conditions, loyalty outweighed ability, but ability was also very important.

In the future, the mayor positions of Madrid and Barcelona would be extremely important. Perhaps a considerable portion of future Spanish Prime Ministers would have served as mayors in these two cities.

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