The Sun Never Sets In Spain

Chapter 83: Food issues and Italian prisoners of war

The whole country is in a state of extreme poverty. It was okay when Prim was in charge. After Francisco came to power, in order to deal with wars in all directions, he collected taxes in various names and drained the wealth of the people.

The whole of Spain may only be better in the Eastern Coastal Autonomous Region and the Southern Autonomous Region. Other places are almost unable to eat.

The food problem must be resolved immediately. The civil war did not reach Castile, but due to the turmoil and conscription, the output of rice, wheat and barley all decreased to varying degrees.

This makes Spain, which has a low self-sufficiency rate of food, even worse.

Fortunately, the traditional autonomous regions of grain production have collapsed, but Catalonia has stood up. Thanks to the policies of land reclamation and grain tax reduction, as well as the large-scale use of agricultural tools, the output of various crops has increased tremendously. In terms of rice production, it even surpasses the Castile region.

In less than a year, with a considerable part of the labor force going to the army, it is quite proud to complete such a scale increase in grain production.

Unfortunately, this hole still cannot be filled.

If you want to feed the 16 million people in Spain, you must look abroad.

The luckiest thing in Spain is to have a reliable big brother-France, who can ask them if they lack money, weapons, food or even the navy.

Under the introduction of the French government, several large banks such as Credit Lyon and Societe Generale jointly provided a low-interest loan to the Spanish government with an annual interest rate of 4.5%, an amount of 2 million pounds, and a term of 5 years.

This interest rate is really low. Although international loan interest rates are generally low, this loan is particularly low.

This year, because of the lack of liquidity and the high risk of bad debts, the interest rate of similar loans is higher than that of later generations. Normally, the annual interest rate of international loans is at least 10%.

This is also the reason why many banks jointly lend. Otherwise, any one of them can take out a mere £2 million. This loan is more like a charity to them.

Such a generous interest rate is of course not without cost. This money is used as a Spanish agricultural loan and can only be used to purchase crops and fertilizers in France. The Spanish government will only see a sum of money in the account. See Less than a cent of real money.

It is not so much a loan to Spain, as it is to sell it to the French government to save face, earning interest is second, helping French farmers to open up the market is true.

Even if the repayment deadline is too early, the government still feels heavy pressure, and this pressure makes them operate far more efficiently than before.

The loan is still in progress, and the Spanish government quickly completed the formation of the cabinet, with Campos as prime minister and Prim as defense minister... The rest of the Catalan administrative team is still used.

Inadvertently, Spain has changed from a Castilian Spain to a Catalan Spain. At least in the cabinet, the number of the two ethnic groups has reached half and half, and there are even slightly more Catalans. some.

Of course, this is only a temporary sight. With the stable operation of Spain, the Castilians will also occupy a larger proportion of the government by relying solely on the number of advantages.

But I have to say that as soon as this cabinet list was released, it greatly calmed the emotions of the Catalans.

Recently, there has been a voice among the Catalan people that they helped reunify Spain. The current government should give them some preferential treatment, such as tax cuts or more autonomy.

However, the Spanish government treats them equally and does not intend to give them special care. Even if there are newspapers to help the government, it is impossible to say that the people have no complaints.

This high-level appointment gave them a step down, at least to comfort themselves, it is Catalans rule Spain, fewer people rule more people, and they can also use the national market. This wave is a victory for Catalonia!

The hurried formation of the cabinet is naturally to make money, and many plans cannot be carried out without a complete system.

The first step is to sell the Italian captives for a good price. There are 25,000 young men, no country...any European country can ignore it, especially if they go abroad to fight for the king, if they can’t be brought back in their entirety. Home, the authority of the royal family, and the love of the people is undoubtedly a great blow.

King Vittorio was absolutely unable to sit back and watch. It was precisely this point, and in order to report the hatred of interfering in the civil war, the Spanish government lion opened his mouth. The average person costs 200 pounds, and noble officers have to count.

It is conceivable that the Savoy royal family resolutely opposed this amount, and even stated that there would be no need to talk about the arbitrary price. According to their thoughts, the two countries were not in a state of war. Whenever the prisoners of war said, they paid the ship fare. Go home.

With such a huge disagreement, the prisoner of war negotiations between the two sides have lasted for more than half a month, but there has been no result.

"Your Majesty, Italy says that it can accept a fee of 135 pounds per person, but there is one condition." In the Madrid Palace, Campos came to report with an expression of resentment.

Alfonso knew that the condition was not simple when he looked at this expression: "Say."

"They asked us to inherit the loan from Francisco to them and the bonds issued in Italy, totaling 1.4 million pounds, and to pay the balance of the arms purchase that Francisco has not yet paid, 300,000 pounds, which will be deducted from it."

"Dreaming!" Alfonso was angry.

It is normal for European countries to inherit the debts of the previous government, but Francisco is a rebel. This is equivalent to supporting the Spanish rebellion and wanting the government to help the rebels pay off the debt. Is this possible?

Francisco had borrowed money from the United States before, but the United States mentioned that he knew that the possibility of acknowledging debts was unlikely, so he didn't mention it again. Unexpectedly, Italy would never die.

"I think they don't want to redeem people at all." Alfonso gritted his teeth.

This is normal. With a population of 28 million in Italy, it is really not a shortage of more than 20,000 people. Without it, there will be no more. It is estimated that the Italian government would like them all to die in Spain.

Vittorio should be using the idea of ​​delaying time, dragged the public's attention away, and Spain cut prices.

Alfonso pondered for a while: "In this way, let them work in the prisoner-of-war camp first, and then grant Spanish citizenship to those who perform well, and repair the railway if they do not well.

In addition, after a while, publicize their lives. Don't let the incident completely cool down. It is best to follow them and report them in Italy. "

He was a little helpless and couldn't kill them all. This would only arouse national hatred. If the Savoy royal family didn't care about the damage to their reputation, he really had nothing to do.

We can only go one step at a time. If we can sell them at a good price, we can only adopt a gentle policy to see if we can detain some immigrants from Italy to the United States by their example.

Historically, from 1870 to World War I, Italy emigrated to the United States close to 5 million people. They were all poor and could not go abroad. If Spain could eat part of it, it would be very helpful to increase the population, and the Italians It's just that you can't play in Italy, and you can play well after you go abroad. There is not much difference with the Spaniards. It is considered as a relatively ideal immigrant.

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