Freemasonry in Spain

[1] Initially, the membership of Masonic Lodges in Spain consisted of expatriates from Britain and France, but it was not long before Spaniards began to join.

The few lodges that were founded had a brief and precarious life because the Spanish Inquisition were quick to prosecute, enforcing the papal bulls and the decree of Fernando VI on 2 July 1751 banning Freemasonry.

In Spain, the encyclical received the royal exequatur and the Inquisitor-general published an edict dated 11 October 1738, claiming exclusive jurisdiction on the matter and called for denunciations within six days under pain of excommunication and a fine of 200 ducats.

[1] In 1752, a year after the promulgation of the Royal Decree which outlawed Freemasonry, Franciscan Father José Torrubia published A Guard against Freemasons (Centinela contra francmasones), a collection of anti-Masonic foreign texts.

The frequent use of these words to refer to the Masons explains why it was not until 1843 that the term Freemasonry appeared in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy as "secret association, in which several symbols taken from the masonry, such as squares, levels, etc are used.

In 1824 Fernando VII enacted a Royal Charter prohibiting "In the domains of Spain and the Indies, all congregations of Freemasons, rebels (Sp:communeros) and other secret sects.

[...] All the individuals of that congregation are armed with a hammer.In 1834 the regency of María Cristina de Borbón decreed an amnesty for Freemasons but maintained the ban on Freemasonry.

In 1876 he replaced Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, another prominent politician of the time and one of the pillars, along with Canovas del Castillo, of the Bourbon Restoration in Spain.

That same year, 1876 a Senator, the Marquis de Seoane emerged to lead the conservative National Grand Orient of Spain.

In the latter work it was said that Freemasonry was [3][5]an association of free men of good character, which has the sole and exclusive purpose of social betterment of mankind.

According to Pere Sánchez, "This was a masonry with a very thinly veiled political vocation in which not a few characters used its structure and their influence to climb to power and prestige within it, which (it is fair to say) met no opposition if the politician in question would favour their interests.

It is no exaggeration to say that some of them would complete the 33 degrees (of the Scottish Rite) in three days and many others, who held important positions, hardly knew anything about the Freemasonry and did not attend rituals.

For example, in Barcelona where there were more than forty active lodges in 1890, various Masonic journals were published which raised money for charitable funds to would relieve the families of deceased Freemasons, helping in case of illness and providing a medical assistance.

Created three years previously this was the first mainland obedience not to force its members to recognise the existence of the Great Architect of the Universe.

In 1884 Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum genus, which again condemns Freemasonry and views it as it one of the main enemies of the Church.

If that were not enough to ensure enmity, it called for concordats, secular education, public cemeteries, abolition of regular clergy and Jesuits, political liberty, etc.

"[3] An example of this anti-Masonic campaign is a work published in 1899 by the Valencian fundamentalist Manuel Polo y Peyrolón, in which he said the following about Freemasonry:[5] Masonry is a monster who conspires in the Caverns of Adoniram to commit all kinds of felonys and crimes; is the Deus ex Machina of all murders, poisonings, regicides, persecutions against the Altar, the Throne and Fatherland, wars, political crises, slander, revenge, sacrileges, mysteries of iniquity, worship of Lucifer and Palladio, and also of the more horrible mysterious, diabolical, criminal and nefarious occurrences which have happened and are happening in the world.

On other side Freemasonry, the undisputed cradle of freedom and human charity" according to an article published in the Bulletin of the Spanish Grand Orient in 1907.

[3] Between 1869 and the end of the 19th century the Spanish masonic obediences created 200 new regular lodges in Cuba, of which near a half was located central capital.

It attempted to follow the model of the United States, so set out to create an independent Grand Lodge in each region of the Iberian peninsula, including Portugal.

[3] However, after the triumph of the October Revolution 1917 in Russia, the 1921 Third International under the Bolsheviks banned associated parties from belonging to Freemasonry, as a "bourgeois institution".

The Special Tribunal for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism functioned until 1963, when it was replaced by the Public Order Court, created under the same law.

In an interview published in European space (espacios europeos) Villar Masso said: A March 22, 1972, in Paris, I was born to life in a Masonic Lodge of the Spanish Grand Orient in exile.

It was formed by Spanish residents of the French capital, and welcomed into the fraternal hospitality of the Grand Orient of France, in one of whose temples at its headquarters on 16 Rue Cadet, the impressive ceremony was held.

The stated reason for the annulment was that "the Directorate General of Internal Policy, in outlawing Spanish Regular Craft Masonry, exceeded the limited statutory power that the Constitution gives government authority...which precludes the performance of a trial of real and alleged hidden intentions in promoting their creation".

According to the abstract published by the daily El País, "the result is that they are believers (32% declare themselves Christian, without pointing specifically to any denomination, another 11.6% Roman Catholic), with strong, but varied political convictions (28% declare themselves liberal, 16.3% social democratic, 15.6% conservative), and consider the biggest problem facing Spain at the moment is "the crisis of values."

The Barometer explains that there are no atheist Masons (compared to 8.8% of the general public) citing the essence of Freemasonry, which has its essential foundation in the Faith in a Higher Power[12]