It is not often that gambling is blamed for major upheavals and certainly less often that it has a role in starting a civil war.
Daniel Strauss, a Mexican of German origin, and his business partner, Joachim Perlowitz, invented a game called Straperlo. Straperlo was named using the first few letters of each of the inventor´s names (STRauss and PERLOwitz) or possibly it also included the wife of Strauss, Frieda LOwann.
Initially, Straperlo was a roulette wheel powered by an electric motor that rotated at a constant speed. The wheel had a track which wound around and across the wheel, into which the dealer put the ball, then let go. The ball rolled down the track and players used their “skill and judgement” (ahem!) to determine into which number the ball fell. The latter versions reduced the number of pockets on the wheel to 25.
Strauss’s Straperlo Wheel
Interestingly, in the Netherlands, a game called Golden 10 became very popular in the 1970s until the mid-1980s, when it was declared illegal. Until that point, Golden 10 was considered a game of skill and thus did not contravene the Netherland’s gambling laws.
The game was similar to Straperlo, except that the wheel was extremely shallow, a little like a dinner plate. It was static and a much larger ball was rolled around the wheel until it came to rest in one of 24 pockets in the middle.
In 1933, Strauss installed his game in a hotel in Aachen, Germany, but despite the game proving profitable, he moved to the Netherlands due to the rise Nazism. Strauss was Jewish.
He set up his new games in three casinos in the Netherlands and one in Belgium and by all accounts was doing quite well. Then it was discovered that unbeknownst to the players, the dealer could use a hidden switch to make the wheel speed up or slow down. Strauss had to hightail it out of town and landed in Spain.
Strauss patented the legal version of the game in Spain in 1934 and because the wheel moved at a constant speed, he could claim it was a game of skill and therefore legal; games of chance were made illegal in 1924, during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
The 1800s and early 1900s were a time of political upheaval in Spain; between 1814 and 1936, there were more than 25 pronunciamientos, or military coups. When Strauss patented Straperlo in 1934, it was two years before the start of the Spanish Civil War.
Strauss first tried to convince the government of Catalonia to allow Straperlo and despite a charm offensive that included staging international boxing matches, he was unsuccessful.
He moved on to Madrid and after bribing government ministers with gold watches, cash, and a share of the profits, he received an authorisation to operate Straperlo in San Sebastian.
It is said that the Minister of the Interior, Salazar Alonzo, was not happy with his bribe and demanded more. Strauss and his cohorts refused. Salazar Alonso claimed he only found out about the game and its authorisation that night, so on September 12, 1934, the launch night for Straperlo in the Kursaal in San Sebastian, the minister arranged a police raid and the game was shut down. Straperlo was live for only a few hours.
Strauss did not give up. There was a government reshuffle in early October and Alejandro Lerroux from the Radical Republican Party was appointed Prime Minister. Strauss managed to obtain another authorisation from the Ministry of the Interior to operate his game in the Hotel Formentor in Mallorca. This time, he was a little more successful; he opened on October 4, 1934, and the local government closed it 37 days later.
It is not clear who was involved on the government side; some claim it was the Minister of the Interior, Salazar Alonzo. Others believed it was the nephew of Prime Minister Alejandro Lerroux, who used his uncle’s contacts and Strauss’s “gifts” to get the authorisation for the game.
Strauss was extremely unhappy, having invested a considerable sum by this point, and decided to blackmail the Prime Minister. He collected his things, including some incriminating evidence, and returned to the Netherlands. In March 1935, Strauss wrote a letter to Prime Minister Lerroux explaining what had happened and demanded “compensation”. Lerroux was unmoved and refused to pay up.
Somehow, Strauss’s letter was leaked to Lerroux’s political enemies, who promptly forwarded it to the President, Alcalá Zamora. In turn, Alcalá Zamora forwarded it to the prosecuting authorities and a complaint was filed with the Supreme Court.
In September, Lerroux resigned and a commission of enquiry was appointed. After a few months, the commission found that many of the politicians from the Radical Republican Party had been involved, which led to a series of resignations and with another scandal, the government collapsed.
Elections were held in February 1936, which were won by the Popular Front, a leftist party, supported by the Communists. The following months were extremely volatile and a coup d’état ensued in July, which led to the rise of General Francisco Franco and the Spanish Civil War. Had the Straperlo scandal not happened, it is possible that the Civil War may not have occurred.
Since then, “estraperlo” has entered the Spanish language and is used to mean any corrupt scheme, especially those involving politicians.
