Straperlo, the roulette of scandal

It must have surprised Anthony Adama Zijstra, senior manager of the Dutch spa company Exploitatie Maatschappij Scheveningen, to find

meeting with the German Daniel Strauss at the Carlton Hotel in The Hague in the summer of 1935.

Adama, a character unrelated to Spanish politics, tells us in his memoir (Vaar Well Scheveningen!, AW Sijthof, Leiden, 1974) of this meeting between an entire former president of the Council of Ministers of Spain with an adventurer like Strauss, whose appearance morality was well known to Adama since in 1933 he had introduced the

in the mythical Hotel Kurhaus of his company

, invented and patented by Strauss himself together with his partner Jules Perel and which caused so much scandal in the Netherlands when its fraudulent nature was discovered. of that game.

The game patented by Strauss and Perel was a modified classic roulette wheel to which an electric motor had been incorporated that provided a regular and continuous rotation.

Based on some references that it had incorporated,

and carried out simple addition or subtraction calculations.

In short, it was an ideal game to be exploited in those places where games of chance were prohibited.

But a hidden device allowed the croupier to vary the speed of the electric motor at certain times, so that the calculations made by the unsuspecting gamblers were no longer valid.

Straperlo roulette was a complete

.

Far from Azaña's confessed excuse that the reason for his European trip was to visit the General Exhibition that was being held in Brussels at that time, his presence in Belgium and the Netherlands had a perfectly specific purpose: to put an end to the center-right government led by by the Radical Republican Party of Alejandro Lerroux, making use of the episode related to the attempt to introduce the Strauss roulette in some Spanish casinos.

Manuel Azaña, president of the Second Republic.

As a collaborator in that plot, Azaña had Indalecio Prieto, who walked through Europe the sadness of his hasty flight from Spain after the revolutionary events of October 1934.

Let's go back to the background of this conspiracy.

On June 30, 1935, Daniel Strauss, who had the Mexican nationality obtained during his years in that North American country, writes a letter to the also Mexican Martín Luis Guzmán, known by the nickname of

, a character established in Spain as a journalist who He enjoyed the appreciation of Manuel Azaña, of whom he was confidant, direct collaborator and adviser.

“The matter is of the utmost importance, especially for Azaña,” Strauss wrote in his letter, in which he alluded to his unsuccessful efforts in Spain to obtain authorization from the Radical Republican Party government for his roulette wheels in

revealing in his writing a certain whiff of political corruption.

“The matter you propose to me has a lot of interest and we would welcome it, of course, on the condition that we choose the moment when it is appropriate to make use of the information,” Guzmán replied to Strauss.

The propitious moment would arrive in the following September.

Relying on the advice of the French leftist lawyer Henri Torrès, and following the instructions of Azaña and Prieto, Strauss forwards a complaint to Alcalá-Zamora.

money for party members

The complainant stated that he had delivered various amounts of money during the previous year to prominent members of the Radical Republican Party, including ministers, senior officials and even a relative of Alejandro Lerroux (Aurelio Lerroux and Romo de Oca) in order to obtain administrative authorization to be able to exploit his game Straperlo at the Gran Casino de San Sebastián, in the first attempt, and at the

later.

As both endeavors were unsuccessful, Strauss considered the commitment that his Spanish contacts had contracted with him unfulfilled, for which he requested financial compensation to settle the matter.

Poster of the time about the events at the Hotel Formentor.

The initiative that Azaña and Prieto conceived abroad had been well calculated, since they took it for granted -as it was- that the ambition and animosity of the President of the Republic Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, a staunch enemy of Lerroux, was an asset that could play in your interests.

Instead of following the correct procedure and putting that corruption allegation in the hands of the courts,

and that the new coalition government formed by the Radical Party and the CEDA deal directly with the matter. .

Without respecting the division of powers by not transmitting a judicial matter directly to the courts, the President of the Republic sought to turn a trivial matter into a parliamentary controversy, making the government and the Courts act as a tribunal.

Clearly, an obvious abuse as none of the legal rights of the people denounced by Daniel Strauss were recognized in that procedure.

Scandal

When Alcalá-Zamora sent the complaint to the Government, the case was dealt with in the Cortes in the midst of a great scandal conveniently incited by the leftist press, forming a parliamentary commission to investigate the matter, and whose exemplary opinion considered as guilty several of the political personalities denounced by Strauss.

Once all the Straperlo documentation had been passed to Ildefonso Bellón Gómez, a special judge appointed for the case, the latter, after completing the corresponding summary, issued an

in addition to other characters. , which would mean the destruction of Lerroux's party.

From that moment on, the word straperlista would be used by the press as a substitute for radical, as it meant a member of Alejandro Lerroux's Radical Republican Party, and the straperlistas were the radicals.

Very soon, the Hispanicized word "black market", initially accepted as a synonym for scam, would acquire a new meaning, being perpetuated in the dictionary as "illegal trade in articles intervened by the State or subject to tax".

Smuggling.

THE TRIAL NEVER CAME TO BE HELD

Despite the great scandal, Judge Bellón considered that the imputed crimes were of "social order and cleanliness" of very little importance, and with very short sentences, never being able to specify the legal exemplary character of that case since it did not reach be held a trial due to the start of the Civil War.

In any case, that affair of minor amounts and of very modest significance was well orchestrated until it was transformed into a

that reached national proportions, and had tremendous consequences.

“The blow had been accurate”, Gil-Robles will write in his memoirs when remembering that matter.

The Straperlo scandal, together with the subsequent Payá affair, meant the fall of the center-right government and with it the last chance for the Second Republic to redirect itself through peaceful channels at a time when the country's economic situation was improving hand in hand. of the Minister of Finance and later head of government, Joaquín Chapaprieta.

In the ensuing political crisis, Alcalá-Zamora, without respecting the parliamentary majorities, far from entrusting Gil-Robles with the formation of a new government, opted for Portela Valladares, a centrist politician lacking support, which would lead to calling

which take place in February 1936 in a situation of confrontation and irreconcilable positions.

The Popular Front won those elections plagued with irregularities, entering the Second Republic in a situation of unstoppable deterioration that would lead to the Civil War.

José Carlos García Rodríguez is the author of the book Historia del Straperlo (Almuzara, 2022)

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