Taking Over the Factories

Although Carlo had no experience dealing with the Carlists, that did not mean no one else in the Spanish government did.

Worth mentioning was that the current prime minister, Primo, had not only been born in Catalonia but had also fought in the First Carlist War. His buffs were truly maxed out.

Carlo had also done everything he could for now: he handed full command of the army to Primo and let Primo handle all the trouble.

This was the vast difference between having Primo and not having Primo. Amadeo had been nearly helpless in the face of the Carlist rebellion, because within Spain, aside from Serrano, there were no influential officials or senior military officers willing to support him.

But Carlo was different. With Primo and Serrano, two military heavyweights, holding the fort, Carlo had never even considered the possibility of losing this war.

To ensure that nothing went wrong, at Carlo's suggestion, the Spanish Army placed Madrid under martial law and provided heightened protection for important institutions such as the government and Parliament.

Besides the five-hundred-man palace guard, Carlo's Royal Palace also gained an additional force of one hundred soldiers, scattered around the area on patrol.

With all of Madrid under martial law, unless the Carlists and other opponents could directly break through Madrid, it was basically impossible for them to threaten Carlo or the other high-ranking government officials.

Before Carlos VII's army had even left Catalonia, the Spanish government received another piece of bad news.

A large-scale demonstration broke out in Vitoria, Basque Country. The marchers stormed Vitoria's city government and clashed violently with the local police.

Clearly, the Basques, who dreamed of independence just as much as the Catalans, had begun harboring ideas of their own.

Compared to Catalonia, which supported the Carlists and incited workers, the Basques' reasons for protesting were even more radical: they demanded either independence for the entire Basque Country or autonomy.

The Basque Country here referred to the Basque regions of Spain, Navarre, and Northern Basque Country in France.

The Basques living across these regions were a fiercely warlike people of the Iberian Peninsula, and also the last people on the peninsula to be conquered.

Fortunately, the entire Basque population numbered only around six hundred thousand, and they were scattered between the Basque Country and Navarre. Their threat was nowhere near as great as Catalonia's.

Regarding the demonstrations in the Basque Country, Primo's recommendation was appeasement first and suppression second.

After all, this people was still quite capable in battle. If they could be absorbed into the broader Spanish population, the Spanish Army's combat strength would also be assured.

Controlling the Basque Country and Navarre was also very simple. All that was needed was to relocate a certain number of Spaniards into those two regions, reducing the proportion of Basques.

Since the big capitalist class, the Carlists, the separatists of Catalonia, and the separatists of the Basque Country had all scrambled to jump out one after another, naturally no one else would oppose the Spanish government's reforms from then on.

While Primo organized the army for war against the Carlists, he also seized the opportunity to vigorously push reforms around Madrid and strictly enforce the Labor Law.

Those factory owners who had taken the initiative in stirring up demonstrations and rebellions became the targets of Primo and Carlo's reckoning.

In just a few days, Madrid's police arrested dozens of factory owners and took over more than a hundred factories and businesses of all sizes.

To maintain production in enterprises around Madrid and protect the jobs of workers in the factories and businesses, the government and the royal family took over most of those industries.

Though the government took the lion's share, Carlo's gains were no less substantial.

Because Carlo had firmly supported Primo during the reforms, Primo repaid him by allowing Carlo to acquire more than ten factories around Madrid at a negligible cost.

These factories were all quality assets, each worth anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Pesetas. There were even major factories like Madrid Steelworks among them, with nearly a thousand workers in that factory alone.

With these factories, Carlo rapidly expanded the scale of his own holdings. The total value of Carlo's industries had now reached more than ten million Pesetas, not to mention the over ten million Pesetas in funds he still held.

Excluding the royal palaces, country residences, and estates he had taken over from Queen Isabella, Carlo was already able to rank among Spain's ten richest men.

If all his assets were included, Carlo could easily become the richest man in Spain.

However, Carlo did not care about such empty reputations. He even quietly dealt with some royal enterprises, making them appear to have little connection to the royal family.

At present, aside from the winery, which bore the word "Royal" because it targeted the high-end market, none of the other businesses carried that word. One could not tell from their names alone whether they belonged to the royal family.

As Spain's king, Carlo naturally had to firmly enforce every provision of the Labor Law.

The moment he took over those dozen or so factories, Carlo had people tally all the wages owed to his workers, and by the next day, nearly all back wages had been repaid.

Without exception, the situation at those dozen or so enterprises made its way onto Madrid's newspapers and became a hot topic among the people around Madrid.

Carlo's purpose in doing this was simple: to set a good example for Spain's capitalists.

Even Carlo, as king, firmly obeyed Spain's Labor Law, and he had even paid the wages the previous factory owners had withheld.

What reason did those capitalists have to keep withholding wages? Did they really think the working class was so easy to bully?

As public opinion fermented, Carlo successfully gained a measure of prestige.

Paying overdue wages was perfectly normal, but paying workers the wages owed by previous factory owners was far from ordinary.

For Madrid's workers, this was where the greatest difference between Carlo and those capitalists became apparent.

From the beginning of February onward, Madrid's residents would occasionally mention their King Carlo in conversation, followed by a heartfelt word of praise.

Although Carlo had paid overdue wages for fewer than a thousand workers, the impact reached nearly a thousand families.

Because they all lived around Madrid, as word spread from person to person, at least tens of thousands of people came away with a better impression of Carlo.

And that was Carlo's goal: to gradually increase the Spaniards' goodwill toward him, so that they would support and esteem him from the bottom of their hearts.

Once workers saw friends around them receive the wages they deserved, they naturally would no longer accept factory owners cheating them out of their pay.

And the capitalists of this era remained greedy. They could not possibly care more about the workers' views as Carlo did.

This would make it difficult for capital and workers to unite again against royal power, while the influence of the big capitalist class over Spain would remain confined to a relatively small scope.

As for when Spain's economy flourished in the future because of the reforms, Carlo's industries would continue expanding and might even become Spain's largest conglomerate. Naturally, there would be no need to worry about the capitalist class making a comeback.

As long as Carlo could become the largest capital in Spain, what capital could possibly contend with Carlo within Spain?

No matter how powerful capital became, it could never defeat the government, because political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

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