The whole country was in a state of severe abject poverty, and Prim was fine when he was in charge, but after Francisco came to power, in order to cope with the war in all directions, he collected taxes in various names and squeezed out the wealth of the people.

In the whole of Spain, only the autonomous communities of the eastern seaboard and the autonomous communities of the south are doing better, and the rest of the country is almost unable to afford to eat.

The food problem had to be solved immediately, and the civil war did not reach Castile, but because of the unrest and conscription, the production of rice, wheat and barley was reduced to varying degrees.

This has made Spain's already low food self-sufficiency rate even worse.

Fortunately, the traditional grain-producing autonomous regions collapsed, but Catalonia stood up, thanks to the policy of land reclamation and grain tax reduction, as well as the large-scale use of agricultural tools, the output of various crops has increased dramatically, even more than that of Castile.

In less than a year, it is quite proud to have completed such a large-scale increase in grain production under the condition that a considerable part of the labor force has gone to serve as soldiers.

It's a pity that this hole can't be filled.

To feed Spain's 16 million people, you have to look abroad.

The luckiest thing for Spain is that it has a reliable big brother - France, who can ask them for lack of money, weapons, food and even a navy.

Under the introduction of the French government, several large banks such as Crédit Lyon and Société Générale jointly provided a low-interest loan to the Spanish government at 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, and while interest rates on international loans are generally low, this loan is especially low.

In this year, because of the low liquidity and high risk of bad debts, the interest rate of similar loans is higher than that of later generations, and normally speaking, the annual interest rate of international loans is at least 10%.

This is also the reason why a number of banks have jointly lent money, otherwise a mere £2 million, any one of them can take it out alone, and this loan is more like charity in their eyes.

Such a generous interest rate is naturally not without cost, this money is used as a special loan for Spanish agriculture, which can only be used to buy crops and fertilizers in France, and the Spanish government will only see a sum of money going around the account, and not seeing a penny of real money.

It is not so much to lend money to Spain, but to sell a face to the French government, and to earn interest is secondary, and it is true to help French farmers open up markets.

Even before the repayment deadline was reached, the government was feeling the heavy pressure to act more efficiently than ever.

While the loan was still in progress, the Spanish government quickly completed the formation of a government, with Campos as prime minister and Prim as defense minister...... The rest follows the Catalan administration.

Inadvertently, Spain changed from Castilian Spain to Catalan Spain, at least in the Cabinet, the number of the two nationalities reached half and a half, and even slightly more Catalans.

Of course, this was only a temporary sight, and with the steady functioning of Spain, Castilians would also have a larger proportion of the government by virtue of numerical superiority alone.

But it has to be said that as soon as this cabinet list was released, it greatly calmed the mood of the Catalans.

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

However, the Spanish government does not treat them equally, and has no intention of giving them special care, and even if there are newspapers to help the government speak, it is impossible to say that there are no complaints from the people.

This high-level appointment gave them a step down, at least they can comfort themselves, it is the Catalians who 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 a cabinet is naturally for the sake of making money, and many plans cannot be carried out without a complete system.

The first step was to sell the Italian captives for a good price, 25,000 young men, any country...... No European country can ignore it, especially since they are still going abroad to fight for the sake of the king, and if they cannot be brought home intact, the love of the people for the authority of the royal family is undoubtedly a great blow.

King Vittorio could not sit idly by, and it was precisely because of this, and in order to repay the hatred of intervening in the civil war, the Spanish government opened its mouth, and the average person asked for 200 pounds, and the aristocratic officers had to calculate otherwise.

It is conceivable that the royal family of Savoy was resolutely opposed to this amount, and even affirmed that there was no need to talk about it if they shouted like this, and according to their ideas, neither country was at war, so how could the prisoners of war say that they could pay a boat fare and let them go home.

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

"Your Majesty, Italy says it can accept a fee of £135 per person, but there is one condition." In the royal palace of Madrid, Campos came to report with a look of resentment.

Alfonso knew that this condition was not simple as soon as he saw this expression: "Say." ”

"They demanded that we inherit the money that Francisco had lent them and the bonds issued in Italy, totalling £1.4 million, and that we also pay the balance of £300,000, which Francisco had not yet paid, for the purchase of armaments."

"Dreaming!" Alfonso was furious.

It is normal for European countries to inherit the debts of the previous government, but Francisco is a rebel, which means that they support the Spanish rebellion and want the government to help the rebels pay off their debts, is it possible?

Francisco had borrowed money from the United States before, but the United States mentioned that it knew that it was unlikely to admit the debt, so it did not mention it again, but he did not expect Italy to be a thief.

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

This is normal, with Italy's population of 28 million, there is really not a shortage of more than 20,000 people, if not, there will be none, it is estimated that the Italian government wants them all to die in Spain.

Vittorio should have been trying to stall for time, until the public's attention was turned away and Spain lowered the price.

Alfonso muttered for a while: "In this way, let them work in the prisoner of war camp first, and then they can give Spanish citizenship if they behave well, and build the railroad if they don't behave well."

In addition, after a while, we will publicize their lives, do not let the incident cool down completely, and it is better to follow them in Italy. ”

He was a little helpless, he couldn't kill them all, it would only stir up national hatred, and the royal family of Savoy didn't care about the damage to their reputation, and he really didn't have much to do.

If you can't, you can only take a soft policy and see if you can use them as an example to intercept some Italian immigrants to the United States.

Historically, from 1870 to World War I, Italy immigrated nearly 5 million people to the United States, all of whom were poor and had no way to go abroad.