 Historian Vicente Carcel Orti asserts that anticlerical Freemasons played a large part in the anti-Catholic acts of the government since they held key government positions, including at least 183 deputies in the Cortes Generales (the Spanish parliament) and so they were instrumental in the making of anti-Catholic laws.As early as March 1933, Abilia Arroyo de Roman had declared at a rally in the Salamancan pueblo of Macotera that Spain was governed by Masonic lodges, intent on 'decatholicizing' Spain, and the "Gaceta Regional" blamed the Law of Congregations on 'an occult power' that had taken refuge in Spain 'to carry out its experiments'.Since the left considered reform of the anticlerical aspects of the constitution totally unacceptable, Historian Stanley G. Payne believed "the Republic as a democratic constitutional regime was doomed from the outset", and it has been posited that such a "hostile" approach to the issues of church and state was a substantial cause of the breakdown of democracy and the onset of civil war.