Читать книгу Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World - Irwin W. Sherman - Страница 12

The youngest of Queen Victoria's nine children, Beatrice, was born in 1857. She was a hemophilia carrier. She married Henry of Battenberg and transmitted the gene to three of her four children; the eldest son was unaffected. The second son, Leopold, was a hemophiliac. He joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps, but because he was physically delicate and lame, he never saw active service; he died in 1922 following a hip operation. The third son, Maurice, also probably a hemophiliac (although this has been disputed), joined the King's Royal Fusiliers and died of wounds received at the battle of Ypres. The only daughter, Victoria Eugenie (known as Ena), who was a carrier for hemophilia, married Alphonso XIII, the King of Spain; her condition had a significant impact on the political stability of Spain.

The shortage of healthy heirs from the marriage of Eugenie and Alphonso contributed to anti-British feeling in Spain since it was believed that the British had defiled the royal blood of Spain by imposing a genetically defective wife on the Spanish monarch. Unfortunately for Ena, her status as the origin of this disease in the Spanish royal family led to tension in her marriage and its eventual breakdown. Although technically Spain was a constitutional monarchy, in actuality the political parties were weak and so the Spanish King was responsible for appointing his governments. At the end of World War I, the position of the monarchy was further weakened by strikes, assassinations, and a military disaster in Morocco. In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera orchestrated a coup and seized dictatorial power. The King named him Prime Minister, thus appearing to support him. The dictatorship was initially successful and popular, but the people eventually tired of living under a dictator, and Primo de Rivera was unable to sustain his position in the face of economic instability in the late 1920s. The last straw came when the military withdrew support after he imposed some unpopular reforms. He resigned in 1930. The King also lost popular support, and he and his family went into voluntary exile in 1931. Spain became a republic. During the next 5 years, various political groups struggled for power: in 1933 the moderate conservatives were elected, but by 1935 they were replaced by the leftists; military leaders then plotted to overthrow the leftist government. In 1936, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who had built his reputation in the Moroccan wars of the 1920s, led a Nationalist revolt against the leftists. Franco's justification for his revolt was the defense of Catholic values against all enemies including communism, liberalism, and separatism. The political situation, however, continued to deteriorate, with revolts and murders and finally the Civil War (1936 to 1939). Franco's regime did not tolerate insubordination or political opposition, and those who were opposed to the militaristic society were purged, executed, or imprisoned.

The monarchists in Spain pressed Franco to restore the monarchy. Indeed, monarchism was strong among the generals who had backed him. However, Franco feared that restoration of a liberal constitutional monarchy would be both anti-Catholic and anti-Nationalist. Further, the possible royal heirs were now living in exile. Alphonso, the eldest son, who inherited the hemophilia gene from his great grandmother Queen Victoria, renounced his claim to the throne in order to marry a commoner, although his removal from the succession as a result of his hemophilia was already being considered. He died at age 31 from a hemorrhage after a car crash. Gonzalo, the youngest son and another hemophiliac, died at the age of 19, also from an uncontrollable hemorrhage after a car accident. Jaime, the second son, who had been deaf since a childhood operation for mastoiditis, renounced his claim to the throne on the grounds of his disability. The remaining son, Juan (the father of the present king of Spain, Juan Carlos), was the only healthy son who survived to adulthood. The number of potential heirs was therefore very limited. The Nationalists, under Franco, received strong support from Italy and Germany, and by April 1939 they were victorious. From the 1940s onward, Spain was under the influence of what Franco liked to call “national Catholicism.” During World War II, Spain, although in sympathy with Hitler and Germany, remained neutral. For not taking sides and for Franco's pro-Fascist policies, Spain was ostracized by the Allies after the war, and this continued to adversely affect the Spanish economy. However, by the 1950s, Spain's economy improved as it opened its markets, and it became strategically important to Britain and the United States in the Cold War. Franco permitted the United States to build air and naval bases in Spain in exchange for economic and military aid. This helped in industrial expansion and improved the economy further. In 1955, Spain was admitted to the United Nations. From 1969 to 1973 there was an unresolved power struggle between the reformists and the conservatives. Miners and other workers went on strike, Basque terrorism increased, and Franco was aging and unwell. The situation was resolved in 1975: General Franco died on 20 November, and Juan Carlos (the son of Don Juan) was crowned King on 22 November. In the end, Franco's 30-year dictatorial regime was replaced by the liberal constitutionalism he had fought so hard against.