A Social History of Spanish Labour: New Perspectives on Class, Politics, and Gender 9780857450401

Citation preview

A SOCIAL HISTORY

OF

SPANISH LABOUR

International Studies in Social History General Editor: Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam Volume 1 Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe 1960–1993: A Comparative Study of the Actions of Trade Unions in Seven West European Countries Edited by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad Volume 2 Class and Other Identities: Gender, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labor History Edited by Lex Heerma van Voss and Marcel van der Linden Volume 3 Rebellious Families: Household Strategies and Collective Action in the 19th and 20th Centuries Edited by Jan Kok Volume 4 Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500 Edited by Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz Volume 5 The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 Michael Seidman Volume 6 Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory Kevin Murphy

Volume 7 Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822–1920 Donald Quataert Volume 8 Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1898–1923 Angel Smith Volume 9 Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800–1940 Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Juan GiustiCordero and G. Roger Knight Volume 10 Alternative Exchanges: Second-Hand Circulations from the Sixteenth-Century to the Present Edited by Laurence Fontaine Volume 11 A Social History of Spanish Labour: New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender Edited by José. A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén Volume 12 Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship Edited by Bert de Munck, Steven L. Kaplan and Hugo Soly Volume 13 Unruly Suburbs: The Other Side of Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Edited by Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner

A SOCIAL HISTORY OF SPANISH LABOUR

New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender

JOSÉ

EDITED BY A. PIQUERAS AND VICENT SANZ ROZALÉN TRANSLATED BY PAUL EDGAR

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

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11/30/07

6:58 PM

Page iv

First published in 2007 by Berghahn Books www.BerghahnBooks.com © 2007 José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of Berghahn Books

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A social history of Spanish labour : new perspectives on class, politics and gender / edited by José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén ; translated by Paul Edgar. p. cm. -- (International studies in social history ; 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-296-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Working class--Spain--History. 2. Working class--Spain--Social conditions. I. Piqueras, José A., 1963- II. Sanz Rozalén, Vicent. HD8584.S63 2007 331.0946--dc22 2007044674 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN 978-1-84545-296-4 (hardback)

CONTENTS

Introduction. Traditional History and the New Social History

1

of Labour in Spain José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén

1. The Formation of the Working Class: A Cultural Creation Manuel Pérez Ledesma

19

2. Women in the Workplace in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Spain: Methodological Considerations 43 Pilar Pérez Fuentes 3. The ‘Hardest, Most Unpleasant’ Profession: The Work of Laundresses in Eighteenth-, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Spain 64 Carmen Sarasúa 4. The Toccata and Fugue of the Urban Factory: Working-Class Conflicts and Work Discipline in Valencia, 1840–1880 92 Francesc A. Martínez Gallego 5. Craft Work, Industry and Radical Culture in the Age of the First International José A. Piqueras

106

6. ‘Resistance, Resistance, Resistance!’ Skills and Disputes in the Castellón Espadrille Industry at the End of the Nineteenth Century Vicent Sanz Rozalén

134

7. Traditional Popular Culture and Industrial Work Discipline: Asturias, 1880–1914 153 Jorge Uría 8. ‘Rough Characters’: Miners, Alcohol and Violence in Linares at the End of the Nineteenth Century José Sierra Álvarez

176

vi

9. Disputes, Protest and Forms of Resistance in Rural Areas: Huesca, 1880–1914 Carmen Frías Corredor

Contents

197

10. The Standard of Living of Miners in Biscaye, 1876–1936 Antonio Escudero

221

11. Republicans, Socialists and Anarchists: What Revolution Was That? Javier Paniagua

241

12. The Civil War – A Class Struggle? The Difficult Task of Reconstructing the Past Julián Casanova

258

13. Subordination, Supplies and Mortality: The Montaña catalana, 1939–1945 Joan Serrallonga

274

14. A Fundamental Instrument for Labour-Force Control? Reflections on the Vertical Trade Union Organisation of the Franco Regime José Babiano

298

Notes on Contributors

315

Index

317

INTRODUCTION

TRADITIONAL HISTORY AND THE NEW SOCIAL HISTORY OF LABOUR IN SPAIN José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén

The social history of labour and labourers is currently in the paradoxical position of having defined the subject of study in all its rich complexity as never before – a fact born out by some excellent works – yet fewer and fewer social historians are working on the subject. In general terms, it has become a branch of history which is increasingly based on the examination of documentary sources, with up-to-date methodology and with the ability to resolve questions by means of analysing and recounting basic problems of the past of many social groups which are truly relevant in all pre-industrial and industrialised societies and whose prominence in protest, associative and political movements has been a significant factor of social life since the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, this has not prevented some authors from using the social history of labour as an outlet for their ideological beliefs. Nonetheless, over the last two decades, in Spanish academic circles, prejudice against militant history has grown to such an extent that it is hardly taken seriously since it is not seen to fulfil the strictest scientific requirements of the field. Paradoxically, this attitude does not apply to the numerous political studies on the political history of the Restoration (1874–1923) or the history of conservatism. Neither does it seem to apply to critical reviews of the left-wing parties of the Second Republic (1931–1939). In these studies the ideologised viewpoints of authors are not much better than the most politicised accounts of working-class history yet no response is considered necessary, a fact which illustrates the prejudices of the academic establishment and its political leanings.

2

Introduction

Ways of Making Social History The increasing lack of interest in working-class history is not something which is new to the last decade, nor is it peculiar to the Spanish case. Marcel van der Linden recently characterised the decline – which he described as ‘regional’ – of the historiography of workers in countries which form the nucleus of traditional capitalism in similar terms. Likewise, van der Linden highlighted the growing interest in labour history, protest and working-class involvement in the changes taking place in the economic systems of countries undergoing industrialisation. In these latter countries, studies multiply at the same rate as the number of salaried workers, while at the same time highly active trade union and political organisations are being formed.1 In this respect, we can conclude that working-class history is no different to any other branch of history. It searches the past for answers to questions which deserve the attention of present-day society, and it deals with the past either as a cause of the present, including the process of class formation, or as the reconstruction of historical backgrounds which show how class was increasingly discernible in defence of their interests or in political conflicts. It is appropriate to add a second observation, this time regarding the relevance of the topics and the upsurge or decline of subspecialities. Interest in the history of labourers appears to be greater in periods of disputes which are the result of industrial processes in progress, in situations where there are prospects for change and at times when industrial working-class movements are on the increase. For one reason or another, so-called working-class history reached a crisis point at the end of the 1970s, at the same time or a short while after the economic crisis which affected advanced capitalist countries from 1973 onwards. This resulted in major changes in the organisation of production processes, in the characteristics of the labour market, in the impact of new technologies on employment and the economy in general, in a drop in the number of active workers employed in the primary sector and in a fall in levels of union membership, above all in the industrial sector. The process included the institutional regulation of labour conflicts and the normalised handling of negotiations with the labour movement in almost all western European countries. In Spain, this was carried out by means of the Moncloa Pacts (1977), the creation of mediation and arbitration organisations (1979) and the Workers’ Statute (1980).2 All of this resulted in a substantial modification of what had been the Left’s history of resistance and struggle to modify the relations between capital and work; not to mention to influence the orientation of society and obtaining certain social and political rights. Logically, a reduction in the number of disputes and the fact that these conflicts are being effectively managed affects the type of historical studies carried out, which change the point of observation of social conflicts according to life experiences and to the negotiating strategies of actors of the past. It is symptomatic that at the same time as there has been a decrease in interest in subjects related to the social history of labour and labourers, books on this subject have often been replaced by an avalanche of ‘self-help’ labour

Introduction

3

literature, in which the collective aspect is replaced by an exclusively individual perspective on sociolabour relations. The sense of dissatisfaction with the results of mainly descriptive and to a certain extent heroic working-class history soon gave way to readjustments which involved maintaining the same line of study while making it ‘more social’, that is to say effectively integrating the issues in the framework of the historical society and in a varied and in most cases inconclusive set of movements and protests (the revolution, the liberation of the fourth state, the destruction of capitalism …). The evolution of the social history of labour in Spain has not differed very much from the route taken in other countries although the point of inflection in the way social history is dealt with took place slightly later. In addition, when the ‘crisis’ of traditional social history occurred, the amount of ‘traditional’ knowledge based on the collection and description of social facts and events was in Spain greatly inferior to that of other countries in which this line of studies had not been interrupted and which had no direct experience of the so-called ‘working-class movement’. It should not be forgotten that in the European context, Spain is a unique example for two reasons. First, it experienced a dramatic Civil War (1936–1939), in which working-class political and trade union organisations played a very important role. Secondly, the country lived under a long, very strict dictatorship (1939–1977), which during its first twenty-five years continuously and systematically repressed working-class organisations and left-wing organisations in general. During the war and during the immediate postwar period, the dictatorship physically eliminated numerous members of parties and trade unions, sent others to jail and dissolved their organisations, confiscated or destroyed their files and books and persecuted their traditions and their intellectuals. For almost four decades, the Franco regime rewrote history and ignored issues related to working-class history. In such political conditions, academic historians directed their attention to fields of study which required less commitment. In Spain, it was not until 1959 that professionals started making references to working-class history. The first publication was written by Casimir Martí, a Catholic priest who had just earned his doctorate in Sociology from the Gregorian University of Rome with a study on Catalan anarchism.3 There was a tradition of militant history prior to 1939 and also among historians in exile. There were also two previous examples which can be considered ‘academic’ labour history. One was from 1916 and the second from 1925, the latter being intended for the students of a School of Business Studies.4 In 1950, José María Jover made a call – not exempt from prejudice – for the need to deal with the issue.5 In the 1960s, modest studies were published which were similar to the previous ones and which contributed to breaking the taboo. The year 1972 saw the publication of two important and, to a large extent concomitant works: one by Josep Termes on the First International and the other about anarchism and revolution in the nineteenth century by Clara E. Lida – an Argentinean historian who was a follower of the exiled Spanish historian Vicente Llorens in Princeton. Publication of the latter had been delayed for two years due to censorship regulations. At the same time,

4

Introduction

Manuel Tuñón de Lara published the first, albeit rather basic textbook on the Spanish working-class movement from 1832 to 1936. One year later, Miquel Izard published an extended version in Spanish of a previous work written in Catalan about the most important manufacturing workers’ association during the nineteenth century, namely that of the cotton textile sector.6 To a large extent, these four works mark the birth of the social historiography of work in Spain.7 The cultural traditions of the authors were different, however. Whereas Martí, Termes and Izard came from seminars which were promoted in the late 1950s at the University of Barcelona by Jaume Vicens Vives and later by Carlos Seco, Tuñón de Lara was exiled in Paris in 1946 and from 1965 onwards was a lecturer at the University of Pau in the south of France. From 1971 onwards, Tuñón organised yearly symposiums on Spanish history which brought together historians from inside and outside the country in Pau. The one organised in 1974 was dedicated to the working-class movement. The period, at the end of General Franco’s dictatorship, was one in which there was a marked resurgence in trade union and political opposition and this allowed left-wing circles to maintain the hope of a regime change in which the working class would be able to play a prominent role. Likewise, publishing houses had greater freedom as to what they were allowed to publish and there was a large demand among university students and professionals for books about the working class and Marxist theory, works which had been banned for decades. By the end of the dictatorship the conditions were such that attention once again turned to studies about social movements. The political implications which this type of studies involved – because of the subject and because of the militancy of the authors – helped them to gain support and become increasingly widespread. During the years that followed, there was a veritable explosion of social history dealing with the labour history, revolutionary ideas and social movements. Following the French model, in Spain the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is referred to as the contemporary period, and this attracted the attention of the majority of university History students, who from 1973 onwards studied a specific university degree course which was separate from Philosophy and Arts. And within the contemporary period, studies about working-class history undoubtedly occupy first place, followed by equally incipient studies on the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the history of agrarian disentitlement. Today, a large proportion of lecturers in the speciality who were educated in the 1970s prepared their doctoral theses on one of these subjects, many on the first one. At times, the studies were undertaken at national level and on many other occasions at local or regional level, a sign of new approaches to the past, but also of the growing autonomist feeling (against the centralised state) among the opposition to the dictatorship. Together with the anti-Franco beliefs of the young authors, there was also their emotional identification with the exploited classes, who in the Spanish case were also defeated in 1939, and the fact that they were part of an international historiographical trend.8

5

Introduction

Just after this phenomenon had started, when it was practically still in its infancy and with Franco still alive, in 1975 two books were published which were very similar to each other and very different from those we have mentioned so far. In both cases, the authors had been educated in Oxford with Raymond Carr. Their history was traditional in style with considerable empirical content, and they had a political outlook on history and adopted a liberal tone from which they denounced history made from theoretical abstractions (to refer to the categories ‘working class’, ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘class struggle’). They also denounced historians who, guided by their ideology, had been quicker to adopt the role of advocate than that of researcher. We refer here to the works of Juan Pablo Fusi and Joaquín Romero Maura on Basque socialism and the working-class movement in Barcelona, respectively.9 These traced the two main trends of the social history of labour in its modernday origins in Spain. The dispersion of subjects, plus the excess of positivist and militant history were perceived early on. Fusi’s denunciation, nevertheless, was equivalent to applying a bandage even before the wound had appeared, no doubt due more to the desire to be different which tends to accompany an author’s first works than to reasons of political intent.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel At the end of the 1970s, a critical reflection of a different kind began to emerge which was more closely related to the problem of developing the historiography in relation to the historical moment. It had been several years since the legalisation of political parties and trade unions, the constitution had been endorsed, but two parliamentary elections (1977 and 1979) had also shown the strength of the moderate Left, represented by socialists, and the hegemony of the Centre-right. At the same time, the two main trade unions, which had low membership levels, were attempting to reach agreements with employers and the Public Administration, a far cry from the old tactics of confrontation which perhaps existed more in the books of historians than in the past itself. The ‘First Conference of historians of Spanish working-class and peasant movements’, held in Barx (Valencia) in December 1979, helped to establish the need for a change in direction. For the first time, fifteen historians, brought together by Javier Paniagua, assessed the recent development of Spanish historiography on the subject and distinguished two lines which were worth emphasising. Both confirmed the obsolescence of history committed to the working classes, the reductionism of summarising the history of the class as the description of organised workers and the non analytical means of approaching phenomena related to the world of work. The first line considered that there was indeed an area of study, which can be summarised as being close to that of Eric Hobsbawm and along the lines of the interrelationships between material conditions, social experience and class action outlined by E.P. Thompson. The second line dissolved the working

6

Introduction

class into popular movements and its protests into the response to established power, with explicit references to the suggestions of Foucault.10 In a wellknown article published in 1982, two of the historians present in Barx, José Álvarez Junco and Manuel Pérez Ledesma, reiterated the critical approaches of the conference and formulated the second of the aforementioned analyses.11 In 1982, another meeting of historians was held in Valencia and their critical and self-critical c omments were published in the journal Debats.12 The third and last of this series of seminars took place in 1987. On this occasion, a project was presented which began to take shape in 1988, namely the journal Historia Social, founded and edited by Javier Paniagua and José A. Piqueras, who had been working together for a decade to arrange and organise the above-mentioned conferences. Historia Social managed to establish itself as the most important means of publishing articles on labour history in Spain, but also as one of the main publications dealing with the history of society.13 All this revision, which began in 1979 and 1982, was similar to what had been taking place in other historiographies for a decade, but in Spain the persistence of more traditional history (committed and institutional) could be explained by internal reasons, firstly due to Franco’s dictatorship and then due to the task of rediscovering the history of those defeated in 1939.14 Once the transition to democracy had finished with the Socialist Party’s electoral victory in 1982, it would appear that a cycle interrupted by the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship had come to an end. However, what should have been a great leap forward after the change did not take place. It caught the latest and most numerous generation of historians of working-class movements writing or finishing their doctoral theses or other research projects using arguments considered to be ‘old history’ – whatever the meaning of ‘old’ may be here – instead of using the new approaches. While there was talk of renovation, the 1980s seemed to indicate that what had aged was not the means of tackling the history of workers, but rather labour history itself as a research subject. And in this respect, the evolution of Spanish historiography is part of a general trend, but here the revisionist trend is more accentuated. Apart from the decline of Marxism, which had nominally inspired a large number of the studies, this is perhaps linked to the exceptional political and social moment of the 1980s. There was then an authentic rebuilding of the academic world as a result of new legislation which removed academics from the position of permanent discontent they had found themselves in for the last decade. This was done by promoting the majority of non resident lecturers to better-paid, life long posts and by creating academic careers along the same lines. When reviewing the labour history and social history written and published between 1972 and 1988 – when the past of the working-class movement attracted numerous historians and a considerable amount of research was carried out – we find how heavy the presence of traditional history was, and how often concepts borrowed from traditional political history were used.15 This sub-subject gave a leading historical role to social groups which had until then been ignored or neglected by academic history

7

Introduction

which, as we know ends up being the main route to the construction of official history. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it can be said that important works were carried out on the working-class movement around 1850,16 the formation and evolution of the First International (mentioned previously), ‘utopian’ thought,17 anarchist ideas18 and anarcho syndicalism,19 violence,20 the evolution of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and its associated trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT),21 the relationship between the working-class movement and populism,22 the institutionalisation of reformism,23 trade union organisation in the service sector,24 official communism and its heterodoxies,25 gender and the working-class movement,26 education,27 the collectivist revolution of 1936–1939,28 Catholic trade unionism,29 the day labourer movement and peasant disputes,30 approaches regarding the conditions of industrial work,31 the life of workers,32 etc. The history of the working class was often limited to the study of its political and trade union organisations, or to the study of ideas. Also particular attention was paid to outbreaks which only sporadically affected the normal course of lives which were becoming dispensable insofar as they did not show any signs of achieving their emancipation. History had a lot to do with the construction of a revolutionary subject, the conscious worker, even when this was not done explicitly and did not comply with the requirements of the subject. Despite this, such history provides useful information and can be examined in a different way in order to provide a fairly complete description of the social condition.

A Change in the Perspective of Study Although it has experienced a decline, the study of social and labour history has not ceased and it has been enriched by new perspectives.33 The year 1988 saw the creation of the Association of Social History, which has periodically organised conferences and has become the main forum of discussion for senior historians and historians starting out in the profession. The published results have always reflected the full range of approaches which existed among the researchers.34 In addition to the aforementioned Historia Social, other publications also deal with this speciality, such as Sociología del Trabajo, Historia Contemporánea (University of the Basque Country) and, to a lesser extent, Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres. However, until very recently the quarterly journal of the Association of Contemporary History, Ayer, had included practically no articles on the subject since its launch fourteen years ago. Previously, between 1977 and 1991, the Ministerio de Trabajo published the journal Estudios de Historia Social, which dealt mainly with working-class history. With a large format and intermittent publication, around sixty issues were published, many of them double issues, and they were the main indicator of the kind of research being carried out, at least until the appearance from 1988 onwards of other more dynamic academic publications with more plural and more independent selection procedures.

8

Introduction

In the 1990s there was a significant change in the direction of studies concerning social and labour history. Although there was still a certain amount of description of the history of organisations, of workers in specific geographical areas and of certain situations, there was the beginning of a reversal in the selection of the subjects, guided by specific problems and processes involving the formation or evolution of class. The decline of the social history of labour referred to here has been more pronounced in research into the nineteenth century than in research into the twentieth century. This uneven interest has been caused by the existence of a greater number of industrial workers and an increase in conflicts and disputes during the first third of the twentieth century, the situation during the Republic and the Civil War (1931–1939) and the reclamation of experiences suppressed by Franco’s regime. There was still a lot more to learn when interest in the subject fell and the fragmentation of its study took place. This has left certain issues unaddressed, for instance the framework of professional societies and local federations which followed the dissolution of the epigone of the International (1888) and covers the period which links the foundation of the anarcho syndicalist trade union (CNT) in 1911, the fate of independent trade unionism, anarchist groups’ going underground, and the causes of the disparate introduction of the working-class movement. We are referring here to the best known period of the Restoration and some classic subjects which have not been formally dealt with. On the other hand, our knowledge of the relationship between republicanism and the working-class movement has been enriched. Previously, history considered this relationship to have been abruptly interrupted with the introduction of a Bakuninist or socialist working-class movement. We know more about anarchist violence and to a lesser extent about violence instigated by the state against workers. With regard to the earlier part of the nineteenth century, almost nothing is known. The transition from corporative work to industrial freedom, which has more numerous and sounder studies, is almost exclusively dealt with in local or professional monographs. The fate of salaried workers of the Ancien Régime when the privileges which protected the royal factories were lost is not exactly a mystery, but the issue has not been fully dealt with.35 We have spent two decades listening to the virtues of the methodology followed by E.P. Thompson regarding the historical formation of the working class as the basis of history from below, which paid attention to the subject and the link between productive relations, experience and action, only to obtain such meagre results. One wonders whether Thompson’s name has not been taken in vain in order to deal with a certain branch of history, either because of its sociostructural or mechanistic content or purely because of the events, or perhaps for reasons of another kind which ignore the sense of commitment of that author’s works. More precise information has been provided about the International, broadening and correcting previous views.36 We are starting to have a greater awareness of the nature of associate workers and their forms of protest, although there is no specific analysis of, for example, the Manufacturing

Introduction

9

Union, which was the main professional federation of the time and which was only partially connected to the International. There is no study that brings together, analyses and typifies the labour conflicts which took place in Spain from 1868 to 1874 and which occurred more often and more intensely than ever before. With all its advances in macroeconomics, economic history has for the time being proved incapable of offering a rough guide to production and its characteristics, including the labour factor. The result is that we still often use estimates and testimonies. It is therefore difficult to establish a correlation between the nature of the productive processes, the characteristics of the labour force (with regard to skills, subordination to capital and education), membership of a radical culture and social mobilisation at any level. If we are to characterise the social and labour history carried out in this decade by means of the main contributions made, we must start with issues related to the changes in the craftwork, manufacturing and industrial productive structures throughout the nineteenth century, which have been the object of attention of economic and social history. Authors have taken an interest in the effects that these changes had on the workers, either from the perspective of the differences between master craftsmen belonging to the same guild, or stressing how this process created bonds of dependence, in a process of proletarianisation of master craftsmen and journeymen in ever more extreme conditions of poverty.37 The training of the working class, bearing in mind the organisation of the productive processes, the creation of new working relations and the role played by professional workers, has been the subject of some outstanding monographs. These refer to regions as different in terms of their importance in heavy industry and the manufacturing industry as the Basque Country and Catalonia.38 We also have collective works – which we have edited – aimed at provoking reflections on these aspects.39 For the period dealt with in these studies, it is interesting to explore the links created by professional benefit societies, as an initial and one of the workers’ most enduring responses to the hostile environment in which they found themselves.40 There are some studies which combine the analysis of salary levels, migratory movements and family strategies in the nineteenth century, relating them with the configuration of the labour market during the period of expansion of the factory system.41 The market and the organisation of labour was the subject of a symposium organised by faculties of Social Studies.42 The classic subject of health and illness among these sectors of the population has been worthy of attention from the field of the history of science and medicine.43 The living conditions of miners and factory workers in Vizcaya have been the subject of two outstanding works by Pedro M. Pérez Castroviejo and Pilar Pérez Fuentes.44 The conclusions, however, are a subject of considerable controversy, as has usually been the case in almost all the countries where similar research has been carried out. The economic historians Emiliano Fernández de Pinedo and Antonio Escudero have put forward contrasting figures and arguments which are worth taking into consideration. A book by Joan Serrallonga and Josep Lluis Martín Ramos45

10

Introduction

provides a broader perspective and examines the effects that living conditions may have had on social disputes. It can be seen that these two regions, Catalonia and the Basque Country, have been the subject of the most research on labour history and there are study groups which have been working on the subject since the 1950s in the first case and since the 1980s in the second. In the case of the Basque Country, this must include the work undertaken by Luis Castells, which consists of his own work and also theses supervised by him,46 and the line of research developed by Ricardo Miralles on the history of socialism. The study of workers has not often been considered in relation to employers. However, one monograph stands out which has brought a breath of fresh air to a subject which often appeared destined to engulf itself. We refer here to the book by José Sierra, El obrero soñado, which reflects on the function of industrial paternalism in Asturias between 1860 and 1917.47 In the book, precise reference is made to the mechanisms used to ‘domesticate’ workers and their families which sought to make workers depend exclusively on the wages paid to them and to dispense with the mechanisms of selfconsumption. With a different approach set in a developed urban framework, Soledad Bengoechea carried out research into social disputes and the response of employers’ organisations in Catalonia at the beginning of the twentieth century.48 With regard to research on the world of women in the workplace, considerable research can be found which, like the rest, is limited to certain sectors and regions. In addition to Mary Nash’s extraordinary efforts to promote such studies, the work of three authors stands out here: the work of Carmen Sarasúa, the author of an important study on the world of domestic service and the dominance of female workers in the nineteenth century; the book by Cristina Bordería on female employees of the telephone company and the work of Paloma Candela on the tobacco industry in Madrid.49 At times, the subjects dealt with go beyond the boundaries of working-class history and give rise to studies on the ‘popular classes’, which interweave conflicts related to class, specifically political disputes, and other disputes related to protests about the cost of living or demands for civil rights (protests against wars or military recruitment).50 In a similar way, although with a different methodological perspective, in recent years research into peasant disputes has gone from analysing large-scale protests and day-labourer revolts to studying resistance against attempts to integrate the rural world into society and capitalist relations, often following the framework set down by James Scott.51 The classic subject of the Spanish working-class movement, especially for foreign specialists, is anarchism and its peak period, the Republic and the Civil War. One particularly famous study is by Julián Casanova.52 During Franco’s regime, mass meetings were banned and persecuted, and demanding workers’ rights was regarded as a political activity in itself. On this subject, it is worth highlighting the studies carried out by Carme Molinero, Pere Ysàs and José Babiano.53 In addition to this, progress has been made in determining the cultural history of social issues, the greatest exponent being Manuel Pérez Ledesma.

11

Introduction

He has introduced and disseminated successive methodological proposals in Spain, ranging from work on collective action from Charles Tilly to culturalist approaches referred to here. And there is indeed a social history of culture, one of the main promoters being Jorge Uría.54 In Spain, however, little has been done to develop the line of study on working-class sociability, Maurice Agulhon-style, despite frequent bilateral meetings promoted by French Hispanists. The most important representative of this school is Manuel Morales Muñoz.55

This Collection For this book, we have chosen fourteen texts which we feel are representative of social and labour history in Spain. This is at least the case for twelve of them, and we took the liberty to complete the anthology with two articles of our own. In addition to considering them representative of the best methods of dealing with the subject, we have followed a series of criteria which it is worth explaining: (1) all the texts were published after 1990; (2) they were all intended to be independent articles or chapters in collective works; (3) they deal with various periods of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (4) they deal with various geographical areas which have a tradition of social movements in addition to a tradition of studying such movements; (5) they use complementary analysis perspectives: from the point of view of culture, class formation, gender or politics; (6) in certain cases, the articles deal with conceptual issues, others look at social behaviour, analyse situations or long periods in the development of a particular trade; and (7) they also consider classic subjects such as the living standards of industrial workers or the means of controlling and subordinating workers. In eight cases the texts were first published in the journal Historia Social, in two instances the texts come from a collective book published by Biblioteca de Historia Social. The text of one of the writers was published recently by Biblioteca Nueva. In two cases, the articles come from other academic journals, Arenal and Sociología del Trabajo. Finally, another text comes from a collective book which the author also co-edited. As mentioned above, among the chapters which make up this selection there are two texts whose content deals with methodological and conceptual issues. These are the first chapters of the book with reflections on the formation of the working class (Manuel Pérez Ledesma) and on the role of women in the world of work (Pilar Pérez Fuentes). These subjects are also dealt with, either directly or indirectly, by the rest of the studies in this book in terms of specific geographical and temporal situations. These texts have been arranged in diachronic order. Despite the fact that all the texts share a common link which makes them part of this book, the wide range of subjects at hand means that it is preferable to arrange them in chronological order. The text by Manuel Pérez Ledesma offers a conceptual rethinking of the working class by introducing a culturalist perspective to the analysis of its formative period. The ritualisation of working-class practices, the language of

12

Introduction

class and the terms in which its discourse and its ideological corpus was composed became essential components in the organisation of a new collective identity. This article aims to open new channels of historical analysis on working-class reality and the formation of the working class in contemporary Spain. In the following chapter, Pilar Pérez Fuentes reflects on the historical formation of a specific social and working gender role. Men and women were affected in different ways by changes in the nature and significance of work introduced during industrialisation. These transformations implied the division of work according to sex and the separation of what was public and what was private, which led to the configuration of a new gender identity in industrial society. Carmen Sarasúa’s contribution on the work of laundresses incorporates this gender element in a novel way into the most commonly used historiographical parameters. The article outlines the key elements which make up the technological transformation of this profession and the changes in the social condition of these workers. Over and above the mechanisation of the work and its impact on the organisation of the steps involved in the washing process, it was precisely the loss of professional status which resulted in the breakdown of the laundresses’ social worth. The chapter written by Francesc A. Martínez Gallego analyses the new disciplinary habits introduced in the mid-nineteenth century by the division of work in factories and workshops. Adaptation to the new ways of organising the productive process resulted in a complex conflictive process – both in urban and rural areas – which surreptitiously coordinated the resistance of craftsmen, an associative organisation with mutualist and cooperative overtones, and an employers’ strategy aimed at subordinating workers to the new rules of production. For his part, José A. Piqueras offers an analysis of the social condition of Spanish members of the First International. Their link with the professional world is examined, a world in which, even though it maintained practices and customs related to its corporative past, the links with the means of production imposed by capitalism transformed the practice of the profession and situated it in a sphere of subordination in social and labour terms. These are issues which help to form a specific political culture rooted in democratic radicalism of working-class origin. The text by Vicent Sanz Rozalén refers to the way in which various factors concurred to affect workers’ ability to put up resistance in an urban profession whose survival was in a precarious condition. The main point put forward in this text lies in understanding the extent to which the characteristics of the labour force itself, with a fragile but indispensable component of specialised labour, and the bonds of solidarity among workers through workers’ associations were conducive to maintaining resistance in workers’ confrontation with manufacturers and employers. Jorge Uría examines the disciplinary practices of the labour force in Asturias. The survival of traditional peasant culture among factory workers and miners diluted their total proletarianisation, which meant that their

Introduction

13

adaptation to the rhythm of work and the demands placed on them by the new means of organising production met with a great deal of resistance. This all resulted in subversive practices arising from an ideological world which was hardly compatible with the system of values which capitalism intended to introduce. The text by José Sierra is a good example of the Thompsonian approach to the social practices of miners at the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter sets out to relocate the uses of alcohol and violence in the context of confrontations and conflicts, in particular as part of ‘life experiences’, and endow them with a specific sociohistorical element. Carmen Frías puts forward new ideas on disputes and protests in rural areas at the turn of the century. She examines the circumstances and factors which gave rise to such disputes following the ideas put forward by James Scott on everyday means of resistance. Her analysis is based on the effects of the marketing and privatisation of natural resources, which eroded the traditional forms of collective use of the land. These changes brought about protests which, because of their intensity and frequency, challenged the means of obtaining and organising work, property and production. Antonio Escudero examines one of the classic debates of social and economic historiography concerning the configuration and determining factors in the formation of the working class by focusing on the issue of living standards. Basing his research on the analysis of the prices of basic goods, the level of real wages and nominal salaries among Basque miners, the author observes their evolution in order to put forward, beyond the dichotomy between pessimism and optimism – yet without shying away from or forgetting these approaches – a reflection on the configuration of class identity. The chapter written by Javier Paniagua deals with the complex issue of the meaning of the term ‘revolution’ and its specific use among republican, socialist and anarchist groups. The different meanings given to the term by the various groups implied the articulation of different and at times divergent theoretical approaches and strategies. For his part, Julián Casanova reflects on the character of class brought about by the Spanish Civil War based on its integration in the context of the social, political and economic crisis of the 1930s. The author takes up a theoretically inspired debate which goes beyond the empiricism, doctrinism and localism which dominates studies on the war and situates the phenomenon within the political, social, economic and cultural parameters of the time. The text by Joan Serrallonga examines the mechanisms put in place by the fascist authorities during the early stages of the post-war period (1939–1945) which were aimed at taming a population that had traditionally been extremely conflictive. The control of supplies and systematic repression were combined in order to undermine traditional levels of resistance. The book ends with a study by José Babiano of trade unionism during Franco’s dictatorship which reassesses the role that has traditionally been attributed to vertical trade unions as a means of controlling and organising

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Introduction

workers. The author details the failure of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation (Organización Sindical Española – OSE) to do just that and introduces new factors to be taken into consideration in order to understand the regulation and discipline of workers during the dictatorship. These last three works go beyond workers’ collective action and delve into the realm of politics, and particularly into the context of politics under Francoism (1939–1975). The Spanish Civil War was both a national and international phenomenon of ideological and political confrontation in which workers – or rather their unions and parties – were the front line of resistance against the fascist-military movement while, at the same time, they carried out revolutionary experiments in industry, services and the collectivisation of agriculture. The triumph of the Nationalist cause – which was a combination of traditional military dictatorship, fascism and conservative Catholic thinking – meant the imposition of strict rules on workers’ activities. Independent workers’ unions were suppressed, and their leaders were either shot or sent to prison or to exile. In stark contrast with other authoritarian or fascist dictatorships, the New State did nothing to incorporate the old union cadres into the system. Workers were just forced to join the new official unions, which were conceived in ‘organic’ and corporative terms. In the process even words such as ‘workers’ and ‘working class’ were replaced by expression such as ‘producers’ and ‘social section’. Workers learned how to use the new structures for their own advantage, creating in the process alternative structures that developed into an independent labour movement. Eventually, those structures were unofficially recognised by employers as a valid negotiators, especially by big companies. The context was unusual for post-war Europe: a long, fasciststyle dictatorship at first, an authoritarian one later, in the middle of a liberaldemocratic continent, which still preserved many of its fascist traits.

Acknowledgements The chapter by Manuel Pérez Ledesma was first published in the book edited by Rafael Cruz and Manuel Pérez Ledesma, Cultura y movilización en la España contemporánea, Madrid, 1997, 201–33. The article by Pilar Pérez Fuentes was published in Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres, 2:2 (1995), pp. 219–45. The text by Carmen Sarasúa appeared in Historia Social, 45 (2003), 53–77. The article by Francesc A. Martínez Gallego was published in Sociología del Trabajo, 19 (1993), 123–41. The text by José A. Piqueras was published as a chapter in the book edited by Javier Paniagua, José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz, Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, Valencia, 1999, 165–209. The text by Vicent Sanz Rozalén is part of Vicent Sanz and José A. Piqueras (eds), En el nombre del oficio. El trabajador especializado: corporativismo, protesta y adaptación, Madrid, 2005, 295–315. The chapter by Jorge Uría was published in Historia Social, 23 (1995), 41–62. The text by José Sierra was published in Historia Social, 19 (1994), 77–96. The study by Carmen Frías appeared in Historia Social, 37 (2000),

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Introduction

97–118. The text by Antonio Escudero was published in Historia Social, 27 (1997), 87–106. The text by Javier Paniagua appeared as a chapter in the collective work edited by Paniagua, Piqueras and Sanz, Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, 243–69. The text by Julián Casanova was published in Historia Social, 20 (1994), 135–50. The text by Joan Serrallonga appeared in Historia Social, 34 (1999), 45–66. And finally, the text by José Babiano was published in Historia Social, 30 (1998), 23–38.

Notes 1. M. van der Linden, ‘El fin del eurocentrismo y el futuro de la historia del trabajo: o por qué debemos y podemos reconceptualizar la clase obrera’, in J. Paniagua, J. A. Piqueras and V. Sanz (eds), Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, Valencia, 2000, 301–22; and J.D. French, ‘El auge de los estudios sobre el trabajo en Latinoamérica’, Historia Social, 39 (2001), 129–50. 2. The ‘Moncloa Pacts’ were agreements made between the government, political parties and unions. They were intended to create the conditions necessary for the consolidation of democracy at the start of the process and entailed a social pact. As a development of the Constitution, 1979 saw the creation of the Economic and Social Council, a consultative body for economic and sociolabour issues which was made up of employer organisations and trade unions. In 1980, the centrist government passed a law regulating workers’ rights (the Workers’ Statute), the consecutive modifications of which were precisely the reason for the country’s main union-organised protests. 3. C. Martí, Orígenes del anarquismo en Barcelona, Barcelona, 1959. 4. M. Núñez de Arenas, ‘Notas sobre el movimiento obrero español’, Madrid, 1916; and M. Reventós, Els moviments socials a Barcelona en el segle XIX, Barcelona, 1925. 5. J.M. Jover, Conciencia burguesa y conciencia obrera en la España contemporánea, Madrid 1952 [republished by J. Izquierdo and P. Sánchez León (eds), Clásicos de historia social de España. Una selección crítica, Valencia, 2000, 219–57]. 6. J. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España. La Primera Internacional (1864–1881), Barcelona, 1972; C.E. Lida, Anarquismo y revolución en la España del siglo XIX, Madrid, 1972; M. Tuñón de Lara, El movimiento obrero en la historia de España, Madrid, 1972; and M. Izard, Industrialización y obrerismo. Las Tres Clases de Vapor (1869–1913), Barcelona, 1973 [first, shorter edition published in 1970 in Catalan]. 7. Other pioneering works from the same period or earlier periods can also be cited, but their impact was considerably less important: A. Balcells, El sindicalisme a Barcelona (1916–1923), Barcelona, 1965; D. Ruiz, El movimiento obrero en Asturias: de la industrialización a la Segunda República, Oviedo, 1968 (very limited circulation until its reissue a decade later); and P. Gabriel, El moviment obrer a Mallorca, Barcelona, 1973. 8. This is according to one of the pioneers, M. Izard, ‘Orígenes del movimiento obrero en España’, in S. Castillo et al. (coords), Estudios sobre Historia de España (homenaje a Tuñón de Lara), Madrid, 1981, 295–314. 9. J.P. Fusi, Política obrera en el País Vasco (1880–1923), Madrid, 1975; and J. Romero Maura, ’La Rosa de Fuego’. El obrerismo barcelonés de 1899 a 1909, Barcelona, 1975. 10. The minutes of the meeting may be consulted in ‘20 años del encuentro de Barx’, Historia Social, 34 (2000), 157–60. 11. J. Álvarez Junco and M. Pérez Ledesma, ‘Historia del movimiento obrero. ¿Una segunda ruptura?’, Revista de Occidente, 12 (1982), 19–41 [republished by Izquierdo and Sánchez León, Clásicos de historia social, 259–80]. 12. ‘Los movimientos sociales’, Debats, 2–3 (1982), 90–135. 13. An analysis of what had been published until 2000 can be found in J.A. Piqueras, ‘La práctica editorial de Historia Social’, Op.Cit. Revista del Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, 12–13 (2001), 93–108 [University of Puerto Rico].

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14. The self-critical concurrence and chronological imbalance was highlighted by, among others, C. Forcadell, ‘Sobre desiertos y secanos: los movimientos sociales en la historiografía española’, Historia Contemporánea, 7 (1992), 101–116. 15. P. Gabriel, ‘A vueltas y revueltas con la historia social obrera en España. Historia obrera, historia popular e historia contemporánea’, Historia Social, 22 (1995), 45–51. Gabriel reacts against what he calls the cliché established by criticism and self-criticism of the historiography, which he does not consider to be in line with the best bibliography of the time. 16. J. Benet and C. Martí, Barcelona mitjan segle XIX. El moviment obrer durant el Bienni Progresista (1854–1856), Barcelona, 1976. 17. J. Maluquer, El socialismo en España (1833–1868), Barcelona, 1977. 18. J. Álvarez Junco, La ideología política del anarquismo español (1868–1910), Madrid, 1976; and J. Paniagua, La sociedad libertaria. Agrarismo e industrialización en el anarquismo español (1930–1939), Barcelona, 1982. 19. X. Cuadrat, Socialismo y anarquismo en Cataluña (1899–1911). Los orígenes de la CNT, Madrid, 1976; A. Barr, La CNT en los años rojos. Del sindicalismo revolucionario al anarcosindicalismo (1910–1926), Madrid, 1982; and T. Abelló, Les relacions internacionals de l´anarquisme català (1881–1914), Barcelona, 1987. Among regional studies, the following can be highlighted: J. Casanova, Anarquismo y revolución en la sociedad rural aragonesa (1936–1938), Madrid, 1985; and A. Barrio, Anarquismo y anarcosindicalismo en Asturias (1890–1936), Madrid, 1988. 20. R. Núñez, El terrorismo anarquista (1888–1909), Madrid, 1983. 21. See various regional studies and the fragmentary work of Santiago Castillo, in addition to the series of three books coordinated by S. Juliá: El socialismo en España. Desde la fundación hasta 1975, El socialismo en las nacionalidades y regiones and Socialismo y guerra civil, Madrid, 1986–1987. Also the collective synthesis directed by M. Tuñón de Lara, Historia del socialismo español, Barcelona, 1989, 5 vols. It is worth highlighting the monographs of A. Elorza and M. Ralle, La formación del PSOE, Barcelona, 1989; C. Forcadell, Parlamentarismo y bolchevización. El movimiento obrero español (1914–1918), Barcelona, 1978; P. Biglino, El socialismo español y la cuestión agraria (1890–1936), Madrid, 1986; and M. Pérez Ledesma, El obrero consciente. Dirigentes, partidos y sindicatos en la II Internacional, Madrid, 1988. 22. R. Reig, Obrers i ciudadans. Blasquisme i moviment obrer. València (1898–1906), Valencia, 1982. 23. S. Castillo, ‘Estudio introductorio a Reformas Sociales’, Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, Madrid, 1985, 27–164; and J.I. Palacio, La institucionalización de la reforma social en España (1883–1924). La Comisión y el Instituto de Reformas Sociales, Madrid, 1988. 24. S. Castillo and L.E. Alonso, Proletarios de cuello blanco. La Federación Española de Trabajadores del Crédito y las Finanzas (1930–1936), Madrid, 1994. 25. F. Bonamusa, Andreu Nin y el movimiento comunista en España (1930–1937), Barcelona, 1977; and R. Cruz, El Partido Comunista de España en la Segunda República, Madrid, 1987. Of a different, unacademic nature, yet still the best present presentation of the PCE during Franco’s regime, is G. Morán, Miseria y grandeza del Partido Comunista de España, Barcelona, 1985. 26. From M. Nash, Mujer y movimiento obrero en España (1931–1939), Barcelona, 1981. Professor Nash, of Irish origin, is based in Spain. 27. P. Solà, Els ateneus obrers i la cultura popular a Catalunya (1900–1939). L’Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular, Barcelona, 1978; A. Tiana, Educación libertaria y revolución social (España, 1936–1939), Madrid, 1987; J.A. Piqueras, El taller y la escuela, Madrid, 1988; and J.L. Guereña and A. Tiana (eds), Clases populares, cultura y educación, Madrid, 1990. 28. We refer here to the summary by J. Casanova (comp.), El sueño igualitario: campesinado y colectivizaciones en la España republicana (1936–1939), Saragossa, 1988. 29. J.J. Castillo, El sindicalismo amarillo en España. Aportación al estudio del catolicismo social español (1912–1923), Madrid, 1977.

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30. In this popular subject, it is worth highlighting the books of M. Pérez Yruela, La conflictividad campesina en la provincia de Córdoba (1931–1936), Madrid, 1979; E. Sevilla and K. Heisel (eds), Anarquismo y movimiento jornalero, Córdoba, 1988; and L. Garrido, Riqueza y tragedia social. Historia de la clase obrera en la provincia de Jaén (1820–1930), Jaén, 1990. 31. A. Soto, El trabajo industrial en la España contemporánea (1874–1936), Barcelona, 1989. 32. C. Molinero and P. Ysàs, Patria, justicia y pan. Nivell de vida i condicions de treball a Catalunya (1939–1959), Barcelona, 1985. 33. Evaluations of the labour history can be found in: R. Miralles, ‘Historiografía del movimiento obrero en el País Vasco (1880–1936)’, Historia Contemporánea, 7 (1992), 237–55; P. Gabriel and J.L. Martín, ‘Clase obrera, sectores populares y clases medias’, in F. Bonamusa and J. Serrallonga (eds), La sociedad urbana, Barcelona, 1994, 133–53; Gabriel, ‘A vueltas y revueltas’; J. Uría, ‘Sociología e Historia. Una década de historia social en Sociología del Trabajo’, Sociología del Trabajo, 31 (1997), 149–77, and J. Uría ‘La historia social y el contemporaneísmo español. Las deudas del pasado’, Revista de Historia Jerónimo Zurita, 71 (1995), 95–141. Two appraisals from the same author with almost a decade between them are: A. Barrio, ‘A propósito de la historia social, del movimiento obrero y los sindicatos’, in G. Rueda et al., Doce estudios de historiografía contemporánea, Santander, 1991, 41–68; and A. Barrio, ‘Historia obrera en los noventa: tradición y modernidad’, Historia Social, 37 (2000), 143–60. 34. The results were published: S. Castillo (coord), La Historia Social en España. Actualidad y perspectivas, Madrid, 1991; S. Castillo (ed), El trabajo a través de la historia, Madrid, 1996; S. Castillo and J.M. Ortiz (coords), Estado, protesta y movimientos sociales, Bilbao, 1998; and S. Castillo and R. Fernández (coords), Historia social y ciencias sociales, Lleida, 2001. 35. Some initial points with reference to the rural context are found in A. Peiró, Jornaleros y mancebos. Identidad, organización y conflicto en los trabajadores del Antiguo Régimen, Barcelona, 2002. 36. J.A. Piqueras, La revolución democrática (1868–1874). Cuestión social, colonialismo y grupos de presión, Madrid, 1992. 37. F. Díez, Viles y mecánicos. Trabajo y sociedad en la Valencia preindustrial, Valencia, 1990; and V. Sanz Rozalén, D’artesans a proletaris, Castellón, 1995. 38. R. Ruzafa, Antes de la clase. Los trabajadores en Bilbao y la margen izquierda del Nervión (1841–1891), Bilbao, 1998; G. Barnosell, Orígens del sindicalisme català, Vic, 1999; and recently, J. Romero, La construcción de la cultura del oficio durante la industrialización (Barcelona, 1814–1860), Barcelona, 2005. 39. Paniagua, Piqueras and Sanz, Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo; and V. Sanz and J.A. Piqueras (eds), En el nombre del oficio. Corporativismo, protesta y adaptación del trabajador especializado, Madrid, 2005. In both cases there is a comparative perspective with other international areas. 40. S. Castillo (ed.), Solidaridad desde abajo. Trabajadores y Socorros Mutuos en la España contemporánea, Madrid, 1994. 41. E. Camps, La formación del mercado de trabajo industrial en la Cataluña del siglo XIX, Madrid, 1995. 42. C. Arenas, A. Florencio and J.I. Martínez (eds), Mercado y organización del trabajo en España (siglos XIX y XX), Seville, 1998. 43. R. Huertas and R. Campos (coords), Medicina social y clase obrera en España (ss. XIX y XX), Madrid, 1992. Also L. Prats, La Catalunya rància. Les condicions de vida materials de les classes populars a la Catalunya de la Restauració segons les topografies mèdiques, Barcelona, 1996. 44. P.M. Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida en las primeras fases de la industrialización vizcaína, Madrid, 1992; and P. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir en las minas. Estrategias familiares y relaciones de género en la primera industrialización vizcaína (1877–1913), Bilbao, 1993. 45. J. Serrallonga and J.L. Martín, Condicions materials i resposta obrera a la Catalunya contemporània, Barcelona, 1992. 46. L. Castells, Los trabajadores del País Vasco, Madrid, 1993.

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47. J. Sierra, El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990. 48. S. Bengoechea, Organització patronal i conflictivitat social a Catalunya, Barcelona, 1994. 49. C. Sarasúa, Criados, nodrizas y amos. El servicio doméstico en la formación del mercado de trabajo madrileño (1758–1868), Madrid, 1994; C. Borderías, Entre líneas: trabajo e identidad femenina en la España contemporánea. La Compañía Telefónica (1924–1980), Barcelona, 1993; and P. Candela, Cigarreras madrileñas: trabajo y vida (1888–1927), Madrid, 1997. Also C. Borderías, A. Calvo and P. López, Empleo, cualificación y género en la formación del mercado de trabajo barcelonés (1840–1930). Estado de la cuestión, análisis de fuentes y metodología para su estudio, Madrid, 1999; and more recently P. Pérez-Fuentes, Ganadores de pan y amas de casa: otra mirada sobre la industrialización vasca, Bilbao, 2004. 50. C. Gil, Echarse a la calle. Amotinados, huelguistas y revolucionarios (La Rioja, 1890–1936), Saragossa, 2000. 51. See the references in note 30. Also A. Sabio, Tierra, comunal y capitalismo agrario en Aragón (1830–1935), Saragossa, 2002. 52. J. Casanova, De la calle al frente. El anarcosindicalismo en España (1931–1939), Barcelona, 1997. 53. C. Molinero and P. Ysàs, Productores disciplinados y minorías subversivas: clase obrera y conflictividad laboral en la España franquista, Madrid, 1998; and J. Babiano, Paternalismo industrial y disciplina fabril en España (1938–1958), Madrid, 1998. 54. J. Uría, Una historia social del ocio: Asturias (1898–1914), Madrid, 1996, dealing mainly, but not exclusively, with working-class or popular leisure. 55. M. Morales, Cultura e ideología en el anarquismo español (1870–1910), Málaga, 2002.

CHAPTER 1

THE FORMATION OF THE WORKING CLASS A CULTURAL CREATION Manuel Pérez Ledesma

To consider the working class as a ‘cultural creation’, as in the title of this article, is nothing new and it is certainly not a provocation. There is little need to mention that E.P. Thompson is responsible for the idea that all classes are a ‘social and cultural formation’, in other words a group of individuals who, despite having different professions and incomes ‘share the same set of interests, social experiences, traditions and system of values’. This formulation, and the corresponding definition of class as a historical phenomenon and not as an immutable reality – as an event and not as ‘a thing’, as Thompson himself would say – accounts for the vast bibliography on the ‘formation of the working class’ which has appeared over the last thirty years; a bibliography whose starting point, in accordance with the same approach, is the consideration of this formative process as ‘a fact of political and cultural history’ and not only of economic history.1 Apart from the differences and even the intense controversy which have arisen from the successive interpretations of this process, there are certain common ideas which are worth remembering. If it is considered to be a historical subject and not only a sociological category, the working class – and the same could be said for other social classes – is not the inevitable result of the relations of production or of economic evolution. Instead, it is a collective identity shaped by those involved over time. Of course, identity does not mean total unity without fissures; on the contrary, as Michael Mann has recently recalled, social classes were never fully unified entities, but instead have been divided by numerous fractures (to which, according to Mann’s terminology, the various class sectors, strata or segments correspond). Neither is it a single or predominant identity at all times and in all places; in fact, class identity has coexisted throughout history, in a difficult and at times conflictive

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relationship, with other collective identities – based on race, nations, religion, gender or belonging to the people – without any of them taking precedence over the others.2 However, despite internal divisions and coexistence with other collective identities – i.e. despite the relatively ‘volatile’ nature of class identity – it is true that throughout a long period of history, in most Western countries, membership of the working class defined the behaviour of millions of people. This is surprising considering the fact that, contrary to many predictions, economic progress and more specifically the development of capitalism did not favour the homogeneity, but rather the differentiation of workers as a result of the division of work, of various different wage levels and hierarchies within the production process. The factors which allowed workers to join together and act as members of a unified class cannot, therefore, be found at an economic level. Other components were required for the creation of a collective identity. It is a well-known fact that for Thompson, workers’ ‘common experiences’, to a large extent determined by the relations of production, played the major role. However, in subsequent studies, in addition to these experiences, special importance has been given to other factors: to ideological traditions, which were present at the same time as the process of industrialisation but were endowed with ‘autonomous causal strength’ (Sewell); to language as the organiser of experiences and not as a simple means of expressing these experiences (Stedman Jones); and to the influence of the different ‘visions of society’, from which identities such as ‘el pueblo’ or ‘class’ were constructed (Joyce).3 In any case, and on whichever aspect greater emphasis is placed, it is important to indicate that there is agreement on one fundamental point: that the working class, as a collective subject, was the result of a formation process, understood as the cultural construction of an identity. This is the issue which shall be examined in this chapter.

In Spain: From Economic Explanation to Cultural Analysis Both Thompson’s pioneering work and the subsequent developments and even the intense controversy to which they have given rise, are well-known in Spain.4 Despite this, in the ample Spanish historiography on the evolution of the working class, these ideas have not as yet had a clear influence beyond certain theoretical declarations. On the contrary, the formation of the working class is still considered to be the almost automatic result of the industrialisation process or of the fusion of two unique ingredients linked to capitalist development. On the one hand, there were the difficult economic and working conditions faced by workers, especially industrial workers, and on the other hand the diffusion of new ideologies after the establishment of the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA (International Workers Association). This chapter is not intended to be a detailed review of this synopsis, the limitations of which have been pointed out in various recent works.5

The Formation of the Working Class

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However, it is at least necessary to mention some points of discrepancy between such a vision and the argument put forward here. If we accept that the working class is a collective identity and not simply a sociological category, and if we define its formation as the process of creating a historical subject – that is to say, a collective protagonist of social action – then it is evident that the protagonists of such a process were not the new industrial workers. In fact, the driving force behind it were the craftsmen and workers of traditional trades who were not (or to a lesser extent, at least) subject to the new methods of production which characterised industrial capitalism, such as mechanisation and the concentration of labour in large establishments. This feature is not unique to the Spanish case: Thompson himself explained that in England trades such as ‘cobblers, weavers, leather workers and trimmers, booksellers, printers, construction workers, small traders and other such workers’ played a similar role. And in a global appraisal of the working-class historiography of the last few decades, Sewell pointed out that there is ‘practically universal agreement’ over the idea that in the formation of the working class, the most important roles were played by specialised craftsmen in the workshops, and not by workers in the ‘dark, satanic factories’.6 For the same reason, the imposition of low wages by the new industrial employers did not trigger a class uprising or class-related action. In fact, many of the instigators were included in a category which, according to the usual terminology among Marxist historians, could be defined as the ‘workingclass aristocracy’, that is to say, on a higher level than the majority of urban day labourers or factory workers. They were superior not only because of their higher salaries, but also, and perhaps above all, because of the way they carried out their work. In the middle of the nineteenth century, spinners from Barcelona, among others, brought attention to the fact that the working conditions of these workers were not the same, and were even comparatively better than those of factory workers. In their opinion, no comparison could be made between ‘our work [in the factories] and that of the majority of craftsmen’. Whereas the craftsmen’s activities had ‘the incentive of variety and the attraction of receiving the approval of others’, the only incentive for textile factory workers, whose work was ‘monotonous’ and ‘tedious’, was the ‘harsh discipline of manufacturers defined as ‘the eyes which keep watch over us and spy on what we do’. Thirty years later, the detailed descriptions of the productive tasks put before the Commission for Social Reforms once again revealed the differences, and also the comparative advantages of some categories of workers – precisely those who were most actively involved in the formation of the class identity – compared to the rest of the manual workers.7 In view of the limitations of the traditional paradigm, it is worth considering the problem from another angle, more specifically from a perspective which takes into account the cultural aspects of the process. If the working class is a collective identity, what we need to know is how sectors which are so different – a workforce as ‘diverse, fragmented and heterogeneous’ as the one Joyce described in Victorian England – managed to perceive (‘feel and articulate’, Thompson would say) that despite their differences, they were part of one unit and shared common objectives and

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interests which, in addition, conflicted with those of other classes. When examining these cultural ingredients, it would seem necessary to start by analysing the language itself. This is partly because, as Stedman Jones explained, language is not simply a means of expression, but shapes experiences instead. But it is also, on a more basic level, because while there was no exact nomenclature, a basic set of terms with which to refer to the social structure and the various entities of which it was comprised, it was impossible to know for sure if a person belonged to one of them. It is this restrictive conception – the ‘language of class’, as Asa Briggs defined it – which interests us here. Just as in England and France, in Spain the term class began to be used during the last decades of the eighteenth century to refer to social differences arising from economic inequalities. In a text from 1779, Dánvila y Villarrasa referred to ‘two classes, one of proprietors and another of wage earners’. Other examples from that period highlight the fact that the economic meaning of the term was already well-known. However, that meaning of the word was not the most common at that time. The word class was more often used as a synonym of the old name for ‘state’, or to define the subdivisions of ‘states’. The modern meaning of the term must have become more widespread during the reign of Isabel II (1833–1868), but it was from the 1880s onwards that the ‘language of class’ became more commonly used, both in cultured circles and among the majority of the population. This can be seen from the new definitions and, above all, the new examples which were included in the Diccionario de la Real Academia in the mid nineteenth century (craftsmen class, military class, artisan class) and finally, the inclusion in 1884 of the expression ‘middle class’, which was defined as ‘the class between the one comprising the powerful and the wealthy and the one comprising wage earners and day labourers’.8 During the same period, other terms which were equally important to the language of class also became commonly used in academic vocabulary. The term burgés (bourgeois), which according to the Diccionario de Autoridades had recently entered the Spanish language and which came from French, was defined during the nineteenth century as ‘something belonging to a hamlet or small village, and anyone who was born there’. Not until the 1884 edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia did the spelling change (to burgués) and a new meaning was given – ‘a middle-class citizen’ – which was more in keeping with the new visions of society. The same edition of the dictionary included the word burguesía (bourgeoisie) for the first time, and the definition given was the ‘body or group of bourgeois or middle-class citizens’. This same edition also included a definition of proletario (proletarian) as ‘an individual belonging to the indigent class’, which replaced the older meaning of the term (a Latin word which was seldom used in Spanish and which meant ‘author of little importance’ according to the Diccionario de Autoridades) and supplemented the meaning that had appeared in the dictionary throughout the nineteenth century (‘A person who has no possessions and who is included in the neighbourhood lists of the village in which he lives by name only’). The process was completed in the twentieth century with the inclusion, in 1914, of proletariado (proletariat) – the ‘social class made up of

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proletarians’ – and the precedence given in 1927 to the sociological definition of bourgeois, which from that time onwards became the most accepted meaning of the term (‘Well-off or affluent middle-class citizen, used commonly in comparison to proletarian’). At the same time that the new language of class gained recognition from the Royal Academy, the dichotomised vision of society – which was not necessarily expressed by means of this language, but which could instead use more traditional formulas – was reaching its peak. Both the more clearly conservative authors, who divided society into ‘rich and poor people’, as well as the various republican schools of thought which presented ‘the people’ against ‘the privileged’, in addition to the more aseptic formulations of the Commission for Social Reforms – the Questionnaire its information came from was based on the difference between ‘capital and work’ – took it for granted that Spanish society at the turn of the century was divided into two large and clearly disparate, even opposing, blocks.9

Harmonious Relations and Popular Identity Nevertheless, it is one thing for academics to accept the new language of class and for a dichotomic vision of society to spread throughout intellectual circles, whatever their ideological viewpoint may be, and another very different thing for workers to immediately adopt such a vision as a starting point for their class identity. In order for both the linguistic formations and the images previously mentioned to become shared ‘cognitive structures’ – of fundamental importance, as A. Melucci explained, in the formation of a collective identity – a long process to formulate and diffuse these meanings was required.10 But it was also essential to overcome certain obstacles which came from previous visions. Let us first of all examine the obstacles. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, judging by the information from the Commission for Social Reforms, an initial difficulty was the survival of traditional forms of social relations, which were impossible to fit into the formulations based on antagonism. In addition, there was another obstacle: even those who accepted the existence of division and antagonism habitually expressed it in what can be defined as a ‘vision of the people’, and not by means of a ‘vision of class’ on which proletarian identity could be based. The endurance of traditional social relations is not an invention of conservative literature. Among replies to the question regarding the ‘relations between workers and the other social classes’ included in the Questionnaire of the Commission for Social Reforms, there were plenty of references to the bonds of ‘friendship’ or ‘cordiality’ which existed between workers and their employers. This was not only true in rural areas where practices inherited from the ‘domestic society of previous centuries’ were still common and where there were still paternalistic bonds of friendship (‘farm workers lived among the farm owners and employers like members of the same family’, read one clearly exaggerated statement). In small towns, too, and even in larger

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urban areas, such as Valencia, there were reports of the ‘good relations’ and the ‘kindness and closeness’ that existed between employers and their workers. It is also true that in other replies to the Questionnaire that also referred to small and medium-sized cities, the tone was more cautious. There were references to ‘indifference’, ‘isolation’, ‘rare friendship’ or ‘prejudices’ between employees and employers. However, it was above all in the most important cities, in certain industrialised areas and in the big towns of Andalusia where the replies were at the other extreme. One informant from Madrid, not professionally linked to any of the sides, referred to ‘a warlike attitude between the classes’. With the same radical approach, many workers used terms such as ‘dislike’, ‘hostility’, ‘open conflict’, ‘antagonism’ and ‘hatred’.10 The fact that it was not only a question of words can be seen from the more detailed accounts of the two sectors’ coexistence in various areas. In the majority of rural communities, the close contacts between landowners, tenants and servants or day labourers favoured the continuing existence of relationships which had nothing at all to do with antagonism. Such contacts refer more specifically to apprenticeships, artificial kinship as Godparents (the day labourers ‘are often the ones who watch over the first steps of the landowners’ children, and members of the latter’s family are usually the ones holding the day labourer’s children at the baptismal font’) or ‘asymmetric’ forms of friendship (according to J. Pitt Rivers’ well-known term). In small and medium-sized cities too, the fact that they worked together in small workshops, the paternalistic attitudes of employers and certain working-class sectors’ belief in cooperation, in addition to the fact that they lived and socialised in the same places, enabled the friendly relationships to continue, or at least made it possible to avoid conflict.11 Even in the big cities, the atmosphere was far from being especially conflictive. If the liberal newspaper El Correo is to be believed, the workingclass group which had declared ‘open war on the capital’ was only a small group, whereas the vast majority of workers accepted the ‘social inequalities’ as the natural result of ‘the diversity of talents and vocations’. Two statements illustrate such an attitude. One worker from Madrid, who was a member of the Quarrymen Society and a professed ‘democrat’, said before the Commission for Social Reforms: Capital by itself is unable to exploit the land and carry out all aspects of production: it requires the cooperation of those of us who can do all kinds of work, in the same way as we workers can do nothing without the help of capital; luckily capital and labour are two essential factors which need each other.

In terms of personal relationships, according to the description of a republican from Valencia, there was ‘no difference whatsoever’ between the various social classes. On the contrary, the members of each class ‘walk together and during the festivals nobody minds rubbing shoulders with the workers’.12 Of course, it was not all harmony. As mentioned previously, in the big cities and also in some less important towns, it was also possible to find an

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atmosphere of ‘hostility’, although it was not perhaps true of the majority of places. One informant declared to the Commission for Social Reforms that this was partly due to ‘greater (in comparison with smaller centres of population) differences in culture, habits, uses and customs’ between the rich and the rest of the population. But it also came down to pure economic differences and the fact that ‘the wealthy classes enjoyed the comforts of life more’. For that reason, in these places the triumph of a ‘vision of society’ centred on inequality and the antagonism between classes should have been easier to achieve, at least in theory. Yet theories do not always coincide with social reality, in this case because the other obstacle mentioned previously came between both: the existence of a very deep-rooted identity of belonging to the people, as opposed to belonging to a particular class.13 Just like class, the sense of being one of the people is a collective identity, the result of a cultural creation. Yet unlike class, this identity does not have a clearly defined sociological profile and nor does it have such exact boundaries (as all attempts to characterise it by contemporary and modern-day historians have highlighted). Reference can therefore be made to an ambiguous and inclusive identity – based more on moral criteria than on economic criteria –, as opposed to the greater preciseness of restricted class identity.14 In fact, what best characterised the people was their opposition to another category which was equally ambiguous from the sociological point of view but more exact from the political viewpoint: that of the privileged. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, when the people appeared as the protagonists of most political speeches, the definition was still fairly simple. It was made up of ‘the common people or the masses as opposed to the nobility’, according to the Diccionario provisional de la Constitución política de la Monarquía española; or of ‘ordinary citizens who, without having any distinguishing features, income or job, live by means of their trades’, according to Bartolomé José Gallardo. However, when in the mid-nineteenth century, being a member of the privileged classes was no longer the exclusive right of the nobility, but instead a condition of both old and new elites, the distinction also became more complex. Now the privileged classes included members of the ‘aristocracy, nobility, military, clergy and merchants’ according to Fernando Garrido; or members of ‘the feudal classes of militarism, bureaucracy, exploitation, speculation and fanaticism’, according to Valentí Almirall. And the people included common citizens who, whatever their social position, were not included in such oligarchic circles.15 Two fundamental characteristics separated the people from these sectors, at least in the opinion of their defenders: whereas the people contributed to the national wealth with their labour – in other words, they were the ‘productive classes’ – the privileged were defined as ‘idle’ or ‘lazy’ (‘the parasitic classes’ in the words of Almirall). In spite of this, the privileged occupied the positions of power, something which the people certainly did not. It was this feature – clearly opposed to the reflections of moderate liberalism, which identified the popular masses as the ‘riffraff’, the ‘plebs’ or the ‘lowest class’16 – which formed the basis of republican discourse on the identity of the people. The root of all the evils to which the people were

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subject be found, from the republican point of view, in politics. Economic and social inequalities were the result of the fact that the privileged occupied the positions of power. This referred to both the old sectors of the privileged classes – the nobility – and above all the new sectors: a new middle class which, once ‘emancipation’ had been achieved, had forgotten about those who had helped them towards their victory. As a result, the solution also had to be political: a new revolution, a democratic revolution which would finish with the privileged and eventually lead to what Pi i Margall called ‘the political and social emancipation of the working classes’. Because only after gaining political rights would it be possible to achieve other popular demands. This is how the situation was explained by Fernando Garrido: ‘The acquisition of political rights (by the people) supposes the defeat of their adversaries, in which case they will not have to ask for social rights but instead declare such rights, which have only ever been enjoyed by the victors’.17 The fact that this line of argument, maintained by republican culture until the twentieth century – and very similar to the arguments of English radicalism, the centre of Chartism according to Stedman Jones – was decisive in the creation of an identity of the people can be seen by the lasting support given to republican groups, both in uprisings and in the most prosaic electoral activity. One only needs to remember Lerroux’s electoral successes at the beginning of the twentieth century among the workers of Barcelona, the main industrial city of the country, or the permanent, albeit fluctuating, electoral support given to republicans in the popular districts of Madrid until the 1920s.18

Constructing the Working Class: The Hope of Emancipation and the End of Social Mobility Faced with the identity of the people and the corresponding ‘vision of the people’, the construction of class identity and the corresponding increase in the classist image of society was without doubt the result of a long historical process. The problem thus lies in defining who promoted this construction and in explaining how they converted that identity into a fundamental part of the image of society and of the collective action of an ever more wide-ranging group of Spanish workers. It is in response to these questions that the ‘common experiences’ referred to by Thompson and the discourse – or the language, in the sense in which Stedman Jones uses this term – of class become central issues. But to which common experiences does the process of constructing a class identity refer? Of course, it is useless to refer to the experience of industrial labour: we already know that it was workers belonging to different trades with different working practices who were involved in the formation of the working class both in Spain and in other European countries and certainly not industrial workers. Neither can reference be made to the experience of poverty, since in general those involved earned more than the majority of

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workers. It may therefore be worth analysing other types of experiences which were less conspicuous but which had a greater effect on the process. In the Spanish case, just like in other countries, a fundamental ingredient of workers’ experiences during the last decades of the century was related to the fact that it was increasingly difficult for workers to change their professional situation. In other words, it was related to the increasingly widespread idea that the ‘emancipation’ of the worker, seen as the possibility of becoming a master or an employer, was turning into an unattainable dream. As a result, the condition of belonging to the working class was no longer a temporary one, as it was under the guild system, but permanent instead. The most direct and ingenuous recognition of this change can be found in Juan José Morato’s autobiography. When he first began to work as an apprentice in a printing shop, his aspirations were typical of the traditional guild system: he hoped to find ‘good, kind bosses’, to work in a ‘patriarchal workshop’ which would be ‘an extension of the family’, to earn ‘enough money to cover the modest needs of a craftsman’ and finally, to eventually become the owner of his own printing company. ‘I thought,’ Morato later said, ‘that the reward for skill, hard work and thriftiness was becoming the owner of a printer’s’. However, he soon discovered how unrealistic his expectations were. Instead of respecting the boss of the workshop, ‘we feared and hated him’, he regarded the level of his salary to be akin to ‘exploitation’ and his hopes of prospering and starting his own business were destroyed when he discovered that the owner had been ‘a bad worker, more fond of a deck of cards and the bottle than of books’, whereas the good, virtuous workers ‘had worn-out boots and threadbare suits and hats’.19 More relevant as a reflection of the generalised nature of this experience, were the statements made before the Commission for Social Reforms during the early 1880s. In response to one of the questions of its Questionnaire, ‘Is it common for workers to become company owners and how can this come about?’, the majority of those interviewed claimed that such a change, which had been fairly common in the past, was becoming increasingly difficult, if not practically impossible. Aside from certain exceptions, the tone of the replies was very similar in big cities and in smaller towns: ‘it is difficult’, ‘it happens very rarely’, ‘it is by no means common’, only in ‘very special’ circumstances, as a result of ‘fortuitous conditions’ and not because of ‘savings gathered from working’.20 Even more relevant was the fact that the difficulties were recent ones. The director of the newspaper Diario de Barcelona wrote that it had previously been common to progress from being a worker to a boss. However, at the time when he wrote his article, as a result of technical developments and intense competition, small industrial companies were going bankrupt and nobody could manage to become a businessman without a considerable amount of capital. Many other reports also echoed this new situation. ‘Nowadays, manufacturers are all sons of workers who were lucky when times were better’, stated the local commission of Alcoy, and in areas as disparate as Oviedo, Vizcaya and Valencia it was acknowledged that many employers had

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enjoyed opportunities that their employees had not. According to the Typographical Society of Valencia, for example: ‘Nowadays, the vast majority of established industrialists were at one time simple machine operators, or at least their fathers were’. It was also added that in the majority of cases, shop owners ‘began as apprentices or shop assistants on very modest salaries’.21 What were the possible causes of this change in workers’ possibilities and prospects? With regard to large and medium-sized industries, the main obstacle was the difficulty in raising the starting capital, which two characters as different as Mañé y Flaquer and Pablo Iglesias both estimated to be in the region of 200,000 duros (the term duro refers to five pesetas, irrespective of the period). It was more difficult to explain what was happening in small workshops, which in principle did not require any major investment and which could be set up with only rudimentary equipment and a few workers. Iglesias himself said that in printing companies it was enough to have ‘half a dozen boxes and another half a dozen work benches’, which could be easily paid for ‘in instalments’ or by means of a loan. According to Perezagua, in locksmith’s workshops it was enough to have ‘a pair of bellows, a vice and a couple of files’, which were all on sale in Madrid’s flea market. What is more, it was not difficult for new employers to find work, as long as they offered to do the work for less money than the competition. As it was not necessary to make advance payments, because employers could delay paying their workers until they themselves had been paid for the job, and could even employ cheap labour by contracting children, the logical conclusion was that it should not have been very difficult for workers to set themselves up in business.22 So, at least, went the theory. In practice, any worker attempting to embark on such an adventure had to be prepared to face almost insurmountable obstacles. This was partly due to the competition. Whereas a new locksmith could only acquire ‘limited, poor quality materials’, a well-established employer who owned a larger company ‘gets better and cheaper materials and represents such a source of competition for workers who have recently set themselves up in business that they go bankrupt and are forced to go back to being paid labourers’. However, in addition to the competition, economic instability was a major problem for anyone who had limited resources. For all those reasons, setting up a company, although in theory a reality, had at that time turned into an impossible dream.23 To use the language of the time, workers had lost the possibility of achieving their emancipation. If previously workers could still ‘aspire to becoming emancipated’, at the time the questionnaire was carried out, such an ambition only lived on as an unattainable dream for ‘a few poor workers who hang on to it like a shipwrecked sailor hangs on to a burning nail’. In the best cases, workers who managed to set up a small workshop and get ‘a mediocre apprentice or a bad journeyman’, were still a long way from becoming true businessmen, even though they now ‘exploited’ their ex-colleagues (or ‘sucked their blood’, to quote the expression used by one person from Madrid). At the most, they could be considered ‘workers who managed to get close to emancipation but no further’. Thus, the only possible means of emancipation was through collective action because, as the Society of Typographers of Madrid said:

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‘nowadays large-scale production requires elements which are difficult for a single worker to acquire’. Only ‘the combined efforts of workers will enable them, as a class, to become emancipated’.24 There can be little doubt that in this comparison there was a great deal of idealisation of the past. It is not easy to accept that twenty years earlier it was normal for a worker to set up his own business and it is even harder to believe that it was as easy as these statements would suggest. Neither is it likely that during the 1880s workers no longer had any chance of improving their position. In Spain, it is more likely that there was no major change such as the one that took place in Germany, where the fact that being a worker had became a permanent reality – proof of which was the spectacular increase during the mid-nineteenth century in the number of married workers who no longer lived with their employers, but rather in separate apartments – was a decisive factor in the appearance of the working class. But the important thing in this case, as in all cultural constructions on which a collective identity is based, is the degree to which such statements were accepted; and from the statements mentioned it can be seen that a drop in the possibilities of social improvement had an impact on the increasingly widespread perception concerning the impossibility of emancipation. The importance of this perception for class formation has been highlighted, from a sociological point of view, by Anthony Giddens: ‘The more restrictions that are placed on mobility, both intergenerational and within the individual’s profession, the greater the chances of forming identifiable classes’.25 For the purpose of our analysis here, the language used to express them is just as important as the ideas themselves. The term ‘emancipation’, by means of which the experiences of many workers could be understood, referred to situations which in principle were far removed from those we have just described. According to the Diccionario de Autoridades, in Spain the term ‘emancipation’ referred to the act of liberating a child from legal custody, and until the nineteenth century, the only meaning of the verb ‘emancipate’ was ‘the act of a father removing a child from his control and setting him free so that he could work and take care of his own affairs’. In subsequent editions of the Diccionario de la Academia, two particularly relevant connotations were added to this first meaning: one of these widened the semantic field to include the liberation of slaves and the other recognised the use of the verb in its reflexive form (‘to emancipate oneself ’). Then, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, emancipation was defined as ‘the act of emancipating and emancipating oneself’, and the main meaning of emancipate was ‘to free from legal custody, tutelage or slavery’. It was not until 1884 that a second, figurative meaning appeared alongside this main meaning, which was more closely related to the abovementioned perceptions: ‘to break free from subjugation’.26 Of course, workers were not children under the legal custody of their parents or under the tutelage of an adult. Neither were they slaves dependent on a master who could set them free. However, during the mid-nineteenth century the working-class condition was often compared to that of children (insofar as their subsistence depended on an employer, who often appeared to be a ‘second father’), and even of slaves (‘a worker is a slave to men and to

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things’, wrote Fernando Garrido27 and at a later date, many anarchists continued talking about ‘modern slaves’). It is therefore not surprising that some sectors of the newly formed working class should use the possibilities that language offered them to identify their hopes of a better future with traditional formulas of liberation from family ties or legal restrictions. It is also true that this use of the term was not simply a working-class phenomenon. In fact, it followed on from what republicans had started, but with one major difference. Whereas republicans referred to ‘political and social emancipation’ and were confident that it could be achieved by means of giving everyone the right to vote, the new formulation referred to ‘economic emancipation’ and hoped to achieve it by other means of action (such as association, political struggle and protests of the working class). Neither can it be put down to chance that the most highly qualified and bestpaid workers were the ones who created this formulation. Workers from traditional trades were the only ones who still had hopes of attaining their emancipation. In fact, they still carried out their work in small workshops with little machinery and they had the skills required to be able to work for themselves. Considering the fact that in addition, certain conditions were present which were required to become the ‘central core’ of a collective identity – especially the cognitive resources and the ability to associate – it is hardly surprising that this sector, and not the workers who were worst off in economic and labour terms, were the main advocates of the new class identity.28 In the case of typographers, the situation could not have been better. For a start, they had greater organisational resources, at least during the early years of the Restoration, because their associations – The Association of the Art of Printing and subsequently The Typographical Federation – did not suffer the consequences of the governmental repression which since 1874 had affected the associations connected to the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA. Moreover, the greater skills required to carry out their trades and their closer links to intellectual sectors, especially to the defenders of republicanism, also provided them with greater cognitive resources than other salaried workers. Neither should it be forgotten that in the last few decades of the century they experienced a drop in their salary levels and in their social standing compared to what they had previously enjoyed, which had until then allowed them to maintain their distance from the majority of trades.29 In short, it was the organisational and cultural possibilities, together with the characteristics of trades that were still based on traditional skills and abilities, which enabled the new linguistic configuration of common experiences and the formulation of a collective ideal with which other working-class sectors gradually identified.

Exploitation and the Exploiters If the impossibility of individual emancipation was one of the faces of working-class identity, another fundamental ingredient was contained in a new definition of productive experiences, based on a crucial term in the

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language of class: exploitation. The collective perceptions of working reality and even the social structure as a whole were constructed around this term and its derivatives. Unlike other common expressions in the working-class vocabulary, in this case it was a new term in the Spanish language, but one which quickly became widely used. In fact, the noun exploitation and the verb to exploit only appeared in Spanish dictionaries during the mid-nineteenth century, more specifically in the Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, published in 1845 by Salvá in Paris, and some years later in the Diccionario de galicismos by Rafael Maria Baralt (1855). In both works, the origin of these words was given as the French terms ‘exploit’ and ‘exploiter’, and despite the fact that Baralt criticised their use because there were Spanish expressions which had a similar meaning, these Gallicisms arrived in Spain with such force that the Real Academia had no option but to accept them. In the 1869 edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia, the main meaning of exploit was ‘to extract the riches contained in a mine’. However, there was also a metaphorical meaning together with this one: ‘to make use of a business for one’s own benefit’. According to subsequent editions, profits could not only be obtained from a business, but also from ‘an industry’. More importantly, it was not long before a negative connotation was added to these terms, reflected in the 1879 edition of Salvá’s Nuevo Diccionario, although it was not accepted by the Real Academia until 1927 (the figurative meaning of the verb to exploit was given as: ‘To use the skills or feelings of a person or any event or circumstance for one’s own benefit, generally in an abusive manner’). This last meaning was the final point in a process similar to the one which had taken place years before in France. As William J. Sewell explained, during the 1830s in France the term exploitation lost its initial meaning which was morally neutral – the productive use of a natural resource – and was used in reference to the conversion of workers into a dehumanised factor of production. It was with regard to this second meaning that L’Artisan wrote that ‘in the hands of an employer, a labourer’s work becomes a piece of land to be cultivated or a machine to be exploited’.31 In the Spanish case, before these new meanings were included in the dictionaries, there were plenty of examples of their being used in political language. From the 1870s onwards, the term exploitation and its derivatives (in particular exploiter and exploited) gradually replaced earlier expressions, such as slavery, tyranny and capital oppression. Whereas Fernando Garrido had spoken of ‘indirect’ and ‘ill-concealed’ slavery, and Antonio Gusart – founder of the newspaper El Obrero (The Worker) – wrote about the ‘capital’s tyranny over man’, Tomás Gonzalez Morago referred directly to ‘the exploiters of workers’ in a manifesto in which the internationalist influence went hand in hand with the abovementioned semantic change. Morago understood ‘exploiters’ to be those individuals who, ‘without a great deal or without even an average amount of knowledge about the art they exploit’ but with capital which in most cases had been inherited, ‘boast that they have doubled [that capital] in a few years’. In other words, they were those unable to exploit

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nature due to their limited abilities and knowledge, but on the other hand had the resources required to benefit from the work of other human beings.32 It was this meaning which became more widespread during the 1880s. However, there was one extra element which can once again be seen from the reports presented to the Commission for Social Reforms. According to many reports, exploitation was not due to the extreme use of workers’ labour, in other words long working days, low wages, piecework or the use of women and children instead of more costly male adult workers. Of course, all these practices made the workers’ situation even worse, but there was underlying exploitation which was not only characteristic of abusive practices, but also inherent in ordinary working conditions. This is how a carpenter from Madrid, Saturnino García, described the situation. In his guild – and the observation could be expanded to include other trades – workers who did not have their own capital were obliged to ‘work like mad and sell their labour to those who owned the capital, so that they were paid 10 and then had to produce 20 or 30’. In other words, ‘the bosses have me working 10 or 12 hours and if they make 60 or 70 reals from my hard labour, they pay me 10 or 12’. Although he applied greater moderation in the calculation of employers’ profits, Pablo Iglesias gave the same explanation: if the workers cost the owner of the printing company 14 duros and he charged 16 or 18 for the finished product, the latter would end up earning 2 duros, not as a result of his own effort, but by exploiting his workers.33 In short, it was the difference between the salary received and the price of the goods produced by the worker which gave rise to this ‘exploitation’. Thus defined, it affected all labour relations and not only the obvious abuses. At least in the opinion of those who considered themselves to be ‘exploited’, this resulted in an extremely negative view of their ‘exploiters’: not only of the large company owners or the wealthy manufacturers, but also – and perhaps above all – of those who owned small workshops. It was not a question of the size of the company, the size of the profits or even the abusive practices, however much these aggravated the situation. Instead, it was a question of appropriating the fruits of someone else’s work, and in this respect the differences were irrelevant.34 References to company owners’ loss of legitimacy, which were inevitably related to comments about exploitation, were made again and again by those appearing before the Committee for Social Reforms. As opposed to manufacturers, who knew their trade well, the power held by company owners was not due to their greater knowledge, but only due to their economic resources. More than ‘master craftsmen’, the employers were regarded as exploiters – as ‘tyrants who milked the workers dry and lived off their sweat’ – as lazy and ignorant people. A few ‘so-called industrialists’, who had ‘no theoretical or practical knowledge’, monopolised the fruits of other people’s work ‘simply because they had money and enjoyed privileges’. Thus any journeyman, however modest, could show them – at least that is what Saturnino García declared with reference to the over three hundred company owners in the Madrid woodworkers’ guild – ‘that they didn’t know anything’. Seen from this point of view, professional terminology, which was still

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being used, was no longer valid and for want of alternative expressions, it was at least necessary to explicitly disaffirm its meaning. That is why people referred to ‘so-called master craftsmen’, to ‘master craftsmen or those we call master craftsmen even though they are not’, and to people ‘below us in terms of intelligence’, whose only merit was the fact that they had managed to take advantage of the disappearance of the traditional controls which applied to guilds. In the eyes of working-class society, only one skill could be attributed to these false master craftsmen: that of taking advantage of the existence of ‘laws which allow those who have capital or enjoy privilege to become exploiters in any profession’.35 In short, whatever resources they may have had, employers had become exploiters, or in even more radical terms ‘the enemies’ of workers; in other words the negative side of a fundamental social dichotomy. Against them, the positive side of that same dichotomy did not, at least in the 1880s, have such a well-defined outline in terms of class. By referring to the ‘exploited’ – to the ‘us’ which defined the collective identity – the immediate reference was to workers of the same trade: the ‘journeymen’ of the trade or the ‘workmates’; the typographers, quarrymen, carpenters and cabinetmakers. Even with the appearance of class terminology, more often than not use was made of the plural forms: ‘the working classes’, ‘the labouring classes’, the ‘wealthy classes’. Only those who identified fully with the socialist vision of reality emphasised the use of the singular form of the terms; because, as García Quejido would say, there were not ‘different classes’, but rather only two clearly characterised classes: the ‘owning class’, on the one hand, and the ‘working class’ on the other.36 Faced with socialist insistence and anarchist emphasis – in this case outside the framework of the Commission for Social Reforms, in which, with very few exceptions, they refused to take part – on the existence of only two social groups, in most cases the ‘language of the trade’ was still more common than the ‘language of class’. This is not surprising considering the major differences in working methods and in salary levels between the various productive sectors of the country. However, neither did the social split which was evident in such declarations have anything to do with traditional divisions between ordinary people and the wealthy, insofar as the possibility of small business owners becoming members of the same group as their journeymen and apprentices had been ruled out. Expressed in the most radical terms: there was evidently a ‘professional identity’; class identity, on the other hand, was only acknowledged by a small sector of the working class and it was yet to be accepted by the majority of workers (not even the most active ones who collaborated in the work of the Commission for Social Reforms). At most, certain hints can be found in the comparison between ‘the exploiters’ and ‘the exploited’, which went beyond professional boundaries, or in the use of contrasting terms, although still far removed from the language of class, such as ‘gentlemen’ as opposed to ‘colleagues’.37 For workers to make the new identity their own, a long process of accumulating experiences and learning the new linguistic codes was required.

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It was a process in which other elements which have not been mentioned up to now played a decisive role. I refer here to the diffusion of myths, rituals and symbols, which shall be examined in the following section.

Legends, Rituals and Symbols We are not concerned here with the wider definition of myths usually found in many historical studies, such as ‘a set of beliefs of emotional origin’ which are expressed by means of images and symbols. A more restrictive definition is of greater use, closer to the conceptions of anthropologists and scholars of classical mythology. According to such a definition, a myth is basically a story. However, it is not any old story: it is the account of deeds of exceptional importance to the community, carried out by extraordinary people in far-off times, in other words in the ‘beginning’. Unlike fables or legends, myths tell ‘true’ stories, or at least stories which have been considered as such over successive generations. What is more, they are stories which help explain the present and act as a guide for future actions. According to M. Eliade, this is because mythical stories share three characteristics of being ‘sacred tradition, fundamental revelation and exemplary model’.38 Such sacred stories from the past are remembered in the present by means of rituals. Of course, when talking about rituals it is advisable to strip the term of the pejorative connotations that our period – in which, according to M. Douglas, there is a universal rebellion against ritualism – usually confers on it. In the same way that a myth is not a fable, neither can ritualistic practices be interpreted as the routine repetition of external acts with which the performer does not feel internally identified. On the contrary, the ritual is a substantial source for the creation and consolidation of collective identity, especially insofar as the memory of a foundational myth facilitates the understanding of social reality and promotes the ‘emotional investments’ required for the construction of a common identity.39 If we accept the definition of ‘symbols’ to be similar to the one provided by C. Geertz (‘tangible formulations of ideas, abstractions of experience set in perceptible forms, specific representations of ideas, attitudes, opinions, desires or beliefs’), then we already have the basic ingredients for the final part of the analysis. The basic thesis is as follows: in the formation of the working class – understood to be the constitution of a collective identity which overcame professional boundaries and was at the same time seen as an alternative to popular identity – both the telling of a ‘foundational myth’ and its regular repetition in ritual practices, and even its expression by means of symbols of the main perceptions on which the identity was based, played a decisive role.40 First, this requires us to challenge an approach which has enjoyed considerable success in recent social historiography. As formulated by Hobsbawm, this interpretation points out that the change from old craftsmen’s rituals to new ‘workers’ rituals’ was characterised by decadence and impoverishment. This was in part because the ‘rationalist’ element of the working-class movement made it ‘not only indifferent to ritualism’, but even

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‘actively hostile towards it as a form of irrationalism’, unlike other, much more ritualised political movements (nationalist movements, for instance). However, it was also because workers’ identification with the movement took place by means of ‘simple class assertion’, in such a way that the role played by the few symbols and rituals which managed to survive the decadence was clearly a marginal one.41 Our thesis is radically at odds with this vision. Throughout the history of the working class, rituals and symbols have played a critical role and ‘classrelated’ organisations have been more concerned with encouraging them than showing hostility towards them. Specifically, in the period prior to the First World War the creation and diffusion of such elements occupied a large proportion of the activities of these organisations. This was probably because they believed in their use as a means of uniting workers in a collective identity; workers who were not used to dealing with abstract ideas and who therefore needed condensed and easily understood formulas to define their situation. The changes that these elements of working-class culture underwent during the interwar period, or the decline in the use of symbols from the Second World War onwards should not lead us to forget that before their decline, they enjoyed a golden age.42 With regard to Spain, the development of working-class myths, rituals and symbols was clearly recognisable from the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards. Just as in other European countries, these years saw the appearance and diffusion of what can be defined as the ‘foundational myth’. Although precedents already existed, namely in the commemorations of the Paris Commune and the ‘thirty thousand martyrs of Progress’, it was the story of the struggle of the eight-hour movement in the United States around 1 May 1886 and above all, the trial and execution of the so-called ‘Chicago martyrs’ which came closest to having the characteristic features of origin myths. The stories told of a series of exemplary deeds carried out by extraordinary people which were used as a model for workers’ future behaviour. Hence their importance in the formation of the working class, which became even more significant after the yearly celebration of 1 May united the myth with ritual.43 Together, myth and ritual played decisive roles in the formation of working-class identity. To begin with, they had an integrating role: the memory of the martyrs and the demands of the eight-hour movement became the common heritage of the whole class, over and above divisions between different professions (although in the Spanish case, there was not total integration as a result of the differences between anarchists and socialists over the ways of celebrating the ritual). Secondly, they performed the function of mobilising the workers, thanks to the fact that they organised annual rallies, demonstrations and strikes in which recalling sacred historical events went hand in hand with demands such as the reduction of the working day (and together with this, the defence of legislation to protect the working class or, later on, opposition to the war). Finally, they performed the function of enlightening, a function whose importance in the Spanish case calls for more detailed analysis.44

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Partly due to coincidence, but also because of good timing, the 1 May became an alternative to the patriotic public holiday held on the following day. This was the assertion of the class as opposed to the assertion of the nation and, at least in part, it inherited the antipatriotic elements which the First Internationalists had used twenty years earlier in their protests against the commemoration of the uprising against the French. ‘Spanish workers, who previously commemorated the 2 May [1808], today celebrate the 1 May. It is lucky that the 1 May, at least in Spain, comes after and not before the 2 May, whatever the calendar may say’, was the comment that Engels made about this particular fact.45 Perhaps more relevant, and certainly more enduring than this hostility towards patriotic attitudes, was the fact that the myth represented a break from the hope of achieving people’s political emancipation by means of the Republic. The story of the ‘Chicago martyrs’ cast doubt on the usual formulations of republican culture: for it was precisely in the United States, that is to say the model of a democratic, federal republic, where the ‘legal murder’ of the working-class militants had taken place, without any proof that they had been involved in the deeds of which they were accused. The Spanish anarchist press immediately highlighted this aspect of the story. In November 1887, the magazine Acracia made reference to ‘the crime committed by the Republic […] that hypocritical institution which, stained with the blood of liberals and debased by the wealth of exploitation and usury, plunges the producers into appalling poverty and leads the apostles of freedom to the gallows’. Two years later, La Revolución Social called a rally in remembrance of the martyrs with a very eye-catching banner: ‘Spanish anarchists pledge to exact full revenge for the anarchists hanged in Chicago by the republican bourgeoisie’.46 From very early on, socialist and anarchist attitudes towards mythical stories and their ritual celebration were radically different, even poles apart. The anarchists insisted above all on focusing on the process and the execution of their fellow anarchists, converted into ‘libertarian heroes or martyrs’, to whom they dedicated rallies, poems, portraits, commemorative articles and special editions of newspapers (especially on the anniversary of their execution, 11 November). At the same time, from 1893 onwards the anarchists refused to take part in celebrations to commemorate the 1 May as a protest against the legalistic and festive aspect given to them by the socialists. In turn, the socialists gradually ignored the Chicago episode, whose violent, anti-political connotations did not go along with their ideology, and attributed the foundational figure to the resolution passed in the Congress of Paris in 1889. For the same reason, during the commemorations they repeated their demands for an eight-hour working day and dropped any other more radical demands, in addition to making an effort to maintain a peaceful celebration. However, despite these differences, the ever-present memory of the foundational legend and the definition of the 1 May as ‘workers’ day’ became symbols of identity of the working class; in other words displays of working-class unity and power against the enemy class.47 Together with exemplary myths and their ritual celebration, the rich working-class set of symbols was crucial in creating a sense of identity and a

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sense of being different from the rest of society. Newspapers of various schools of thought, collections of stories, poems and engravings, literary evenings and drama, political books and leaflets, anthems, flags and trade association banners: all these were used to familiarise workers with classrelated symbols. If one thing stands out in the analysis, however superficial it may be, of the ample set of symbols present in all these forms of cultural creation, it is the shortage, or even the lack, of informative content in the strictest sense of the term. Theatre performances and illustrations in the working-class press did not refer to current affairs or analyse specific historical events, neither did the poetry and stories. To make up for this ‘uprooting the specific’ – to use the term coined by C. Serrano – what both socialist and anarchist working-class culture offered was a set of abstract ideas and stereotypes by means of which capitalist exploitation became apparent, but also the possibility of the emancipation of the working class. Basically, instead of educating, i.e. providing information, it was a question of creating an identity, of spreading stories of common importance, of developing feelings of belonging to the community, of stimulating emotions and lastly, of encouraging collective action.48 In order to achieve these objectives, the image of society projected by these various channels can be summarised in two, clearly defined features. On the one hand, there was the frequent and dramatic portrayal of poverty and the dispossessed (the ‘didactic of poverty’ of which Serrano spoke). On the other hand, there was a dualist vision of the social structure tinged with strong moral connotations. In newspaper illustrations the exploiters were either shown to have all kinds of deformities, a clear sign of their vices, or shown to be foul, brutal animals. At the same time, in literary texts the dichotomy was reflected in two opposing stereotypes which, according to a recent study of socialist poetry, can be defined by the following comparisons. On the one hand, those who were described as ‘idle / rude / arrogant / lazy / proud / vile / dissolute / thieving / selfish / work-shy’; and on the other hand, those who were ‘poor / humble / unfortunate / simple / wretched / miserable / sad / forgotten / suffering / honest’. The former were, of course, members of the bourgeoisie, in the widest sense of the word. In other words, they were characters like cruel capitalists, greedy moneylenders and lecherous, lazy young gentlemen, but also priests and nuns, politicians, soldiers and aristocrats. On the other side, of course, were the workers, and together with them orphans and women, homeless people and beggars, prostitutes and poor people in general. In short, on one side there were those who directly or indirectly exploited the working class, and on the other side, the exploited and the pariahs, or what amounts to the same, the passive victims of the capitalist system.49 However, it is also true that, together with these two basic stereotypes, there was a third category made up of the ‘proletarian heroes’: strong, young workers whose appearance alongside allegorical images of working-class unity, revolution, anarchy and general strikes helped to eradicate the sense of resignation and passivity and to highlight the combative nature of the symbols. These were the positive heroes, the models to follow, proof of the

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strength of the proletariat and the foundation of hope in a new world. Thanks to their presence, the role of unifying the working class, of overcoming the differences between the various trades and working sectors and of differentiating workers from the ruling classes, which was again portrayed as one and the same thing, went hand in hand with the role of mobilising, which was the ultimate objective of the whole set of symbols.50

Conclusion Until not so long ago, scholars of nationalism started from the premise that the nation was a natural reality which preceded the human beings that lived in the corresponding territory. It is true that this reality had only managed to surface and become embodied in nation-states, or at least in nationalist movements, during the last few centuries. However, that was not an obstacle to considering that the prior existence of the nation explained the subsequent appearance of these historical subjects. In contrast to such a description, more recent works have resulted in a change of the line of argumentation, to the extent that nations now appear to be the result of nationalising activities undertaken by existing states, or in certain cases by elites aspiring to create new states.51 A similar conclusion can be drawn from the previous analysis concerning the formation of class identity. The traditional version started from the premise of the prior existence of the working class, whose origins were usually considered to be in the industrialisation process, which led to the appearance of ‘class consciousness’, the formulation of programmatic objectives and the emergence of a working-class movement aimed at reaching these objectives by mobilising the members of this group. This chapter’s approach, however, forces us to take the opposite route. In terms of a historical subject, in other words as a collective identity ready to be mobilised, the working class was the result of the continued action of members of the working-class movement; they were the ones who interpreted workers’ common experiences and were responsible for disseminating the conceptual frameworks which allowed workers to join together and fit into a collective identity. The language of class, the formulation of concepts such as exploitation and emancipation, the production and dissemination of myths, rituals and symbols: all these ingredients enabled the cultural construction of a new identity and the gradual substitution of previous or alternative identities. Of course, certain prerequisites were required for this to be successful. Among these, workers had to be employees (as opposed to self-employed), there had to be unease caused by working and wage conditions, in addition to the disappearance of workers’ prospects of social ascent and even fear that their present situation might get worse. But it was also necessary to convince sectors as diverse as agricultural day labourers, craftsmen in traditional professions, miners and a small number of industrial workers that their common features were more relevant than the particular features of each productive sector. In Spain, the last two decades of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of this process.

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Notes 1. E.P. Thompson, ‘The Peculiarities of the English’, Socialist Register, 2 (1965), 311–62; and La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra. Barcelona, 1989, vol.I, XIV and 203. 2. M. Mann, Las fuentes del poder social, Madrid, 1997. 3. With regard to this volatile identity, see P. Joyce, ‘The End of Social History?’, Social History, 20:1 (1995), 73–91. With regard to traditions, W.H. Sewell, Jr., ‘Cómo se forman las clases: reflexiones críticas en torno a la teoría de E.P. Thompson sobre la formación de la clase obrera’, Historia Social, 18 (1994), 70–100. With regard to language, G.S. Jones, Lenguajes de clase. Estudios sobre la historia de la clase obrera inglesa, Madrid, 1989. With regard to the visions of society, P. Joyce, Visions of the People. Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1840–1914, Cambridge, 1991. For a sociological definition of ‘collective identity’, which supplements this historical vision, see the articles of A. Pizzorno (‘Identidad e interés’) and A. Melucci (‘Asumir un compromiso: identidad y movilización en los movimientos sociales’), Zona Abierta, 69 (1994), 135–52 and 153–80 respectively. 4. In addition to the works of Thompson, Stedman Jones and Sewell, some texts which reflect the most recent debates have also been translated into Spanish: N. Kirk, ‘En defensa de la clase. Crítica a las aportaciones revisionistas sobre la clase obrera inglesa en el siglo XIX’, Historia Social, 12 (1992), 59–100; and B.D. Palmer, ‘La teoría crítica, el materialismo teórico y el supuesto fin del marxismo: retorno a La miseria de la teoría’, Historia Social, 18 (1994), 125–50. Less well-known, in any case, are Joyce’s theses, a good summary of which can be found in P. Joyce, ‘A People and a Class: Industrial Workers and the Social Order in Nineteenth-century England’, in M.L. Bush (ed.), Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe. Studies in Social Stratification, London and New York, 1992, 199–217. 5. For a summary of the reviews, J. Álvarez Junco, ‘Movimientos sociales en España: del modelo tradicional a la modernidad post-franquista’, in E. Laraña and J. Gusfield (eds), Los nuevos movimientos sociales. De la ideología a la identidad, Madrid, 1994, 413–20. 6. With regard to the difference between category and identity, J. Kocka, ‘Problems of Working-Class Formation in Germany: The Early Years, 1800–1875’, in I. Katznelson and A. Zolberg (eds), Working-Class Formation. Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, Princeton, 1986, 281–83. The quotation from Thompson is translated from La formación, vol.I, 202. The quotation from Sewell is translated from W.H. Sewell Jr., Trabajo y revolución en Francia. El lenguaje del movimiento obrero desde el Antiguo Régimen hasta 1848, Madrid, 1992, 15. 7. About the ‘Manifiesto de los dirigentes de la Sociedad de Hiladores de Barcelona’ of 26 June 1856, in C. Martí, ‘El movimiento obrero en Barcelona durante el bienio progresista (1854–1856)’, Estudios de Historia Social, 2–3 (1977), 5–74. With regard to the diversity of conditions in the 1880s, M. Pérez Ledesma, ‘La Comisión de Reformas Sociales y la cuestión social durante la Restauración’, in De la beneficencia al bienestar social. Cuatro siglos de acción social, Madrid 1986, 157–61. 8. With reference to the language of class, see a classic essay of A. Briggs, ‘The Language of Class in Early Nineteenth-century England’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History, London, 1967, 154–77. For the example, B.J. Dánvila, Lecciones de Economía Civil, o del Comercio, Madrid, 1779, 31 and 34. For a more detailed explanation of the analysis in this paragraph, M. Pérez Ledesma, ‘La imagen de la sociedad española a fines del siglo XIX’, in J.L. Guereña and A. Tiana (eds), Clases populares, cultura, educación. Siglos XIX and XX, Madrid, 1989, 79–109. 9. For a more detailed analysis, M. Pérez Ledesma, ‘Ricos y Pobres; Pueblo y Oligarquía; Explotadores y Explotados. Las imágenes dicotómicas en el siglo XIX español’, Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 10 (1991), 59–88. 10. Melucci, ‘Asumir un compromiso’. 11. The quotations in the last two paragraphs come from S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, 5 vols. [henceforth cited as RS]. Specifically, references to ‘cordiality’ and ‘good relations’ in the Report of the Provincial Commission of Burgos (RS, vol. IV, 395); Benedicto Antequera’s address in the Ateneo de Madrid (RS, vol. II, 98); Isidro Benito Lapeña’s report from Ávila

40

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Manuel Pérez Ledesma (RS, vol. IV, 220); the report of ‘La Unión Pictórica’ Benefit Society of Valencia, and the Report of the Provincial Commission of Valencia (RS, vol. III, 91 and 521); references to ‘indifference’ and to ‘prejudices’ in Antolín Santodomingo’s report form Ávila (RS, vol. IV, 288) and the Report of the Provincial Commission of La Coruña (RS, vol. V, 32). The final statements, whose tone is more critical, are in Agustín Sardás’s address in the Fomento de las Artes (RS, vol. II, 410–11); information given in the Ateneo-Casino Obrero de Gijón by Fernando García Arenal (RS, vol. V, 440–41); the report from the Society of iron workers and other metal workers of Madrid (RS, vol. II, 554); and Benedicto Antequera’s paper (RS, vol. II, 105). The quotation comes from Francisco Cabrelles’ report on the Valencian village of Orriols (RS, vol. III, 384). The description of J.A. Pitt Rivers is from his Un pueblo de la sierra: Grazalema, Madrid, 1989, 113–35 and 175–76. The first quotation comes from El Correo, 12 December 1884. The examples are taken from reports by José Aymat (RS, vol. I, 130–31) and Navarro Reverter, on behalf of the Junta Directiva de las Escuelas de Artesanos de Valencia (RS, vol. III, 259). The quotations come from the report written by Crisanto Herrero, a member of the Comisión de Plasencia (RS, vol. V, 546–47). With regard to the difficulties of a sociological definition of the people, reference has been made, among others, to D. Castro, ‘Jacobinos y populistas: el republicanismo español a mediados del siglo XIX’, in J. Álvarez Junco (ed.), Populismo y caudillaje y discurso demagógico, Madrid, 1987, 188–200. With regard to the ambiguous identity, Joyce. Visions of the People, 254. The quotations come from the Diccionario provisional de la Constitución política de la Monarquía española, published in 1820; B.J. Gallardo, Diccionario crítico-burlesco, Bordeaux, 1819; F. Garrido, La República democrática, federal universal. Madrid, 1856 [included in J. Trías and A. Elorza (eds), Federalismo y reforma social en España (1840–1870), Madrid, 1975]; and V. Almirall, ‘La declaración de los diarios republicanos de Madrid (V). La demagogia y el socialismo’, El Estado Catalán, 3 June 1870. With regard to the ‘lowest class’ and the virtues of the middle class, J. Pacheco, Lecciones de derecho politico constitucional, pronunciadas en el Ateneo de Madrid en 1844 y 1845, Madrid, 1984, 175–79. Other similar characteristics are found in J. Varela, ‘The Image of the People in Spanish Liberalism (1808–1848)’, Iberian Studies, vol. 18/1 (1989), 10–21. The first quotations come from F. Pi i Margall, ‘La revolución actual y la revolución democrática’, La Discusión, 1 April 1854 (in F. Pi i Margall, Pensamiento social, Madrid, 1968, 196–202, edited by J. Trías). The last quotation comes from Garrido, La República democrática, 374. With regard to Chartism, Stedman Jones, Lenguajes de clase, 101–2. On support for Lerroux, J. Álvarez Junco, El emperador del Paralelo. Lerroux y la demagogia populista, Madrid, 1991, 351–54. With regard to the elections in Madrid, J. Tussell, Sociología electoral de Madrid (1903–1931), Madrid, 1969. The quotations come from S. Castillo, ‘De cómo un aprendiz de tipógrafo se hizo socialista. Juan José Morato (1864–1938)’, in J. Maurice, B. Magnien and D. Bussy Genevois (eds), Peuple, movement ouvrier, culture dans l’Espagne contemporaine. Cultures populaires, cultures ouvrières en Espagne de 1840 à 1936, Saint-Denis, 1990, 20–21. Examples of these replies are in Verbal Information from Ávila (RS, vol. III, 167–8); Report of the Provincial Commission of Burgos (RS, vol. IV, 371); Report of the Provincial Commission of Cáceres and the written Report of the Círculo de Artesanos de Plasencia (RS, vol. IV, 468 and 556); Verbal Information from La Coruña (RS, vol. V, 41); Report of the Provincial Commission of Navarre and the Report of the Real Sociedad de Amigos del País de Tudela (RS, vol. V, 199 and 231); Verbal Information from Palencia (RS, vol. V, 509, 514 and 517). By ‘fortuitous conditions’, Vives Mora, who made a statement on behalf of the Ateneo-Casino Obrero de Valencia, was referring to conditions arising by chance (‘a lottery win’, ‘an inheritance’), and in particular to the ‘protection of a person with capital’ (RS, vol. III, 170).

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22. This was opinion of Mañé y Flaquer in ‘La información’, Diario de Barcelona, 19 October 1884. The other quotations are from the Report of the Local Commission of Alcoy (RS, vol. IV, 57) and the Report of the Typographical Society of Valencia (RS, vol. III, 543). 23. The quotations and the line of argument are from the verbal reports of Iglesias and Perezagua (RS, vol. I, 204 and 179–80). 24. Once again, the quotations are taken from Perezagua’s verbal report (RS, vol. I, 180). 25. Reference to individual and collective emancipation was made in the written report of the Montepío de Tipógrafos de Madrid (RS, vol. II, 492); reference to workers’ vain hope was made in the aforementioned verbal contribution of Pablo Iglesias (note 23). Reference to exploitation and ‘sucking workers’ blood’ was made by Nafarrete, Antonio Ribera and José Sedano, all workers from Madrid (RS, vol. I, 77, 188 and 53). The penultimate quotation of the paragraph is from Vives Mora’s verbal report (RS, vol. III, 170). 26. With regard to Germany, see Kocka. ‘Problems of Working-Class’, 307–10. The quotation is translated from A. Giddens, La estructura de clases en las sociedades avanzadas, Madrid, 1979, 124. 27. In his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, published in 1611, Covarrubias had made a distinction between the situation of children and that of slaves (‘We refer to an emancipated child as one whose father has relinquished his paternal rights and set him free et sui iuris, but when a slave is freed from his master it is referred to as the right to manumission’). Not until the 1869 edition of the Diccionario de la Academia was there a meaning of ‘emancipate’ which incorporated both cases. The use of the reflexive form can be found in the 1852 edition of the Diccionario. The figurative meaning mentioned in the text remained the same, with minor changes, until the new edition in 1992: ‘Free oneself from any kind of subordination or dependence’. 28. Garrido, La República democrática. 29. For the definition of ‘central core’, Melucci. ‘Asumir un compromiso’, 174–76; and M. Pérez Ledesma,. ‘Cuando lleguen los días de la cólera (Movimientos sociales, teoría e historia)’, in Problemas actuales de la historia, Salamanca, 1993, 174–75. 30. With regard to typographers, J.J. Morato, La cuna de un gigante. Historia de la Asociación General del Arte de Imprimir, Madrid, 1984 [1925]. On the changes, J.C. Frías, ‘Niveles de vida, mentalidades colectivas y socialismo: los tipógrafos madrileños a finales del siglo XIX’, Hispania, 180 (1992), 143–72. 31. Sewell, Trabajo y revolución en Francia, 279–80. 32. The quotation by Garrido is taken from La República democrática, 369–70. The articles of A. Gusart, in El Obrero, 11 and 18 September 1864. Morago’s phrases are taken from ‘Manifiesto del Comité de la Sección Organizadora Central Provisional de la AIT de España’, of 24 September 1869, in C.E. Lida, Antecedentes y desarrollo del movimiento obrero español (1853–1888), Madrid, 1973, 177–91. 33. Verbal reports from S. García and P. Iglesias (RS, vol. I, 168 and 204). In a more theoretical explanation, Antonio García Quejido attempted to link this perception with Marxist theses regarding surplus value and the division of society into two classes (RS, vol. I, 254–55). 34. For a statement regarding this subject, ‘Información hecha en el Ateneo-Casino Obrero de Gijón por el socio D. Fernando García Arenal’ (RS, vol. V, 440–41). 35. The quotations in the last two paragraphs come from the verbal reports of Saturnino García, Nafarrete and Recarte (RS, vol. I, 168, 77 and 84) and from the written report of the woodworkers’ association called ‘La Unión’ (RS, vol. II, 501). 36. On these linguistic uses, Pérez Ledesma. ‘La imagen de la sociedad’, 104–9. The quotation is taken from the verbal report of A. García Quejido (RS, vol. I, 256). Pablo Iglesias also explained that ever since the French Revolution and its equivalent in other European countries, ‘the social question has been simplified and reduced to the struggle between two classes’ (RS, vol. I, 201–2). 37. This refers to a meaningful incident: after starting his speech with the words ‘Gentlemen, colleagues’, Juan Cordobés, a worker from Madrid, was rebuked by the President of the session, who considered that the informant had only addressed the people in the audience, most of whom were workers, and not the members of the Committee. His reply was unequivocal: ‘I have never used the term gentlemen to refer to workers because I, for one,

42

38.

39.

40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

Manuel Pérez Ledesma would be offended if someone called me that. So I said gentlemen to refer to the members of the Commission and colleagues to refer to the workers’ (RS, vol. I, 232). The first description is taken from M. García Pelayo, Los mitos políticos, Madrid 1981, 15 and 111–12. A very short description can be found in C. García Gual, Introducción a la mitología primitiva, Madrid, 1992, 19. For the difference, in Malinowski’s classical text on the subject (‘El mito en la psicología primitiva’, in B. Malinowski, Magia, ciencia, religión, Barcelona, 1994, 114–27). The final quotation is taken from M. Eliade, Mito y realidad, Barcelona, 1992, 24. For the relationship between myth and ritual, see Malinowski, ‘El mito en la psicología’, 107 ff. With regard to rebellion, see M. Douglas, Símbolos naturales. Exploraciones en cosmología, Madrid, 1978, 20–38. With regard to ‘emotional investments’, see Melucci. ‘Asumir un compromiso’, 173. The definition can be found in C. Geertz, La interpretación de las culturas, Barcelona, 1990, 90. The quotations come from E. Hobsbawm, ‘La transformación de los rituales obreros’, in El mundo de trabajo. Estudios historicos sobre la formación y evolución de la clase obrera, Barcelona, 1987, 95 and 115–16. The comparison with nationalism can be found in E. Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-producing Traditions: Europe 1870–1914’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, 1983, 263–307. For a more detailed line of argument, G. Korff, ‘History of Symbols as Social History? Ten Preliminary Notes on the Image and Sign Systems of Social Movements in Germany’, International Review of Social History, 38 (1993), suppl. I (M. van der Linden (ed.), The End of Labour History?), 105–25. With regard to martyrs in the Commune, see La Bandera Social, 18 March 1886 (included in J. Álvarez Junco, La Comuna en España, Madrid, 1971, 247). For the origins of the 1 May, M. Pérez Ledesma, ‘Las acciones de masas: el primer Primero de Mayo’, in El obrero consciente, Madrid, 1987, 126–41. For a classical history of rituals, M. Dommanget, Histoire du Premier Mai, Paris, 1972. With regard to the functions of the myths, García Pelayo, Los mitos políticos, 23–25. Engel’s text, published in El Socialista on 1 May 1893, is quoted in J.L. Guereña, ‘Del antiDos de Mayo al Primero de Mayo: aspectos del internacionalismo en el movimiento obrero español’, Estudios de Historia Social, 38–39 (1986), 91–104. The quotations are taken from Acracia, 23, November 1887; and La Revolución Social, 5 and 11 November 1889. A third statement, which is even more explicit, regarding this line of argument can be found in Ricardo Mella’s leaflet: ‘La tragedia de Chicago’ (re-edition: México, 1977, 31 ff). With regard to the various ways of celebrating the event in Spain, L. Rivas, Historia del 1º de Mayo en España. Desde 1900 hasta la 2ª República, Madrid, 1987. For statements regarding the emphasis that anarchists placed on the martyrs, J. Álvarez Junco, La ideología política del anarquismo español (1868–1910), Madrid, 1976, 549–54 (and bibliography, 574–76); and L. Litvak, Musa libertaria. Arte, literature y vida cultural del anarquismo español (1880–1913), Barcelona, 1981, 168–70. For evidence of the limited presence in the Socialist press, F. de Luis, ‘Iconografía obrera: Imágenes y símbolos visuales del 1º de Mayo en El Socialista (1893–1936)’, in his Cincuenta años de cultura obrera en España (1890–1940), Madrid, 1994, 35–84. The quotation is from C. Serrano, ‘Notas sobre teatro obrero a finales del siglo XIX’, in El teatro menor en España a partir del siglo XVI, Madrid, 1983, 274. With regard to the didactism, Serrano. ‘Notas sobre teatro obrero’, 269. For portrayals of the poverty, exploitation and deformities, L. Litvak, La mirada roja. Estética y arte del anarquismo español (1880–1913), Barcelona, 1988. With regard to the dichotomies, P. Bellido, Literatura e ideología en la prensa socialista (1885–1917), Seville, 1993, 58–74. With regard to the proletarian hero, L. Litvak, Musa libertaria, 150–51. With regard to the change of perspective, J. Álvarez Junco, ‘Ciencias sociales e historia en los Estados Unidos: el nacionalismo como tema central’, Ayer, 14 (1994), 63–80.

CHAPTER 2

WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE IN NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPAIN METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS Pilar Pérez Fuentes

The changes that industrialisation brought about to the nature and meaning of work and the different ways in which these changes affected men and women have been the subject of study of a great many historians and the work of J. Scott and L. Tilly is undoubtedly the starting point in such a historiographic task.1 The individualisation of working relations and the separation of the place of production from the home are features which characterise work processes in industrial society. These changes brought about profound transformations in the organisation of both the production and the reproduction systems of pre-industrial societies (division of work according to sex, new marital and family models etc.), in such a way that a new social gender model was established around them.2 The modernisation process endangered the survival of some of the most basic aspects of the patriarchal system. First, the individualisation of economic, social and political life gradually reduced the power held by the paterfamilias and consequently the family model linked to the Ancien Régime and to peasant and proto-industrial economies. Certainly, when the family disappeared as a unit of production and/or work, one of the bases on which the family structure in pre-industrial societies was built also disappeared, namely paternal control of the work carried out by other members of the family. Moreover, it is a well-known fact that separating the home from commercial production areas – factories and workshops – represented a major conflict for women since it meant that housework could not be combined with paid work. The difficulties they faced in combining these two functions

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changed the options open to women, at the same time as working practices were gradually introduced which specifically affected them. Another factor that is traditionally taken into consideration in this process is competition in the labour market between men/women and children/ adults. Although differences in wages and professional status according to gender and age were not a product of industrial capitalism – there is evidence that these existed from earlier periods – the traditional hierarchical organisation of the world of work resulted in fierce wage competition for men as the relations of production became more individualised. What is more, it must be taken into account that the growing monetisation of the economy affected the very definition of work and that only activities developed in or for the market ended up being recognised as such. Clearly, a considerable part of the production of goods and services carried out by women at home were excluded from the market and as such were not recognised as economic activities. In this way, the spread of this new concept of work as a product or merchandise became part of the structure of the gender system in industrial societies since it converted women’s work, which was required for social reproduction, into ‘nonwork’ compared to that done by men. At the same time, the rigid gender division of work brought about changes in the organisation of reproduction, bringing it in line with the productive system from the previous, more ‘functional’ criteria. Life inside the home underwent major changes with the professionalisation, to a certain extent, of childcare and housework according to the middle-class model. The social construction of the figure of the ‘housewife’ is one of the phenomena that best expresses the depth of the economic and demographic changes taking place, in addition to the complexity of the process of constructing industrial society’s new gender identities. The exclusion of women from a large proportion of paid work, or at least from the best-paid jobs, made it impossible for them to survive without a ‘breadwinner’ at their side. This dependence made marriage the best economic strategy for women. In fact for women, their best chance of obtaining a good income lay in getting together with a man who was able to earn well, given the fact that their own possibilities were extremely remote. This aspect was corroborated by changes in the average age that people got married in industrialised regions, with women getting married earlier and earlier, and the subsequent impact on fertility, at least during the initial periods of little or no birth control. Gradually, ‘protectionist’ government policies, working-class and union practices and the persistent action of social reformers, hygienists and teachers introduced new norms, new social practices and individual prospects for men and women. Acceptance of the value of privacy, of the importance of domestic – in other words female – space as an area away from the stressful world of business (which was the male domain), gradually moved beyond the middle classes. Thus, a new regulatory and symbolic framework was constructed by means of which new female and male identities were developed which were considerably different from those in pre-industrial societies. The aim was not only to maintain a certain degree of hierarchy

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between the sexes, inherent in the social gender system in all historical formations, but also to achieve greater social and economic ‘functionality’ of women’s work in industrial society. This strict division of work according to gender gained ground insofar as the subsistence of the family group did not require all members of the family to do paid work. This was therefore a model which certain sectors found it impossible to follow during the initial phases of industrialisation. However, through mimicry of the middle classes, the population as a whole gradually became familiar with the idea of domesticity as a female paradigm and a sign of respectability for men, but also as a factor which provided a greater quality of life for the family. Broadly speaking, these were the changes which took place with the transition to the factory system in the context of Western Europe in terms of men’s and women’s work. However, within this general outline there is an enormous and complex variety of transformation processes. One of the challenges facing feminist historians is precisely that of uncovering the logic by which the different models of industrial development, demographic patterns and the social gender system were organised in historical societies.

Censuses: A Macro-Analytical Approach to Changes in the Nature and Meaning of Women’s Work The first problem to take into consideration when referring to women as workers is the fact that they carried out a wide range of different work including both paid and domestic work. In other words, women were involved in both commercially productive work and biological and social reproduction. In actual fact, it is not an issue which only affected women, but it is true that the effects on women were more generalised and more intense. As a result, when dealing with the subject of women’s work it is necessary to examine the various different types, both from the perspective of the nature of the work and also in terms of its value and significance in a particular historical society. However, such an approach comes up against a great many theoretical and methodological difficulties. What is more, it must be taken into consideration that any attempt at quantifying the ‘active’ population – in the strictest sense of the word – and the evolution of the employment structure of the population as a whole in the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century always presents major problems. First, the criteria used to analyse the active population vary and in addition, the age and marital status of the people is not always clear. Secondly, the professional classifications used are heterogeneous and make it difficult to compare different censuses, especially between 1860 and 1930. In the case of the female population, the difficulties involved are multiplied insofar as the distinction between domestic and productive work was deepened by the industrialisation process, which meant that it was difficult to fit women into the economic and employment classifications. In a study on the quantification of the female labour force during this period, Soto

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Carmona warned of the confusion that existed, particularly in the agricultural sector but also in cottage industries. Such work, carried out at home on a part-time basis, was usually not declared.3 Despite all this and although the source has serious limitations which necessitate careful use, population censuses give an idea of the major changes which took place in the world of work and which particularly affected the socioeconomic stratification of women. In fact, censuses are perhaps the source which most clearly outlines the growing gender segregation and hierarchical organisation which became established among different types of work and also the significance of this process. One of the most revealing aspects is the analysis of the criteria used to classify activities and occupations throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The categories used in the censuses are a basic starting point in order to discover the evolution of the productive sectors and the growing division and specialisation of work. In addition, they are an excellent indicator when trying to understand the changes in gender models which took place in the final decades of the nineteenth century with regard to the social role of men and women and, specifically, with regard to their work. The classification of jobs, and especially those affecting women, varied greatly between 1877 and 1930. In the instructions for the censuses undertaken in 1877 and 1887, it is patently clear that individual criteria were used to determine the activity of each member of the family unit, as opposed to the more family-orientated criteria used in other, earlier censuses, such as the one in 1857. For that reason, the instructions emphasised the need to use particular, specific terms to refer to each trade and profession, even if they were jobs done by children or apprentices. The instructions stated that only ‘those people who depend on the resources of the head of the household (women, children and the disabled)’ could be classed as not having a profession. These guidelines show a clear tendency towards classifying women as being solely involved in looking after the home, which is highly doubtful from the point of view of the family economy. What is more, despite attempts to control the terminology and make it as accurate as possible, no indication was given on how to clarify the complex nature of women’s work, knowing full well that it was inconceivable that a considerable percentage of female adults did not do any farming or craftwork at home. In a primarily agricultural society like Spain’s – in terms of small properties, large estates and day labouring, and even in urban areas – women played a fundamental role in the family economy and it is therefore implausible that most of the female population did not appear to do any form of recognised work. The economic and social changes which were taking place in Spain during the last decades of the nineteenth century (even though regionally they were extremely localised), in addition to the rise in middle-class ideology and the growing importance of the debate about the so-called social question – in which the position of women was a central issue – were, without doubt, taken into consideration by those in charge of the Geographical and Statistical Institute. As from 1877 onwards, their criteria, which at least represented the

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mentality of the ruling classes, gradually belittled female productive activities and rendered them ‘invisible’, which does not reflect the true situation in Spain. It could be said that began a first phase of invisibility and invalidation, as seen in the 1877 and 1887 censuses in which most women were grouped together in a section named ‘without profession and unclassified’. Such data should not lead us to the conclusion that women had abandoned their productive activities en masse in favour of exclusively reproductive activities. It is also true that the fact that women were ‘without profession and unclassified’ is a reflection of the difficulties involved in classifying work which in the majority of cases was done in people’s homes and in which it was difficult to differentiate the various types of work included – commercial, subsistence or domestic/reproductive – and to determine which of these were carried out at the same time. However, these censuses did not include a generically female professional category. In 1877, 73 percent of the unclassified population were women and these represented 83 percent of the total female population, in other words almost all female adults. In 1887, the results were similar insofar as 77.5 percent of people without professions were women, representing 75.5 percent of the total female population. Naturally, including women in the section entitled ‘without profession and unclassified’ was closely linked to their marital status, as can be seen from the census in 1887. Once married, the majority of women were classified in this section. In the Basque Country, for example, 95 percent of married women from Alava, 74 percent of those from Guipuzcoa, 96 percent of those from Navarre and 61.5 percent of those from Vizcaya were ‘without profession’.4 These figures are inversely related to the importance of agriculture in these areas. In other words, this is the sector which most concealed women’s work, precisely because of the difficulties involved in separating the activities undertaken in each household, given the property structure. In 1900, unlike the previous censuses and following the Nomenclature of Professions adopted by the International Statistics Institute in 1893, there was for the first time a section entitled ‘Domestic Work’, which included people who did housework for free in their own homes, as well as people in domestic service. In other words, it was a category which in principle referred to the nature of the work. In this case, the vast majority of women left the ranks of those who were ‘without profession and unclassified’ to become members of the group of domestic workers. On the other hand, men now accounted for 87 percent of those who were unclassified and without profession. Domestic work was thus recognised, together with the almost generalised classification of women as workers in this sector. There is a question as to whether the professional category in which most women were included reflected the reality of the work they carried out or rather the category they should be in due to their sex. Through other sources of information from that period, it is clear that paid work carried out by women played an important role in the family economy, both in urban and in rural societies. Well-known

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examples of such sources include the information collected by the Commission for Social Reforms or the works of Le Play, Sallarés y Plá and Zancada.5 However, those included in the category ‘domestic work’ were also divided according to the social context in which they carried out their work. Paid personal and domestic service performed outside the family, in other words the work of ‘servants’, appeared as a subgroup of this section, separated from ‘members of the family who do domestic work’. In the latter, 100 percent were women and they represented 88 percent of married women in 1900. But the census used different, contradictory criteria to group together people involved in the two types of domestic work, depending on whether the data referred to the whole of Spain or to provinces and provincial capitals. In this case, the two subgroups which made up the ‘domestic work’ sector were separated and later reorganised into different sections using a philosophy which went against international classification criteria. The ‘members of the family involved in domestic work’ were put in the last section together with those ‘without profession and with unknown professions’, thus breaking the original criteria and implying that the work carried out by women in their homes was unproductive, whereas ‘servants’ were included in the tertiary sector. The above-mentioned contradiction, depending on whether the information referred to provincial areas or the whole of Spain, appeared in the censuses carried out in 1910 and 1920. However, from 1930 onwards, the mistakes no longer appeared and the majority of women were classified as ‘members of the family’, a category which did not refer to any particular activity and which also included ‘children who do not work because of their age’. In this case, not even the nature of the work was used as a classification criterion, but rather the fact that they belonged to the family unit. This group was set apart and rated below the so-called ‘unproductive’ group, implying that women’s work had absolutely no value whatsoever. It is still impossible to accept that in 1930, given the importance of the primary sector in the Spanish economy and considering the slow, uneven growth of real wages and family incomes – and therefore families’ limited purchasing power – women did not do more productive work than the censuses suggested. The reason for this was that any other activity undertaken by women was understood to come second to what should have been the profession par excellence of all women, at least during most of their life cycle. An analysis of censuses in other European countries throughout the nineteenth century reflects opacity similar to that of the Spanish case in terms of the activities done by women. It also reveals the international nature of the changes which took place in the gender system as a result of industrialisation in the Western world. The result is that according to official statistics, the general activity of women in the pre-industrial period was gradually replaced by a universal and mythical absence of all activity. As Blunden has stated, it was a conjuring trick by means of which the exceptional and abnormal nature of women’s work appeared to occur naturally and was structured and incorporated into the social customs and considered to be normal.6

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Changes in the Activity Rate According to the Censuses The generally accepted definition of activity was precisely the root of the changes brought about by industrialisation. This defined the active population as the group of people who supply, or are available to supply, labour for the production of goods and services in and for the market. It was a definition which excluded from the economy all work carried out within the framework of the family. Neither could it be applied to the black economy, whose production was in most cases not included in economic and employment statistics. Activity, associated with employment – either actual or potential – became a fundamental social institution in industrial society, charged with strong generic connotations by means of which individuals not only received an income, but also a certain status and social identity. This shows that the object of analysis by historians, sociologists and economists is not the activity itself, but rather its significance, defined by means of social practices. Having said that and in light of the criteria used in the censuses, it is no surprise to find that in Spain the female activity rate was implausibly low in 1877 at 17.1 percent, and that it continued falling until it reached 9.2 percent in 1930.7 The continuous drop in the female activity rate, above all between 1900 and 1910, can also be explained, although it was not the most important factor, by the decrease in agricultural activities as a result of the breakdown of the agricultural subsistence economy. Land seizures, which privatised a considerable proportion of common land, in addition to the agricultural crisis at the end of the century, caused a 41.3 percent drop in the number of farm owners or tenants, whilst there was a 40.3 percent increase in the number of agricultural workers.8 In this respect, it is true that to a certain extent the transition from a traditional society to an industrial society began in Spain with women withdrawing to domestic activities, abandoning in part a field of activity that they previously occupied, namely family-orientated agricultural or craftwork.9 In part, the phenomenon originates from the growing decline of the primary sector and traditional activities and industries linked to protoindustrialisation which employed a large number of women. It was also due to the fact that those women who continued working in family-orientated agriculture, shops or crafts found themselves in ‘borderline’ working situations in which it was more difficult to distinguish strictly commercial work from domestic work. A key factor when it comes to interpreting the fall in the female activity rate is people’s mentality in terms of the new paradigm of female work which shaped the major changes in the gender system. This went hand in hand with the industrialisation process. During the first phases of industrialisation (a tardy, disorganised process in Spain) the censuses reflected the model of the gender-related division of work that should exist in urban, industrial societies – with the man as the sole breadwinner and the woman as the person who takes care of the home – to a much greater extent than was actually true.

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Not only did female activity fall and become limited to a period of the life cycle that was inversely proportional to that of men, but in addition, the censuses show a clear segmentation of the labour market and the redistribution of the female labour force by productive sectors. The agricultural sector contained the greatest number of women until 1920, a year in which the tertiary sector, headed by domestic service, took first place.10 Despite the fact that the urbanisation process stimulated the development of the tertiary sector and, in particular, domestic service and small-shopkeeping, which were typically female activities, it is highly likely that the undervaluing of agricultural work resulted in very inconsistent results in terms of the female activity structure during the first decades of the twentieth century. This not only affected women, but also disrupted the analysis of changes in the productive sector as a whole, both when analysing the total number of people employed and when limiting the analysis to the male population, a procedure used by some historians in order to work with more reliable data. All in all, in terms of the activity and employment of women, population censuses have serious limitations but, on the other hand and despite being unintentional, they are a good reflection of changes in mentality with regard to the place and the role of women. The censuses allow us to trace the general outline of the now classic model of interpreting women’s work relative to the life cycle, regardless of social class, the productive structure or the demographic pattern of which they were a part. The simplicity of this model, although useful as a basic interpretation, hides a wide variety of situations that we are aware of through local and regional studies. From these studies it can be gathered that there was no dominant patriarchal logic with which to interpret and foresee changes in the activity of men and women, nor was there a logic of capital which predetermined employers’ attitudes with regard to the female labour force.11

The Municipal Registers: Women in the Framework of Local Labour Markets and Family Strategies Working with more homogeneous and more sociologically significant subpopulations allows women’s work to be set within the framework of certain labour markets and specific demographical patterns, factors which combine to explain the preferences for different types of female labour. In addition, the municipal registers and nominative lists of inhabitants provide a more detailed reflection than the censuses of the deep changes brought about by economic modernisation, in terms of both the conception and classification of work and whether that work was family-orientated or done on an individual basis. This last aspect can be clearly seen in the case of the Basque Country if lists of inhabitants from different towns in the first half of the nineteenth century are compared with those of the last two decades of the century. Thus in 1825 and 1857 the philosophy underlying the municipal figures was that of the family as the economic unit, in such a way that the profession of the head of the

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household, particularly in the case of farmers, classified the other relatives living in the same household.12 Thus, on many occasions classification of the activity came down to that of the head of the household, with other members of the family unit appearing without profession and with no independence of their own. But likewise, this conception of the family as an economic unit can be perceived in the tendency to acknowledge and accept those types of jobs which represented income for the family economies, regardless of the place where they were carried out. In other words, both paid activities undertaken at home (farm workers, seamstresses, washerwomen …) and wage-earning activities outside the home were accepted. In one way or another, the family-oriented nature of the economic, productive and wage processes was reflected in the municipal registers, which portray the image of the typical pre-industrial household, in which the family was the unit of production or work.13 However, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and above all from 1877 onwards, there was a sudden increase in the number of women without a profession and those classed as ‘housewives’ in the areas studied. Broadly speaking, it can be seen that the female activity rate dropped in all these towns in line with the development of wage-earning work markets. Moreover, the drop in the activity rate was more noticeable in rural areas, despite the fact that women still continued to do productive work in farming families. Thus, as occurred in the censuses, the first problem that must be faced is the fact that female work was hidden, at times arbitrarily, although on other occasions it would appear to go hand in hand with the urbanisation process and its economic and cultural implications.14 The underestimation of paid female work also took place in other productive sectors, with the possible exception of domestic service, which appeared to be the activity most accurately recorded in the registers. The case of Catalonia is a good example, since despite women’s significant participation in the textile and clothing industries, according to workers’ and employers’ sources, they were not always correctly accounted for in municipal registers during the nineteenth century.15 Having reached this point, everything would appear to indicate that until well into the twentieth century any attempt at a quantitative analysis of women’s work during the transition towards industrial society would be unsuccessful. However, in comparison with population censuses, municipal registers allow us to retrieve a proportion of women’s paid employment and activities which were intended to ensure the subsistence of the family – not only those related to domestic work – such as agricultural work carried out by the wives of farmers, small landowners and tenants. Their farm work was indispensable for the family economy but was nevertheless not reflected in the registers.16 Indeed, returning to the case of some of the Basque towns analysed earlier, even very similar farming villages, such as Morga (1889), Mendata (1877), Arteaga (1897) and Yurre (1887), it can be seen that, in the first two villages, the activity rate for women between 15 and 59 years old did not reach 5 percent, whereas in the latter two villages the activity rates were 60 percent and 89 percent respectively. However, if we consider farmers’ wives to be

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agricultural workers, the activity rates of married women in Arteaga and Yurre would be 53.2 percent and 57 percent, very similar to the figures for Mendata and Morga, with 45 percent and 50.6 percent respectively. This reclassification of part of the population and the subsequent correction of activity rates – has already been carried out by other authors for other regions – may be valid for other rural towns of small landowners and family farms on the Cantabrian (Northern Spain) coast.17 Moreover, the municipal registers can reveal when and how certain groups of women participated in the labour market relative to the family cycle, the structure of relationships, the activity of other family members etc. They even allow the correlation of nominative information from factory payrolls and working censuses. The association of nominative sources allows analysis of the participation of women from a double perspective: that of technical changes and changes in internal labour markets, with the subsequent occupational segregation according to gender and age, and the adaptive strategies used by families.18 However it is not an easy task, since identifying individuals in different documentary sources is complicated and, with the exception of Catalonia, there are not so many sources available for the nineteenth century. This micro-analytical perspective allows women’s work to be set within the logic of domestic group decisions as a determining factor in the opinions and decisions of women and men. It is clear that in the so-called post-industrial society the analysis of the population’s professional careers can best be tackled from the perspective of individual decisions. However, in the case of societies undergoing the industrialisation process, or even those at a more advanced stage, the family determined people’s professional careers, in such a way that the individual options with regard to a person’s activity should not be separated from a certain economic rationality of the co-resident group or from family strategies. Logically, we start from the hypothesis that families tried to achieve the best possible living standards by means of economic and demographic strategies, in such a way that the multiple experiences of work within the family and their distribution according to the gender and age of the family members could only be understood within the framework of the family. During the first stages of industrialisation, the family home was crucial for people’s survival, especially among the popular sectors.19 In this respect, the municipal registers represent a source which allows us to analyse the changes which took place in the socioeconomic structures with greater accuracy, with regard to both the productive system and the organisation of reproduction, above all from the last decades of the nineteenth century onwards. The wealth of information about each person (name, sex, age, marital status, position in the family, level of education, profession, place of origin, years of residence) enables numerous factors to be linked together to help to achieve a better understanding of the complexity of the social changes, from the perspectives of both individual people and homes. Since the registers indicate each person’s relationship with the head of the family, the co-resident group represents a unit of analysis which reproduces a whole series of social categories within itself according to gender, age and relationship.

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There have been a large number of works on urban family life in nineteenth century Europe, and we are aware of the magnitude of changes in the organisation of production and reproduction in the transition towards the industrial system. By means of this literature we know that the family group created various strategies in order to adapt to or resist the transformations which were taking place outside their homes.20 Thus, the family appears to have been a dynamic and flexible institution by means of which men and women fitted in with or put up resistance to the new demands of industrial society, facilitating the changes or reducing the impact that they had. In short, if we wish to make advances in our knowledge of the complex and varied experience of women’s work in contemporary Spain, it is essential to take into account the close relationship between the formation and evolution of local or regional labour markets, in addition to economic and demographic family strategies. It is also important to consider that the members of the family unit had generic identities, as men and women, for example, which conditioned their individual options and expectations with regard to work. The individual chose not only according to the possibilities of the labour market – which were different for men and women – but also according to the family survival strategies, which included old criteria concerning the gender division of work, which cannot always be interpreted using the strictest economic rationality, such as the fact that women undertook most of the activities related to biological and social reproduction. Therefore, the key explanatory factors concerning women’s work cannot be fully dealt with unless they are considered in a specific socioeconomic and family structure. Research into women’s work carried out from this perspective formed the main core of debate at the Second Workshop on Family Strategies and Family Economics held in the University of the Basque Country in December 1993. The sessions concerning the transition to an industrial society in the Basque Country and in Catalonia gradually revealed a rich, wide-ranging, interwoven framework made up of economic development models, family strategies and women’s work. In all the sessions, municipal registers represented the main source of information. Thus, municipal registers allow close relationships to be established between modernisation models and women’s work. For this, it is necessary to know how the local labour market worked, in addition to analysing the internal logic of the household in order to have a much better understanding of the decisions related to the division of work according to gender and the different ways in which family members participated in the maintenance of the home: occupations of the various members, existence of other incomes or financial resources, the dependence ratios of the domestic group, the composition of family relationships, the family cycle etc. In short, it is a question of positioning women’s work within the logic of the adaptive strategies used by families faced with the transformation of the labour market from the perspective of the needs of the family group. These needs must be defined in the framework of a culture and a demographic pattern which were likewise undergoing profound transformations.

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For instance, the case of the Catalan textile industry, and the industrialisation model of towns situated in the Ria (Forth) of Bilbao based on mining and the iron and steel industry provide two very distinct outlooks on women’s work. The adult female activity rate in the textile sector of Sabadell (near Barcelona), calculated using workers’ censuses, was 69 percent in 1849–1850, despite the fact that in many cases female workers were not registered as such in the lists of residents. In addition, it can be seen that increasing mechanisation and industrial concentration gradually reduced the participation of women, restricting it to one part of the life cycle. In 1858, the highest female activity rates in the textile industry were for those under 20 years old (56.8 percent), falling sharply to 23.2 percent from 30 years onwards. The mechanism by which female labour was replaced by child labour would in part help to explain this drop in the activity rate. From the employers’ point of view, the greater instability of female labour was offset by low wages and the subsequent reduction in labour costs.21 However, in the case of inland Catalonia, women still dominated the textile industry as they had since the mid-nineteenth century, in spite of the technical changes in spinning and in textile mills which came about as a response to an economic model in which agriculture was still an important source of family income. Male agricultural work and female factory work supplemented each other in the family economy, allowing families to overcome their difficulties in the case of a crisis in one sector and allowing the various sectors to reduce costs. This feminisation of the industrial labour market was also accompanied by the seasonal migration of young women, with the consequent imbalance between the sexes and high levels of celibacy among the women since they got married later and many even decided not to get married. In this case, spinsterhood and relatively high fertility rates – male children went to work in agriculture and female children in factories – can be seen as strategies aimed at maximising income in view of the employment opportunities.22 A radically different example would be that of the mining industry in Vizcaya (Basque Country), where there had always been a strongly male-dominated labour market and where even the number of women involved in subsidiary work was insignificant. In fact, activity rates for women over 14 years of age in mining towns was no greater than 10 percent in 1900 and 1913 and they worked in services and agriculture, not in the mining industry.23 The reasons for employers’ preferences when contracting staff can be found in the structure of the demand for iron ore, which was destined for overseas markets and which fluctuated a great deal with very rapid expansion and reductions and which did not allow a stock of the mineral to be built up. In this respect, there was a need for an abundant labour force which was required to work in unstable conditions but with high productivity. This was achieved by organising the extraction and transport of the iron ore around homogeneous gangs of workers (young men), who negotiated the work that was to be done each day with the foreman and who, in contrast, had the opportunity to reduce the working day. This therefore explains the absence of

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women and children in the iron mines of Vizcaya, both from the employers’ point of view and in terms of the interests of the workers themselves. Their absence was closely related to the increase in the female marriage rate as a survival strategy among the popular sectors of society. In this case the need to get married was accompanied by greater opportunities to do so as a result of the high ratio of men to women in mining and industrial towns. The hypothesis that the division of work by gender, in addition to having a considerable impact on the way households were organised, also contributed to the way labour was organised in accordance with criteria of greater productivity and control over the labour force and that it even favoured the capital accumulation process, was certainly relevant in the mining industry in Vizcaya, above all with regard to the period of greatest capital accumulation: 1877–1913.24 However, from the perspective of the family group, both in the example of the textile industry of Sabadell and the Basque iron and steel and mining industries – above all in the latter – it would appear that adult female labour was underused due to scarce employment opportunities in the local markets. Yet a response can only be given to this interpretation in the context of family strategies and economies, where women’s economic activity can be examined in its widest sense, incorporating all the activities, whether they be paid or not, from the point of view of the survival and reproduction of the family group. The rationality of the decision to retire from the textile labour market at the age of thirty can be understood if we take into account the low salaries paid to women throughout their working lives. Women’s wages were not only considerably lower than men’s, with no apparent criteria concerning their skill or productivity, but they also hardly varied during their time in the company: men’s wages increased by 50 percent during the first ten years in a company, whereas in the case of women the increase was barely 15 percent.25 Throughout the whole of Spain, men’s and women’s wages in industry differed by around 50 percent until 1920.26 For that reason, women’s contribution to the family income was not very great. In the case of Sabadell, for instance, in the first phases of the family formation cycle women’s income only accounted for 25 percent of the total and later, this was gradually replaced by the income received by the children, whose earnings far exceeded those of the mother.27 The result is that families had to endure situations of economic deficit, when their expenses were greater than their incomes, during those phases of the cycle in which the children were not old enough to do paid work. It was a critical period for families and such a structural risk of poverty is a phenomenon which has been substantiated in various different places such as Lancashire, Florence and the mining districts of Vizcaya.28 It is possible that any surplus income that families managed to save during the first years of marriage allowed them to deal with the deficit they faced until their children grew up.29 Yet we cannot forget that work aimed at the social and demographic reproduction of the household was one of the fundamental priorities of the family, even more so in situations where there was little or no birth control. It is a fact that in Spain, with the exception of

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certain areas of the north east, the demographic transition was a belated phenomenon and that it was precisely during the critical phase of the family cycle (in economic terms) that most effort was put into reproduction. In subsequent cycles women did return to paid work if their children were able to replace and increase their potential earnings. However, despite these considerations, many historians find it difficult to accept that in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spain, married working-class women did not do any part-time paid work. It is true that reproduction was a fundamental part of societies with a high birth rate, but it is inconceivable that this was women’s only occupation both in rural and urban economies. Likewise, in the case of unqualified workers and agricultural day labourers, low wages made it difficult for them to save money in order to get through the most financially demanding phases of the family cycle. What is more, the ‘demographic lottery’ and unemployment should also be taken into consideration, both phenomena which bring about profound changes to the family economy.30 This all leads back to Tilly and Scott’s now classic approach regarding the existence of two labour markets from the first phases of industrialisation. In fact, women were responsible for a significant number of goods and services in all cities. The jobs were no doubt badly paid and done on a part-time or seasonal basis outside the structure of workshops or factories. This made it difficult for them to do the housework but represented a significant source of income for families with which to face up to the structural risk of poverty. Women who worked from home, washerwomen, street sellers, women who ironed clothes, seamstresses, landladies who took in lodgers etc. made up an army of female workers whose work was difficult to identify and assess.31 The problem is how to gain access to what could be referred to as the black-market economy of goods and services undertaken by women, of which there is indeed evidence in other documentary and literary sources. Invisible Black-Labour Markets This was the starting premise when analysing the mining areas of Vizcaya, since from the perspective of the family economies, it is virtually impossible to understand the insignificant role that women, and above all married women, played in the mining labour market. The fact that there were no other industries nearby, the limited development of the service industry, the disappearance of agricultural work and the geographical remoteness of the densely populated mining community located in the Montes de Triano minimised job opportunities for women. On the other hand, the low real wages paid to men, the lack of promotion possibilities for day labourers – who represented most of the large labour force of the mines – and the fact that child labour was not used, resulted in a scenario in which the economic survival of the family group appeared to be impossible. With the daily wage from the mine, in 1887 as well as in 1900 and in 1913, it was not possible to cover the minimum requirements of three people, which would have made it difficult to save money for times of greater hardship.

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The apparent underutilisation of female earning potential diminishes with the discovery that there was a black market of domestic service which was encouraged by the mining companies themselves in order to look after their labour force. The labour force was made up of thousands of migrant day labourers without homes or families, who resided as lodgers in the homes of married workers, paying a set amount for their bed, cleaning the room, laundry and cooking. These were not isolated cases, since more than 60 percent of the total labour force working in the iron mines lived as lodgers in the homes of other workers. The existence of this rearguard entrusted with carrying out numerous domestic services for workers in their own homes not only allowed the mining companies to preserve their labour force without having to invest in cabins or canteens, which would have been extremely conflictive solutions, but also allowed them to maintain daily wages which were clearly not enough to cover a family’s minimum needs. Thus, all the services required for the maintenance of those members of the labour force without a family, whether they were seasonal workers or not, were undertaken by women and remained outside the labour market. They therefore represented lower costs for the mining companies, both in economic terms and in terms of industrial disputes. Women who took in lodgers received far more money than they could have earned from washing minerals or from doing other subsidiary jobs. Moreover, as the prices of board and lodging increased, on the initiative of the workers who took them in, working in the mines was less and less lucrative for women, since their wages increased by only 15 percent between 1887 and 1913. As a result, there were fewer advantages to women working in the mines, both from the employers’ and from the families’ point of view, than to them working at home. Women working full time in providing personal goods and services represented not only an improvement in the quality of life of the population, but also a considerable improvement in family economies. Throughout the three periods analysed here – 1887, 1900 and 1913 – for 25 percent of the families, the earnings from providing board and lodging represented between 40 percent and 60 percent of their total income, in other words, almost as much as the head of the family earned. For 40 percent of the families the earnings from board and lodging represented between 20 percent and 40 percent of their total income. In the remaining families, monetary income from the women was the main source. Out of the total number of families who took in lodgers, 84.96 percent in 1887, 68.97 percent in 1900 and 72.35 percent in 1913 were able to meet their minimum needs, increase their spending power and even save money for times of greater hardship.32 This phenomenon is incomparable in terms of its extent and the reason behind it lies in the very nature of the mining industry: a large, maledominated labour market which was discredited, precarious and from which the mining companies wished to get the maximum profits with the least possible outlay. As the commissioners from the Institute of Social Reforms

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declared, man’s exploitation of natural resources was closely linked to the workers’ exploitation of each other, forming a chain of exploitation and dependence held together by women. We can speak of the existence of management and family strategies aimed at optimising human resources according to age and gender and in both cases they would benefit from the absence of women in the mines. In short, this was an accumulative model which required a subsidiary labour force working outside the labour market. In comparison to the example of Sabadell put forward by Camps, providing board and lodging allowed mothers to contribute to the family income, regardless of which phase of the family cycle they found themselves in and without the fact that they had small children being an insurmountable obstacle.33 What is more, in the period between 1887 and 1900, a time during which there was intensive mining activity, it was during the most critical phase in the formation of families, when the head of the family was 30–39 years old, that a greater number of lodgers were taken in than during other phases and as a result, income received from women’s work was greater. However, in accordance with the model for some areas of Catalonia, it is also true that when the children were old enough to work (14–16 years old), there was a decrease in the number of lodgers taken in. The specific feature of the case analysed is the close interrelation between the mining labour market and the ‘black’ subsidiary market of services provided by women. We can confirm that this phenomenon existed in all the towns of the Ria of Bilbao, albeit to a lesser extent because in the iron and steel sector, board and lodgings did not represent a subsidiary market required to regulate the hiring of labour. However, in the case of women working from home in the textile and clothing industries, we are indeed faced with a phenomenon which was an inherent characteristic of a certain industrial model which developed above all in Catalonia during the First World War.34 This would be another interesting example to be analysed in greater detail from the double perspective of business and family, although we would very probably come up against the problem of too few sources of information. Verbal sources, as C. Borderías has demonstrated, in addition to current experiences in urban areas of Third World countries, are of great assistance when analysing the reality of paid female labour in historical societies, from the point of view of both domestic and national economies.35

Domestic Work in Family Economies References here to the role that women played within the family economy always start from the idea that their work is considered to be essential to the family’s wellbeing, although in the majority of cases their contribution cannot be judged in monetary terms. We know that housewives from the urban and rural working classes played a fundamental role in the family economy.36 They were responsible for a wide range of tasks which required considerable time

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and without which it would have been impossible to take care of the home and ensure a minimum quality of life. Yet beyond the functional aspects of domestic work, the question is how to assess this contribution which was necessary for the survival of the family group and, therefore, include it as part of disposable income.37 According to the classical definition, domestic work consisted of unpaid activities carried out by and for members of the household; activities which could be substituted for goods and services paid for and acquired through the market if circumstances such as income, market conditions and personal inclinations allowed the service to be assigned to someone outside the family group. On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that there are several schools of thought on the economic conditions of this type of unregistered economy, but above all it has aroused an interest in micro-economic analysis within the neoclassical school, which regards the home as a unit of production and domestic work as productive work which can be expressed in terms of input and output.38 Goldschmidt’s exhaustive compilation of evaluations and methods, carried out with the assistance of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, is also an enormously useful source of information for historians who wish to tackle the subject of evaluating domestic production.39 In fact there is a great variety of methods and there does not appear to be uniform criteria with which to undertake comparative studies. In general, domestic activities tend to be evaluated on the basis of the input used, given that they are highly work-intensive activities. But there have also been estimations of the value of the services provided, calculated by comparing them with the market price. Clark was the first person to do this, taking the cost of maintaining adults and children in charitable church institutions as a reference and deducting the intermediary consumption of accommodation, food and clothing from the total.40 In 1959, Chaput-Auquier applied this method to Belgium.41 Both evaluations of what could be referred to as the value of domestic production per capita were undertaken on a macroeconomic level. This system, like all those which base their estimation on output, comes up against the problem that prior determination of the volume and nature of non mercantile production is often complicated and the quality of the service given is difficult to compare.42 Golsdschmidt-Clermont has once again taken up this evaluation method, which takes into account household output and assigns to it the equivalent price of market goods and services, deducting intermediary consumption.43 This method, defined as the ‘value-added method’, has been used in the economic estimation of part of the domestic work carried out by women in the mining towns of Vizcaya between 1887 and 1913. In this case, domestic service was part of the black market referred to earlier. In addition, the municipal registers allow the reconstruction of the household group (relatives and lodgers). Through the information collected by the commissioners of the Institute of Social Reforms, from the Mining Headquarters of Vizcaya, the Association of Mining Employers and from

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workers’ organisations, there are records of the price that lodgers paid to their landladies, itemised according to the services included. It can therefore be confirmed that for washing clothes and preparing food for members of the family, housewives carried out work whose value, if these services were acquired in the market, as was the case with lodging workers, was not less than the potential wages earned by women in the mines.44 Women’s daily wages in the mines were clearly designed to deter women so as to ensure the labour force was well looked after in the family units. In addition, the prices of domestic services which are used here as a reference were partly determined by the pressure and the opinion of the foremen and managers of the mines who, in short, determined the value of the work carried out by their own wives and by the wives of the whole mining population. To take an example, the cost of such services for a family of four people was 272 pesetas in 1887, 256 pesetas in 1900 and 472 pesetas in 1913; whereas the salary paid to women for subsidiary work such as washing minerals or cleaning the company offices was 312 pesetas, 335 pesetas and 360 pesetas respectively.45 What is more, women’s contributions to the family economy, bearing in mind the income received from taking in lodgers and the estimated value of one part of unpaid housework, were in many cases greater than those of the head of the family. With regard to the average values, it can be seen that the total value of the work carried out both in the submerged services market as well as in only two of the basic domestic activities required to maintain the family (washing clothes and preparing food) was very similar to the wages earned by the head of the family. It can easily be deduced that in a more detailed monetary assessment of all the domestic tasks carried out in the household, the value of these would exceed the income received from paid work. In addition, the cause of the lack of women in this important sector of the Basque labour market becomes clear when we discover that women’s salaries in the mining industry were obviously intended to discourage them from working there. In fact, if the salary paid to women in the mining industry is imputed to all the women in the mining communities, it turns out to be lower than the estimated value of one part of domestic work: paid in the case of lodgers and unpaid in the case of family members (see Table 2.1). Table 2.1 Average Values of Domestic Work Required to Wash Clothes and Prepare Food. San Salvador del Valle-Biscaye, 1887–1913 (in pesetas) Year

For Family Members (A)

For Lodgers (B)

Total A+B

Mine Worker Wages Imputed to Housewifes (+ 14 years)

1887 1900 1913

130.422 140.480 315.886

32.436 75.136 79.296

162.858 215.616 395.182

180.960 209.040 277.200

Source: Pérez Fuentes, Relaciones de género.

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Without doubt, the case of Basque mining towns analysed here is exceptional, not only in terms of the sources of information, but also because of the socioeconomic homogeneousness of its members. But it may not be too far removed from what the real significance of women’s work in household economies would have been in many sectors of the urban population during the nineteenth and part of the twentieth centuries, in contrast to what can be deduced from an initial examination of censuses and population registers. Certainly, the difficulties involved in any estimation of domestic work are greater when referring to historical societies. The slow and belated development of the services market in Spain, together with the fact that it is impossible to determine the amount of time that was spent on household tasks in the past, make it inconceivable to attempt to evaluate this type of work. However, it must not be forgotten that the existence of a large domestic-service sector may be a reference with which to estimate its value or that, following Clark’s guidelines, charitable institutions occasionally provide detailed descriptions of the costs of maintaining the people they took in.46 Likewise, the press of the time and information from employers and workers may be of great assistance in reconstructing the real resources available to domestic workers of a certain place.

Notes 1. L. Tilly and J.W. Scott, Women, Work and Family, New York, 1978. 2. M. Berg, La era de las manufacturas (1700–1820), Barcelona, 1987; M. Berg, ‘What Difference Did Women’s Work Make to the Industrial Revolution?’, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993), 22–44; K. Blunden, Le travail et la vertu. Femmes au foyer: une mystification de la revolution industrielle, Paris, 1977; A. Burguière, ‘Pour une typologie des formes d’organisation domestique de l’Europe Moderne (XVIe–XIXe siècle)’, in Annales. Economies, Societés, Civilisations, 41:3 (1986), 639–56; C. Davison, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles, 1650–1950, London, 1982; M.L. Douglas, ‘Mujeres trabajadoras durante la revolución industrial (1780–1914)’, in M. Nash (ed.), Presencia y protagonismo. Aspectos de la historia de la mujer, Barcelona 1984, 91–120; M.T. Mc.Bride, ‘El largo camino a casa: el trabajo de la mujer y la industrialización’, in Nash, Presencia y protagonismo, 121–37; S. Narotzky, Trabajar en familia. Mujeres, hogares y talleres, Valencia, 1988; and M. Segalen, ‘La revolución industrial. Del proletariado al burgués’, in A. Burguière et al., Historia de la familia, Madrid, 1988, vol. 2, 387–425. 3. A. Soto, ‘Cuantificación de la mano de obra femenina (1860–1930)’, in La mujer en la historia de España (siglos XVI–XX), Madrid, 1983, 279–98. 4. Dirección General del Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico [henceforth as DGIGE], Censo de población en España en 31 de diciembre de 1877, Madrid, 1883; DGIGE, Censo de población de España en 31 de diciembre de 1887, Madrid, 1892; and DGIGE, Censo de población de España en 31 de diciembre, Madrid, 1903. 5. S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, 5 vols.; F. Le Play, Campesinos y pescadores del norte de España, Madrid, 1990 [1874].; J. Sallarés y Plá, El trabajo de las mujeres y los niños. Estudio sobre sus condiciones actuales, Sabadell, 1892; and P. Zancada, El trabajo de la mujer y el menor, Madrid, 1904. 6. Blunden, Le travail et la vertu; B. Hill, ‘Women, Work and the Census: A Problem for Historians of Women’, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993), 78–94. 7. A. Soto, Cuantificación de la mano de obra femenina.

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8. A. Espina, ‘La participación femenina en la actividad económica. El caso español’, in R. Conde (ed.), Familia y cambio social en España, Madrid, 1982, 283–351. 9. Espina, ‘La participación femenina’. 10. R.M. Capel, El trabajo y la educación de la mujer en España (1900–1930), Madrid, 1982. 11. M. Lawson and A. Witz, ‘Family Labour to Family Wage? The Cases of Women’s Labour in Nineteenth-century Coalmining’, Social History, 13:2 (1988), 152–74. 12. Reference is being made here to the first known nominative lists in the Basque Country, called the Police Registers. These are a highly valuable source of information as they reveal details about female activity in a society which still conserved the fundamental traits characterising pre-industrial Basque society throughout the previous centuries and in which the political and social structures of the Ancien Régime were still in force. 13. Registers were consulted from Abadiano, Morga, Mendata, Arteaga, San Salvador del Valle, Baracaldo, Durango, Zalla, Trucíos, Gordejuela, Elanchobe, Rentaría, Vergara, ArayaAsparrena and Olazagutía. 14. Although not always the case, the gradual disappearance of women’s acknowledged work largely depended on the classification that the head of the family gave to female work and the work of the other members of the family, and then on the criteria of the person responsible for compiling the municipal lists. These were therefore extremely complex change processes in which the urbanisation factor or the closeness to urban centres was a diffusion vector of the new practices and social values. 15. E. Camps, ‘Una visión de las economías familiares en el mundo fabril: el ejemplo de la ciudad de Sabadell’, unedited paper presented at the ‘II Workshop on Family Strategies and Family Economies’, University of the Basque Country, 1993. 16. D. Levine, Family Formation in the Age of Nascent Captitalism, New York, 1977; R. Wall, ‘La contribución de las mujeres casadas a la economía familiar bajo distintos sistemas familiares: algunos ejemplos de mediados del siglo XIX a partir del trabajo de Frederik Le Play’, in E. Camps and P. Pérez Fuentes (eds), Las economías familiares desde una perspectiva histórica, special issue of Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica, 12:2–3 (1995), 185–97. 17. R. Wall, ‘Trabajo, bienestar y familia: una ilustración de la economía familiar adaptativa’, in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson (eds), El mundo que hemos ganado. Estudios sobre población y estructura social, Madrid, 1990, 325–63. 18. C. Borderías, Entre líneas. Trabajo e identidad femenina en la España contemporánea. La Compañía Telefónica (1924–1980), Barcelona 1993; Camps, ‘Una visión de las economías familiares’; P. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir en las minas. Estrategias familiares y relaciones de género en la primera industrialización vizcaína (1877–1913), Bilbao, 1993; and in Camps and Pérez Fuentes, Las economías familiares: C. Sarasúa, ‘Las emigraciones temporales en una economía de minifundio: los Montes de Pas (1758–1888)’, 163–81; M. Llonch, ‘Inserción laboral de la inmigración y sistema de reclutamiento de la fábrica textil: Villasar de Dalt (1910–1945)’, 149–61; and L. Ferrer, ‘Notas sobre la familia y el trabajo de la mujer en la Catalunya central (ss. XVIII–XX)’, 199–232. 19. This perspective has recently been the frame of reference for several works of research. It has been promoted in two workshops carried out in the Pompeu Fabra University and the University of the Basque Country organised by Camps and Pérez Fuentes. The papers are compiled in Las economías familiares (note 15) Also M. Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares y Transición demográfica en Vizcaya (1825–1930), Ph.D. diss., Universidad el País Vasco, 1994; Pérez-Fuentes, Vivir y morir; P. Pérez Fuentes and M. Arbaiza, ‘Familia, matrimonio y reproducción social’, in M. González Portilla (coord), Bilbao: Ciudad y población, Bilbao 1994, Camps, 263–319; and ‘Una visión de las economías familiares’. 20. Levine, Family Formation; D. Levine, ‘Industrialization and the Proletarian Family in England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), 168–203; M. Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth-century Lancashire, Cambridge, 1971; Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and Family, L. Tilly, ‘Individual Lives and Family Strategies in the French Proletarian’, Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), 137–52; T.K. Hareven, Family Time and the Industrial Time: The Relationship Between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community, New York, 1982; and T.K. Hareven, ‘Historia de la familia y la complejidad del cambio social’, Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica, 13:1 (1995), 99–150.

Women in the Workplace in 19th- and 20th-Century Spain 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

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Camps, ‘Una visión de las economías familiares’. Ferrer, ‘Notas sobre la familia’. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir. This thesis is supported by Levine, ‘Industrialization and the Proletarian’. E. Camps, ‘La teoría del capital humano: una contrastación empírica. La España industrial en el siglo XIX’, Revista de Historia Económica, 7:2 (1990), 305–35. Soto, El trabajo industrial. Camps, ‘La teoría del capital humano’. Anderson, Family Structure; S.J. Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in XVIIth and XIXth Centuries, London, 1986; and D.S. Reher and E. Camps, ‘Las economías familiares dentro de un contexto histórico comparado’, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 55 (1991); for the case of Vizcaya, Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir. E. Camps, ‘Oferta de trabajo y niveles de bienestar. Análisis de aspectos cualitativos sobre su interdependencia’, paper presented at the XV Simposi d’anàlisi económica. Secció Història Económica, 1990. Soto, El trabajo industrial; and J. Rodríguez Lavandeira, El trabajo rural en España (1876–1936), Barcelona, 1991. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and Family. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 272–75. Camps, ‘Oferta de trabajo y niveles de bienestar’. M. Nash, ‘Trabajadoras y estrategias de sobrevivencia económica’, in El trabajo de las mujeres (siglos XVI–XX), Madrid, 1987. Borderías, Entre líneas. M. Segalen, ‘La revolución industrial: del proletariado al burgués’, in Burgière, Historia de la familia, vol. 2, 387–425. C. Carrasco, El trabajo doméstico y la reproducción social, Madrid, 1991. G.S. Becker, Tratado sobre la familia, Madrid, 1987. L. Goldschmidt-Clermont, Unpaid Work in the Household. A Review of Economic Evaluation Methods, Geneva, 1983; and L. Goldschmidt-Clermont, Economic Evaluations of Unpaid Household Work: Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, Geneva, 1987. C. Clark, ‘The Economics of Housework’, Institute of Statistics Bulletin, 20 (1958), 205–11. G. Chaput-Auquier, La valeur économique du travail ménager, Bruxelles, 1959. Once domestic production has been estimated by any of the methods used until now, allowance must also be made for the social values which make women’s salaries lower or which make their services cheaper. The interrelationship between social and economic factors is part of social reality and any search for a purely economic evaluation, without other interpretative aims, may turn out to be an abstract concept which is disconnected from the society it belongs to and in which the domestic activity takes place. For that reason, in addition to the problem of finding documentary sources, it is difficult to establish purely economic and universal models. Goldschmidt-Clermont, Economic Evaluations. Calculations carried out deducting the intermediary consumption of items such as soap, coal etc. Pérez Fuentes, Relaciones de género y estrategias familiares en la primera industrialización vasca: San Salvador del Valle (1877–1913), Ph.D. diss., Universidad del País Vasco, 1990. 272–75. Clark, ‘The Economics of Housework’.

CHAPTER 3

THE ‘HARDEST, MOST UNPLEASANT’ PROFESSION THE WORK OF LAUNDRESSES IN EIGHTEENTH-, NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPAIN Carmen Sarasúa

I know, and we all know places not too far from here, in this very peninsula, where women do the hardest and most gruelling work … where they work alongside men doing all the same activities and the very same work. There are still some trades in which our women seem to want to exceed the women of ancient civilisations. Among these trades, washing was almost exclusively a male profession. Is there any job which is harder, more unpleasant or more open to discomfort and danger? Well, this job is now done exclusively by women in the courts and the major cities … Where, then, is women’s disproportionate loathing of work? (G.M. de Jovellanos, Report Presented to the General Committee of Trade and Currency on the Free Exercise of the Arts, 1785)

In 1785, the Enlightened thinker Gaspar de Jovellanos was requested by the General Committee of Trade and Currency to report on the project to reform the laws regulating trade guilds which had ‘left work in few hands’ and, in particular, ‘almost entirely kept women from practising trades’. There was discussion about the possibility of enacting a law specifying the activities which women were allowed to do. Jovellanos was of the opinion that there was absolutely no need for any law because if women were unable to do a certain job due to lack of physical strength, they simply would not do it. Likewise, he drew attention to the fact that there were many physically demanding jobs regularly performed by women, not only among peasants, but ‘in the courts and in the major cities’. Laundresses were the best example he could find.

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In recent years, various papers have been published on the industrial and technological history of laundering, the organisation of work in this industry (and especially changes in the gender composition of the workforce) and its eventual transformation, with the mass commercialisation of automatic washing machines after the Second World War, into an activity carried out by housewives as part of their unpaid housework.1 In various European countries there are local museums dedicated to the history of this trade, which was mainly performed in rural areas near the major cities.2 Halfway between ethnography and industrial archaeology, these museums have reconstructed the work processes, conserved the tools and utensils and gathered together photographs and posters, all of which are displayed in exhibitions and publications.3 In Spain, however, the social, economic and technological history of this activity is practically unknown: there have been no studies on laundries or on washing as an industrial activity except for Mercedes Tatjer’s recent article on laundries in the city of Barcelona.4 Such a void cannot be explained by the fact that the activity involved few workers. Laundry work was one of the main activities in the nineteenth century: in England and Wales it was the eleventh occupation by number of workers according to the census of 1861 with 167,607 workers, a figure which had reached 205,015 workers by 1901.5 It should also be noted that the official censuses and figures only registered a certain proportion of these workers, since, just as with other activities done by women, many others were registered as working ‘at home’, or doing other activities.6 However, in addition to the number of female workers employed, this activity is significant for two other reasons. First, washing clothes was a vital source of income for poor families (a large proportion of which were headed by women) and it is therefore key to understanding rural and urban subsistence economies. What is more, it provides an exceptional opportunity to study the origins of the service sector and its development alongside the growth of the population and cities, changes in the purchasing of garments, in hygiene and in the standard of living of the middle classes. Our lack of knowledge of this and other occupations should be considered to be the result of the general backwardness of labour history in Spain, especially in terms of economic history, which has concentrated on studying and measuring (preferably in mathematical terms) the product, without any interest in the producers (in the organisation of work, institutional involvement, salaries, the impact of technological change, training systems, unemployment). It is also the result, fundamentally, of the massive lack of information about the work carried out by women, who were still defined as jobless or, at best, secondary workers. This chapter is simply intended to be an introduction to the study of this profession and this ‘industry’. It intends to trace the main lines of its historical transformation, emphasising two issues: the way in which it was transformed after successive technological changes; and the industry’s social evolution, from an almost exclusively female wage-earning activity to an industrial, wage-earning activity, and later an unpaid, domestic activity.

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The Washing Process and Washing Technique The washing process began by going to the houses to collect the clothes. Particularly in the cities where the laundries collected clothes from many houses, this involved counting the garments (which the women or maids of the family would have marked to avoid them getting lost), making lists etc. The clothes then had to be taken to the river or the laundry in huge sacks or in bundles which were carried either on the workers’ backs or on their heads. Laundresses from villages, who collected and washed clothes from nearby cities as a family business of some importance, could at this stage count on the participation of the men, who drove covered carriages and waited in the street while the women went up and down to the flats with the clothes. In any case, transporting the clothes to the place where they were washed sometimes required long journeys carrying extremely heavy loads, particularly in villages. The washing process had several different phases, which varied greatly. For further information, we can compare two sources: the theoretical description in the Enciclopedia Espasa of 1916, and the information provided by the laundresses of a village in Alicante (South East of Spain) who gave a practical description of how this was done until a few decades ago.7 According to the Enciclopedia Espasa, ‘washing a large quantity of clothes requires the use of industrial processes’. It is possible to distinguish eight different stages, the first three of which are as follows: 1: Separating the different clothes into groups according to how big and how dirty they were. 2: Soaking the clothes in running water to dissolve any soluble material.8 3: Bleaching the clothes, the objective of which was to wash them in alkaline bleach of soda, potassium or vegetable ash at 100 °C degrees in order to dissolve the grease and stains.9 The bleaching process, by means of which ‘grease was dissolved’, was the main operation: the bleach is prepared in a copper cauldron on a stove, using carbonate of soda and potassium or vegetable ashes dissolved in water […] the clothes are placed in wooden tubs with a hole near the bottom, endeavouring to place the dirtiest clothes at the bottom and the least dirty at the top. When the bleach boils, it is released through a tap in the bottom of the cauldron, collected in buckets and poured over the clothes in the tub. The alkaline liquid passes through the clothes and goes through the lower orifice to a wooden or iron channel which takes it back to the cauldron, where it is heated once again. Sometimes the bleach is not prepared separately and instead, once the clothes have been placed in the tub they are covered with a piece of closely-woven cloth. The washing salts are then placed on top of this cloth and boiling water is poured over them.10

In a home economics manual from the end of the nineteenth-century, the explanation given is somewhat simpler: The principles on which clothes laundering are based are as follows: the ashes, obtained from burning charcoal, contain the soda and potassium, which when

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mixed with water produce bleach. The greasy substances which come from human dirt cannot be dissolved in cold water, but they can be dissolved in boiling water and ashes […] The normal method for washing clothes consists of placing the dirty clothes in a large bucket and giving them a light wash in cold water. The clothes are then completely covered with a coarse cloth, on top of which the ashes are placed. The bucket has a hole in the bottom to allow the boiling water, which is carefully poured over the ashes, to pass through. When the ashes have fully soaked into the clothes, which can easily be seen by the residue, the clothes are dried and then washed using cold water and hard soap in order to remove the grease which comes from the bleach.11

Just like most rural laundresses, the women from Fenollar and Fontcalent, in Alicante, washed the clothes in washtubs in their houses and went to the river or to the washing place, where there was only cold water, to rinse the clothes. Most of the dirt was removed in these washtubs and the women scrubbed the clothes on flat stones or sinks […] The water was transported from the wells or irrigation channels in large jugs with the aid of a barrow and at times this work was done by children (until the end of 1975, running water was not available in our area) […]. A copper cauldron was placed on the stove in the kitchen at home with water, caustic soda and ash. The white clothes, which made up the majority of the washing, were placed next to the cauldron at a slighter higher level. They were placed in a large clay washbowl called a ‘cossi’ which had a hole in the lower part of one side, through which a cane was inserted (which had been hollowed out earlier with a red-hot iron) which led to the cauldron. The boiling water was taken out of the cauldron using a ladle and was poured into the cossi onto the clothes. The water then went back into the cauldron through the cane. This operation was repeated many times for several hours.12

The substances used to remove the grease during the washing process were made of materials of vegetable origin which contained soda or potassium. The properties of plants such as Russian thistle had been well-known for many years and their use in washing clothes explained the fact that this and other types of plants were grown as industrial products.13 The problem with using them was that, since they had to be used in the form of ash in order to be easily dissolved in water, many of them stained the clothes. This problem was solved by replacing soda ash with soap, whose basic ingredients consisted of oil and soda, which was generally extracted from Russian thistle. Soap had been made from time immemorial, but it was too expensive for washerwomen to use.14 This explains the interest shown in finding new formulas for making cheaper soap. In the Semanario de Agricultura y Artes dirigido a los Párrocos (Weekly Magazine of Agriculture and the Arts for Parish Priests) published in Madrid from 1798 to 1808, various chemical experiments were published which were related to the production of soap. These were common formulas during the nineteenth century in all the treatises and manuals on home economics. In the formulas used by women to make home-made soap (until the 1950s), oil was replaced by any other type of fat, such as the remains of animal and vegetable fat used during cooking. Little by little small producers appeared who specialised in producing soap, which would later be permanently replaced by industrial detergents.15

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Once the clothes had been bleached, there were still five final stages in the laundering process: 4: Soaping, which eliminated the yellow hue of the clothes after bleaching. This yellow tinge came as a result of using bleaches which contained many impurities.16 5: Exposing the clothes to the sun in the meadows in order to remove any coloured particles which still remained after the previous stages. 6: Rinsing, which removed the soluble soap with which the clothes were impregnated.17 7: Wringing the clothes to remove most of the water in the fabric. 8: Draining or sunning, which evaporated the rest of the water and left the clothes perfectly dry. The clothes could be exposed to the sun up to two times: first, when the clothes were full of soap to increase its effect; and once the clothes had been rinsed, to dry them and whiten them, either horizontally, in the fields, rocks by the river or on bushes, taking care not to dirty the clothes again, or vertically, by hanging the clothes on ropes.18 Since ancient times, people had been aware of the sun’s bleaching properties for preparing and whitening linen. In the book entitled Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales by Gonzalo Correas (1627), there are two related proverbs: ‘Washed in cloudy conditions, dried with smoke, not washed at all’ and ‘Water on water neither cures nor cleans’. The author himself explains their meaning: ‘Soap and sun are necessary to treat and whiten the cloth and the fabric; they need to be soaked and left in the sun, then soaked again and be left in the sun again’.19 As early as the nineteenth century, doctors and hygienists confirmed this ancient belief on discovering the antiseptic properties of the sun. On finishing the washing process carried out at home, the clothes were taken to the washhouse in barrows to be rinsed […] the women would come to an agreement and go in a group, since the washhouse did not open until all the women were present. The washhouse was privately run; it was probably built at the end of the nineteenth century […] it is around fifteen metres long and five metres wide with a sloping roof. Inside, the water was contained in three elongated troughs. The first one was used to rinse white washing; the second for coloured washing and the third for the darkest coloured washing […]. All the women paid a fee for using the washhouse and the amount depended on the quantity of clothes that they took […]. To whiten the washing even more, indigo or blueing was used, which was dissolved in the water used for the final rinse. A lot of the clothes were starched so that that they were ‘stiff ’, in accordance with the fashion of the time. Starch was added to boiling water and then filtered […].20

The tools and utensils that the laundresses used were: water, soap and bleach; paddles or sticks for beating the clothes, bristle brushes for scrubbing, containers for transporting the clothes (wicker or straw baskets), and receptacles used for bleaching (troughs or bowls made of wood or zinc). For the laundresses who washed in rivers, the implements which helped them find

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a good position on the river bank were also essential, such as boxes to kneel on and washboards made of corrugated wood so that the washing did not slide off, or tiles. Some washerwomen used barrows or donkeys to get to the river.

Washerwomen in Rural Areas Washing clothes was one of the jobs peasant women did as part of their everyday housework (the production of goods and services for household consumption), along with cooking and washing up, cleaning the house, looking after children, fetching water, mending clothes etc. However, it was also a paid job (performed exclusively by women) in large rural towns where there were institutions which contracted out their washing (convents, hospitals, orphanages, prisons) and families which, in addition to having servants and maids working in their houses, contracted out whichever services they required. Of all the factors that conditioned the washerwomen’s work, the main one was access to running water. Even in the 1960s, there were still many rural areas in Spain which did not have a main water supply. This explains how collecting and transporting water for various purposes (washing, washing up, cooking, personal hygiene, cleaning the house, giving water to livestock) was one of the most time-consuming tasks, due to the number of times water had to be collected and due to the fact that the springs were often far away, above all in Mediterranean areas of Spain. The women and children, usually girls, were responsible for fetching water, with the exception of that used for watering animals, for which both the women and men were responsible. Washerwomen from small villages washed in rivers, ponds, pools or springs and often had to travel long distances. The Diccionario geográfico estadístico de España y Ultramar published between 1844 and 1849 by Pascual Madoz, contained a great many references to washing places in rural towns and villages. Despite the fact that washhouses had been built in certain large towns and villages, usually in the area where horse troughs were found, in the vast majority of places there was no spring in or near the village. For instance, in the province of Valladolid, two and a half leguas (1 legua equals 5.55 kilometres) from Medina del Campo, there was a lake called La Lavandera (The Laundress). ‘It was round and in winter had a radius of more than 1,500 feet, which was reduced to half that size during the very hot months […] a lot of bulrushes grows there, there are few fish and the water […] is only used for doing the washing of the neighbouring villages’. In Liesa, three leagues from Huesca, there was a stream whose ‘water is only used for washing’; in Casas de Millán (Cáceres), ‘a spring called ‘el Chorro Blanco’, half a league from the village, is used as a washing place by the women’. In arid Spain, the need for plenty of water for washing meant carrying the clothes large distances to get to the river, lake or well. The village of Lillo, in Toledo, ‘takes its drinking water from two wells quite far away, because to all extents and purposes it resembles a village of La Mancha in terms of how dry

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the land is and because there are no trees and no water’. In Llano, eight leagues from Valladolid, there is ‘a spring which, because it is so far from the village, is only used for washing’. In addition to washing clothes, rural women also treated linen in rivers and ponds, i.e. prepared the linen for spinning and weaving, and whitened it after weaving. In Cobdar (Almería), ‘there is also a small, yet constant stream, which occasionally floods: the women use its water to treat a lot of linen’. There were many other domestic activities, such as washing pots and cooking utensils: in Laluenga, three leagues from Barbastro, in Huesca, there were ‘various wells which can be used by the inhabitants of the village. One in particular has an abundant supply of good quality water and to draw the water there are steps which go right down to the bottom, where there are two more steps used for washing clothes and pots’. There were conflicts between the women who used the springs and the men who took their livestock there for watering. In Lagartera (Toledo), ‘the [water]of the spring is also adulterated by the women who wash clothes near the spout, which is very near the surface and easily gets soaked in soapy water’. In many cases, the fact that these two uses were incompatible led to the construction of washhouses, which regulated the use of water: in Navas del Madroño (Cáceres), ‘there is a large spring half a league from Garrovillas, with a spout which flows into a long trough made of ashlars which is large enough for horses to drink from; this trough flows into another round container where up to forty women at a time can wash’. In Lorca (Murcia): ‘There is also another one called Fuente de Oro with seventeen spouts, the water of which is collected in a place where horses from the surrounding area drink. The water then flows into a large covered washhouse, with enough space for up to a hundred women, without needing to enter the water to wash the clothes’. The design of rural washhouses depended on whether or not it rained a lot, in which case the washhouses were covered. For example, in Azpeitia (Guipúzcoa), ‘there is one spring with four spouts […] a large overflow which supplied water to the washhouse […] the place set aside for the washerwomen is covered by a tiled roof supported by stone columns’; in Ledanca, seven leagues from Guadalajara, there was not only ‘a spring providing good quality water from four spouts’, but also ‘a good washhouse with a roof ’.21 Covered washhouses were the first technological revolution of washing and changed the way in which washing was done. They completely changed the working posture of the washerwomen, who worked upright instead of kneeling down and bending over the river bank. Since they no longer had to wade into the river to rinse the clothes in deeper water, to a large extent they avoided getting soaked during the washing process, which also meant that they avoided many of the illnesses caused by constantly being wet. Although washhouses were not built with the comfort of the washerwomen in mind, but rather to regulate the use of water and even, as we shall see later, due to reasons of public morality, they did represent an extremely important improvement in washerwomen’s working conditions.

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The Transition: Rural Washerwomen Who Did Washing from the Cities At least from the eighteenth century onwards, the washing of middle– and upper-class families from cities all around Europe was done by women from nearby villages. In France, laundresses from Fresnes did the washing of Paris and women from Craponne did the washing of Lyon. In Spain, at least from the eighteenth century onwards, there were villages whose womenfolk did this job and these villages grew as a result of the laundry business. The authors of Madoz’s Diccionario bore witness to this activity in four cities, three of which were in the north: León, El Ferrol and Oviedo followed exactly the same pattern, with washerwomen travelling to the towns either on foot or on horseback, together with other men and women who sold other goods and services in the city. The washing of people who lived in León was done in Ferral, one league away. ‘The inhabitants, and in particular the women, did the washing of the capital. They made regular money from this, as they did from selling milk from their cows and goats’. In El Ferrol, in the province of La Coruña, washing was done by women from Santa Marina de Sillobre. ‘Some women bake bread and others wash clothes from Ferrol, where, as in the capital of the region (Pontedeume), they sell bread’. In Oviedo, the washerwomen came from Santa María del Naranco: ‘in addition to agriculture, which is done by men, the proximity of the city of Oviedo encourages the women to work as washerwomen and bakers’.22 The fourth town mentioned in the Diccionario as a washing town was San Ginés de Agudells de Horta, which is nowadays the Horta neighbourhood of Barcelona. This town’s industry consisted of ‘a bakery which supplied the village and also served a lot of orders to Barcelona, tanning factories, factories making glue, cotton and linen fabric. However, the most productive activity is washing the clothes of a large number of inhabitants of the capital, a job which is done by women’.23 In other cities, washing clothes was also the specialisation of women from nearby villages. A century earlier, in Madrid, Of the 180 inhabitants of Hortaleza and Canillas in the mid-eighteenth century, no fewer than one hundred worked in the local ‘industry’: the women washed the dirty washing of the Court and the men fetched and carried it with the help of 131 horses and donkeys (115 of these were small donkeys). However, since the aforementioned villages were part of the manor, each washerwoman had to pay the lord 40 reals (4 reals equal 1 peseta) to use the washhouse.24

In the city of Santander, the women of Cueto and Marina went to collect the washing, but women from villages much further away also worked as washerwomen for inhabitants of the city.25 Women from La Canyada del Fenollar and Fontcalent did the washing for the city of Alicante and their story has recently been reconstructed orally: They went to Alicante every Monday in carts which were usually driven by the women themselves […] the washerwomen came together in groups around the

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carts and those who could pay more travelled on the carts and those who could not walked alongside and only paid a small amount for transporting the washing on the return journey; some women even walked back with their baskets on the their heads to save a few cents […]. Some made the most of the journey and took eggs to sell, or farmyard animals that people had asked for. The carts were covered with a tarpaulin […]. The first stop was at a bakery in Los Ángeles, on the road leading into Alicante. There, they bought loaves of fresh bread […]. The second and final stop was at an inn […] in front of what is now the main market of Alicante and there, they ate the bread with cold meat or something savoury […] they went to the houses of their various customers to collect the dirty washing […]. The washing was returned to its owners the following Friday and the women organised the trip in the same way as they organised the collection […]. To deliver the washing, they carried baskets on their heads, placed on pads made of cloth which they made themselves…The washerwomen were paid when they delivered the clean washing and until the 1940s, it cost 1 real (25 cents) per item […]. The customers themselves brought new customers by word of mouth [and] at times they requested [their] help to do certain household tasks, such as helping to prepare special meals. Such work represented a small increase in their normal income.26

In coastal areas near ports, peasant women did the washing for ships as well as for people in the cities. The washhouse in the parish of Jove, near the port of El Musel in Gijón, was used until recently: ‘Until not so many years ago, all the women of the area washed there and some of them did the washing for the ships docked in the port. In order to finish their work on time, it was not unusual to see women washing during the night’.27

City Laundresses Just like in rural areas, in the cities there were three different situations in which women washed clothes: (1) women who did the washing of their family as part of their housework; (2) maids who did the washing, along with other paid housework, for the family they worked for; and (3) professional laundresses, who collected and delivered the washing of families or institutions every week. These three types of laundresses sometimes came together in public laundries, whereas only maids or women who washed for their families worked in private laundries (in the houses). What made the situation of these laundresses different was the fact that their job was a fully recognised trade and in small towns the laundries themselves were no longer simply municipal buildings which could be used for free.28 The eagerness of town councils to obtain income from taxes and fees and to fund water channelling projects increasingly led them to rent out the washhouses to private companies, which in turn charged for their use. Finally, there were privately constructed and privately managed laundries. Private laundries existed alongside public laundries, which were both publicly and privately managed, in almost all cities. For the city of Granada, Madoz’s Diccionario makes reference to public laundries:

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The only one which merits such a name is the one at Fuente Nueva, next to the Triunfo, covered in 1843 with a gallery to provide shelter for the women who go there. Since almost all the houses have a supply of water; because water channels run all through the city and since the two rivers Genil and Darro are so close; public laundries are not urgently required by the inhabitants. However, in addition to this laundry at Fuente Nueva, there are other private laundries: there is Zafra, Las Tablas, Carrera del Darro, where there are remnants of some magnificent Arabic baths, Genil and Méndez. The most popular of these, except for the rivers, are the ones at Fuenta Nueva and Las Tablas.

In the city of Jaén, no mention is made of private laundries: an excellent supply of water is provided by various streams […] at the exit of Sta. Ana […] when there is a surplus, water overflows into an open laundry situated along the road where women from the neighbouring areas come to do their washing […] [the poplars] on the promenade are enormous and provide shade and shelter for the washerwomen who meet in great numbers.

In Valladolid: there are four public laundries. Three of these use spring water and the other takes water from the River Esgueva, situated in the centre of the town. The others are also within the city walls. They are leased to a single contractor for 1,550 reals per year. In addition, there are three private laundries, which also use spring water. Two of these are situated outside the town and one inside.29

In Madrid, washing in the river was controlled and privatised from the mid-eighteenth century onwards by means of business deals which eventually led to the creation of small companies.30 In 1749, the town council, which from time immemorial had charged a fee for use of the water and for access to the river banks, reorganised this service, buying the places from those who had obtained rights through use and leasing them out on a yearly basis. Thus, a new type of municipal tax was created called ‘laundries, washing places and bathing’, described in the municipal Tax Office as simply the ‘wash bench sector’ in reference to the wooden boxes the washerwomen used to kneel on. In 1750, ‘on the river bank from Nuestra Señora del Puerto to La Huerta de los Cipreses’ there were 1,142 standard washing places and 24 small washing places, ‘with their respective washing lines’. Of these, 1,068 standard washing places and 24 small washing places obtained licences on contracting the lease by deed. They had to pay ‘the amount for one month, a third of a year or half a year in advance, by means of a deposit’. However, not all the licenses actually had to be paid for: there were only 586 ‘paid washing places at two maradevis each per day’, while the licences for 482 washing places ‘were granted for free because of reasons contained in the deeds’. In addition, there were ‘seventy-four washing places whose licences were given free of charge to various poor people who had very little to eat’.31 In 1753, 887 washing places leased to 27 tenants were listed by the sector’s administrator in the accounts presented to the Treasury of the town

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council; each of them ‘has a place leased to them on the aforementioned River Bank for Washing Clothes, for one year’, washing places whose cost, ‘at 2 mrs. each per day, minus 75 days’ holiday, comes to a yearly total of’ an amount of reals and maravedís (34 maravedís equal 1 real) which the leaseholder had to pay to the city council monthly (‘one month in advance’) or biannually, as stated in the leasing contract which each of them signed before a notary.32 Table 3.1 Leaseholders With Washing Places Along the River Manzanares. Madrid, 1753 (in reals ‘r’ and maravedís ‘m’) Leaseholders

Washing Annual Places cost

Monthly Instalment Payable

1. Antonio Sánchez 2. Juan López 3. Joseph López 4. Francisco García del Carril 5. Ángel Pérez 6. Manuela Fernández 7. Manuel González Agüero 8. Pedro Martínez 9. Francisco de Medicis 10. Juan Jadraque 11. Francisco de la Vega 12. Manuela Fernández 13. Juan Díaz de Andrade 14. Antonio Díaz de Andrada 15. Feliz Fernández 16. Antonio García 17. Ignacio Morera 18. Juana Lucatona 19. Juan Antonio López 20. Alphonso Cabo 21. Alonso Terradas 22. Manuela Herrero 23. Feliciana Fernández 24. Ignacio Taboada 25. Antonio García 26. Sebastiana Rodríguez 27. Juan de Lemus

139 68 48 40 40 40 38 37 36 35 30 30 30 30 24 24 24 22 22 20 20 19 18 15 13 13 12

1,188 r 17 m (6 months) 96 r 22 m 469 r 14 m(6 months) 56 r 11 m 341 r 6 m (6 months) 341 r (6 months) 324 r 4 m (6 months) 315 r 22 m (6 months) 51 r 49 r 26 m 42 r 22 m 255 r 30 m (6 months) 255 r 30 m (6 months) 42 r 17 m 204 r 24 m (6 months) 34 r 2 m 204 r 24 m (6 months) 31 r 8 m 31 r 8 m 170 r 17 m (6 months) 28 r 14 m 162 r (6 months) 25 r 21 r 12 m 18 r 17 m 18 r 17 m 102 r 12 m (6 months)

2,371 r 1,160 r 939 r 28 m 682 r 682 r 12 m 682 r 648 r 8 m 631 r 6 m 614 r 597 r 511 r 26 m 511 r 26 m 511 r 26 m 511 r 409 r 14 m 409 r 14 m 409 r 14 m 375 r 375 r 341 r 341 r 6 m 342 r 300 r 255 r 30 m 222 r 222 r 204 r 24 m

Table 3.1 shows that in the River Manzanares in Madrid, there were 887 washing places leased by the city council to private individuals, which were occupied every working day of the year (calculated to be around 290 days) and for which they paid the city council 1 real, 40 maradevís per place per month. There were 27 leaseholders, which meant that the business was in relatively few hands. There were 10 leaseholders who had more than the average number of washing places (33 places per leaseholder) and one with 16 percent of all the washing places. Among the 27 leaseholders, there were only 7 women (26 percent of the total), who leased 142 washing places

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between them, or 16 percent of the total number of places. This meant that despite the fact that all the workers were women, and that some of them managed to become leaseholders and sign contracts with the city council, they only controlled a very small percentage of the business. Men, on the other hand, who did not work in the laundry trade, became ‘businessmen’ in the sector, probably due to the fact that they had the necessary relations and contacts to get the contracts and above all because they had the capital to pay the deposit on the lease. This situation became more pronounced as time went by because the amount of capital available increased the differences between the laundries. The leaseholders who built huts where the washing could be dried on rainy days and where the women could eat and organise the washing, those who bought soap and bleach in large amounts to sell to the washerwomen etc., attracted more laundresses and therefore obtained higher profits. Until the mid-nineteenth century, it would appear that the centre of the Madrid laundry industry was still based around the River Manzanares: ‘Despite its lack of water, this river is of great use to Madrid to fertilise a large part of its municipal area, for washing clothes, for general bathing in summer and to supply the canal […]. Its water is fine and of good quality, but it is not fit for drinking because it is used for washing’.33 A few years after this statement by Mesonero Romanos, it was confirmed that, despite water shortages, [the River Manzanares] is of great use to Madrid since it is used as a general washing place, for dying, for tanning, for endless bathing in summer and many other uses. The course of the river is about 10 leagues and black poplars and other bushes grow on both banks, providing shade and a somewhat pleasant atmosphere. There are also a great many small cabins which washerwomen use to keep the washing and for other uses […], especially on the left bank, there are various cabins used as accommodation for the leaseholders of the laundries and as shops selling food and wine. This is the last part of the picturesque river banks of the River Manzanares, which begin before the Toledo Bridge with vast amounts of washing blowing in the wind, hanging on washing lines erected with ropes and posts. All along this section of the river there are various islets, on most of which, like on the rest of the banks, there are vast numbers of women doing the awful, incomparable task of washing: for that reason there is a great deal of activity in this place at all times.34

Practically every traveller and writer who passed through Madrid during the nineteenth century described this scene because the River Manzanares, to the south of the city, had to be crossed on the way to La Mancha and Andalusia and was close to the royal palace. In addition, the sight of these hundreds of women bent over the banks of the river and of the washing hung out to dry in the sun was ‘picturesque’, the type of impression that the romantic writers were in search of.35 Baron Charles Davillier, travelling in Madrid in the early 1860s, thus described the ‘water nymphs of the River Manzanares’:

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sturdy Galician women, whom one often meets when going up or down the Cuesta de la Vega balancing an enormous bundle of white clothes on their heads and another under each arm. These washerwomen dig holes in the sand, in which they retain as much water as they can from the river’s miserly flow. These washerwomen occupy great stretches, from the Toledo Bridge to the bridge at the Casa de Campo, of the River Manzanares, which splits into various irrigation channels and is metamorphosed into soapy water. The riverbed accommodates many cane huts which are used to protect the washerwomen from the sun’s rays. There are also long parallel rows of poles on which the underwear of Madrid is hung out to dry.36

In 1842, there were 75 laundries among the ‘industrial and commercial establishments of each of the neighbourhoods on the outskirts of this city’.37 Two decades later, in 1863, Barcelona had 45 laundries and this number increased to 82 in 1896, in addition to 64 laundries in the surrounding villages.38 The leasing or property of laundries must have been considered a business with good prospects because in 1846, there was an attempt to form a shareholding company entitled Compañía de baños y lavaderos públicos de Madrid (The Public Bathing and Laundry Company of Madrid), with a nominal capital of 12 million reals. The following year, in 1847, another company, El Armiño, was formed with a capital of 8 million reals. Its objective was to ‘set up public laundries’.39 However, just like other companies at that time, they were unable to raise such amounts of capital. The growing number of laundries in the cities was due to the increased demand for their services, not only from individual customers, but also from institutions, particularly hospitals and prisons. Other institutions organised their own laundry services and the work was done by their own staff or by inmates. Since many of the welfare institutions were segregated, they were some of the only places where we can find examples of men working as launderers prior to the appearance of industrial laundries in the twentieth century. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, there were three main hospitals in Madrid and various shelters and hospices. The Hospital General de Atocha, with 1,526 beds, had 369 employees, with ‘2 launderers in charge of doing the washing’ and 5 assistant launderers. The Hospital de San Juan de Dios, with 253 beds, made no mention of laundresses among its 19 employees, whereas the Hospital de Incurables de Jesús Nazareño, founded by Carlos IV in 1803, with 109 beds in 1847, had ‘three washerwomen taken in from the first-aid post’. There was also the Hospice of San Fernando, which provided accommodation for 453 poor women and 117 girls. Work was found for them in the workshops (doing knitting, making gloves, embroidering, removing burls from wool and thread etc.), as servants in private residences (there were 42 in 1846) or as we have seen, as washerwomen in hospitals.40 Unlike the hospitals, many hospices and shelters, especially those for women, did not contract washerwomen. Since forced labour was the preferred means by which the poor were supposed to be taught a sense of morality, the washing was done by the women staying there. In the Inclusa y Colegio de la Paz in Mesón de Paredes street, which was run by the religious

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order the Hermanas de la Caridad, there was a laundry where one nun worked ‘with four women to assist her, who were each given one real extra’ in addition to a monthly salary of 60 reals, food and ‘soap to do the washing’. In the Colegio de Niñas de la Paz, which took in abandoned girls after they had left the Inclusa at the age of seven, there were 145 girls in 1846 and it was also run by the Hermanas de la Caridad: ‘so that they can learn the financial administration of a home. Since they are not allowed, unlike in the past, to go into service to do this, every week they take turns working in the kitchen, the laundry, cleaning the house, warehouse and infirmary, with 12 girls doing each of these tasks every day’. In neither of these two poorhouses was washing included in their expenses and this was done by the residents. However, the Colegio de Desamparados, which took in children from the Inclusa from seven to thirteen years old and which had 276 children in 1846, did not have any washerwomen among its staff (although one woman was in charge of the clothes and there were four seamstresses) and it may well have contracted outside laundries to wash the residents’ and the workers’ clothes: ‘the interns, the inspector, the four security guards, the verger, the organist, the orderly, the kitchen hands and the porter are entitled to food and clean washing’. In other words, food and washing their clothes were considered part of the wage they received.

The Living and Working Conditions of Washerwomen Washing clothes is without doubt the most awful job for a woman. It is done outside in all weathers, it requires considerable effort, there are fixed deadlines and it is related to a large number of illnesses due to the effect of the water, which goes up to their knees, due to their posture because they spend all day bent over, and due to the risk of catching infections if the clothes come from patients with infectious diseases.41 Work has finished on a public abattoir and a public laundry which shall be inaugurated today and whose importance should not be overestimated […]. The inauguration of these buildings brings great satisfaction at having performed an important duty which could be postponed no longer; namely that of providing this city with a washing place to end the living hell endured by the women of Utiel.42

Before it was mechanised, washing was one of the most terrible jobs and all the testimonies of the time state the same reasons for this. The washerwomen spent practically their entire long working hours soaking wet, which caused bronco-pulmonary illnesses (ranging from colds to pneumonia, rheumatism and bronchitis) and skin complaints: their hands were raw, chapped and often bled, and the constant cold and damp caused chilblains.43 What is more, washerwomen worked outside in summer and also in winter when the water was freezing cold. This was unavoidable as washing also had to be done during the winter months and because in many parts of Spain water was only available in large quantities during the wettest and coldest

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seasons.44 Also, a considerable part of the washerwomen’s work involved moving and carrying the washing, firstly when it was dirty and afterwards when it was clean. The enormous weight of soaking wet sheets, blankets, bedspreads and towels (which weighed four times their dry weight) which had to be repeatedly submerged in water, soaped, wrung dry and hung out, made this, alongside farm work, the most physically demanding job done by women. Unlike jobs carried out by men, the fact that washerwomen’s work was extremely hard did not mean that they were better paid or that society valued their work more highly. On the contrary, doing a job which required great physical effort was a social handicap because it was not compatible with the reserve, modesty and fragility attributed by society of the female sex.45 In many rural areas, the municipal by-laws prohibited women from washing in the village springs, not only because these were reserved for watering animals, but also to avoid the supposedly immoral spectacle of seeing women with their clothes pulled up above their knees or with bare arms. This was even one of the reasons for building laundries, which were closed places where the women could work without losing their composure. According to the informant of Madoz’s Diccionario, in Loja (Granada), ‘Despite the fact that there is abundant, good quality water in this area, and that there are many textile mills, Loja lacks washing places to wash wool and general white washing. In order to do this job, the women have to go to the streams, which is detrimental to their health as well as their decency’.46 In the Cordovan village of Rute, of the forty-seven fines imposed by the Mayor in 1851, 1852 and 1853, fourteen were given to women and five of these were for doing washing: Josefa de Campos was fined 2 reals ‘for being found doing the washing in the animals’ drinking trough, which is a direct infringement of the law regarding this matter’ (18 January 1852); Antonia León was fined 2 reals ‘because her daughter was found doing the washing with her petticoat hitched up, thus infringing the law on this matter’ (18 January 1852); María Royo was fined 2 reals ‘because her daughter was found doing the washing in the basin of the El Moral fountain’ (4 July 1852); Juana María Sánchez Cubero was fined 8 reals ‘for washing in the fountain called El Moral’ (11 July 1852); and on the following day ‘Josefa García was given a fine of 80 reals for washing in the El Moral fountain, and since she was insolvent, on the very same day she was sent to prison for 4 days instead’ (12 July 1852). This extremely heavy fine (the others ranged between 2 and 10 reals) was one of only two which were replaced with a prison sentence and puts Josefa García on the same level as Telesforo Herrero, who was also given a fine of 80 reals ‘for wandering around and causing a commotion late at night’ (21 July 1852).47 The money to pay these fines and all the expenses related to their work (soap, bleach, firewood, shovels and washbowls and the rent to pay for the laundry in the cities) had to be taken from washerwomen’s extremely low salaries. These salaries were totally unrelated to the physical effort or the difficulty of the job, and were mainly determined by what was considered to

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be a ‘day’s pay for a woman’. It is very difficult to calculate washerwomen’s salaries because they were paid per item of washing and even if the rate for each item were known, it is impossible to know how many customers they may have had, the amount of washing each customer gave them, and whether or not they charged the going rate.48 However, in 1884, seven representatives of workers from Valencia informed the Commission for Social Reforms that the ‘estimated expenses of a single worker’ amounted to 12 pesetas 32 centimes per week.49 Of this sum, 8.40 was spent on food, 1.31 on accommodation, 0.35 on taxes, 1.17 on tobacco, leisure and entertainment and 1.09 on personal hygiene, which included washing and ironing (Table 3.2). Table 3.2 Weekly Personal Hygiene Expenses of a Single Male Worker, Valencia 1884 Service

Item

Price (pesetas)

Washing

One shirt One vest One pair of underpants One pair of socks One neckerchief One sheet One towel One shirt (badly ironed)

0.12 0.09 0.09 0.03 0.03 0.18 0.06 0.12 0.12 0.25

Ironing Cleaning the room Shaving

Source: RS, vol. III, 463–7.

It cost this ‘single worker’ 60 centimes per week to have his washing done, half of what he spent on ‘tobacco, leisure and entertainment’ (which was a very conservative estimate given the fact that it did not include a single glass of wine in a tavern).50 How many items would a washerwoman have to wash each week to earn what the Commission for Social Reforms calculated to be the minimum expenses (12.32 pesetas) of a worker? It should also be taken into account that from however much they earned, washerwomen had to deduct what they spent on soap, bleach, fuel to heat the water and whatever they paid the owner of the washing place. Despite the terrible rate of pay, the money earned from washing was probably of fundamental importance to the washerwomen’s families. In 1886, Enrique Naranjo de la Garza, chief engineer of the mines in Linares (Jaén), was requested by the Commission for Social Reforms to report on the miners’ living conditions. When asked question XIV about ‘Women’s Work’, he replied: ‘Workers’ wives also do washing, because since there is a large number of workers, there is a lot of washing to be done; they also do washing and ironing for the well-to-do houses and earn between 1 peseta and 1.50 pesetas a full day’s work’.51 This income was even more important when it was the family’s only source of income and since washing was one of the only jobs that women could do, it allowed thousands of women to survive and support their families. The best

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description of the working and living conditions of the washerwomen of the River Manzanares comes from Arturo Barea, whose novel entitled La forja de un rebelde, published during his exile in 1944, describes the working classes of Madrid in the early twentieth century through the eyes of a washerwoman who supports her family thanks to her hard, badly paid job: When my father died, we were four brothers and sisters and I was two months old. They advised my mother (from what I’ve been told) to send us to the Inclusa, because she wasn’t going to be able to get by with all four of us. My mother went off to the river to wash clothes […] on the days when she isn’t washing in the river she works as a maid in our uncle and aunt’s house and she cooks, washes up and does the washing for them […]. Now that it’s summer and I don’t have school […] I go to spend the day in the country with her. When my mother has finished collecting the washing, we go home along the Cuesta de la Vega […] the sack that Mr Manuel carries […] is a very big sack, bigger than a man. Since I count the washing with my mother I know how much it can hold: 20 sheets, 6 tablecloths, 15 shirts, 12 nightshirts, 10 pairs of underpants, well, loads of things.52

Barea’s novel described the washerwomen’s work as an activity which required the women to cooperate and which also involved children, just like all the jobs done by women. Either the washerwomen had to take care of the children while they worked or the children looked after each other and when they were a little older they could help their mothers: The two hundred pairs of trousers are blowing in the wind … We children run between the rows of white trousers … Mrs Encarna runs after us with the wooden shovel that she beats the washing with to wring out the grease. We hide in the maze of alleyways made by four hundred wet sheets … In the afternoon, when the trousers are dry, we help to count and separate them into piles of ten until all two hundred are finished. We gather together with Mrs Encarna on the top floor of the laundry. It is a building with a sloping roof. Mrs Encarna carefully walks among all the feet and almost hits her bun on the main beam … Next to Mrs Encarna are the piles of trousers, sheets, underwear and shirts. The pillowcases are at the far end. Each item has a number and Mrs Encarna counts them and throws them to the child in charge of that particular dozen. Each of us has two or three piles by our sides, where there are ‘twenties’ or ‘thirties’ or ‘sixties’. We place each piece of clothing on its respective pile. Afterwards, we put a pair of trousers, two sheets, a pair of underpants and a shirt which all have the same number, into a pillowcase, as if it were a sack. On Thursdays the big cart comes down with four horses and it loads the two hundred sacks of clean washing and leaves another two hundred sacks of dirty washing. This is the kit belonging to the soldiers from the Royal Guard, the only soldiers who have sheets to sleep on.53

Washerwomen’s problems with regard to looking after their children while they were working led to the establishment of the Casa-Asilo de Lavanderas de Madrid. This was a proposal made by Queen María Victoria, the wife of King Amadeo de Saboya (1871–1873), who inaugurated the construction

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work in June, 1871. According to the press reports, ‘the grateful washerwomen expressed their deepest, most affectionate respect for the king and queen’.54 Situated next to the Puerta de San Vicente, close to the River Manzanares, the Casa-Asilo de Lavanderas was protected and visited by future queens. Run by the Hermanas de la Caridad, it was considered to be a model institution in 1901, when it accommodated 400 children, ‘whose mothers spend the whole year working and suffering the rigours of the cold and the heat, but happy in the knowledge that their little ones are being looked after better than in their own homes’.55

Industrial Laundries As we have seen, the first major technical transformation of the washing process came about as a result of the modest village washhouses which, in addition to providing shelter, provided the washerwomen with a large container and a supply of running water and allowed them to do the washing standing up, without having to wade into the river or kneel down on the riverbank. Paradoxically, such buildings were constructed and were more common in large villages than in many cities. This was due to the fact that whereas in the former it was possible to take advantage of a fountain or spring, in the cities the water had to be channelled. In addition, the fact that traditionally there were washhouses on the river banks meant that this industry took a long time to become established. This explains why during the years that Madoz’s Diccionario was published (during the 1840s), various provincial capitals still included the construction of a covered washing place among the planned improvements of the town. Such was the case, for example, in Burgos: ‘Improvements. The town council of Burgos plans the following improvements: […] the construction of a covered washhouse which should be located behind the new theatre and to the right of the River Arlanzón’.56 One of the factors which greatly affected the washerwomen’s working conditions (the duration and laboriousness of the washing process, the risk of catching illnesses, even the day’s wages and whether or not there was work at all) was their access to water. Whether or not rural washerwomen could do the washing next to their homes or whether they had to travel large distances carrying the washing depended on how close they were to a water supply. They were also able to get customers in cities as long as these had no running water and there were thus no covered washhouses. The transformation took place in two stages: the first was the initial step towards providing an urban water supply, which still did not reach every house but reached most neighbourhoods by means of fountains.57 The covered washhouses were buildings of one or more floors with various rooms: there was the room used for washing, with rows of sinks, each with its own tap; the room for hanging up the washing on an upper floor, and a drying room, with a system of hot air to dry the washing when the weather was bad. A picture taken by the photographer Alfonso in the 1920s shows the washhouse in the Galileo street

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in Madrid, and is a perfect reflection of the changes in the washing process and in washerwomen’s work. In his novel, Arturo Barea also speaks of the changes brought about by covered washing places and the sense of factory life that was then prevalent: closed in, smelly, full of steam, with the washerwomen crammed into narrow spaces. Señora Paca […] is also a washerwoman, but she doesn’t go to Granizo’s washhouse, she goes to one which is on the road to Atocha, where there isn’t a river and where they do the washing in sinks made of cement which they fill with water from a tap. I’ve been there once and I didn’t like it. It looked like a factory with all the sinks full of washing with stream rising from them and the women crammed together, shouting like crazy. And there was no sun and no grass and the washing stank. The drying room, where there are lines to hang up the washing, is in an area behind the sinks. The naughty kids jump over the fence and steal the washing. Of course they steal washing from the river, too, but since it’s in the countryside they’re frightened because the women run after them and they always catch them. By the river, opposite the Casa de Campo, there are decent washerwomen, but down from the Puente de Toledo and in the washhouses of the Rondas, the washerwomen are all crude and vulgar.58

Although we have seen that in the mid-eighteenth century the town council of Madrid assigned a considerable number of washing places on the River Manzanares to poor people, in the nineteenth century, it would appear that almost all the places had been privatised. Washing places which were open to the public were privately run businesses in almost every city. This meant that even the poorest women had to pay to do their washing (even those who only did the washing for their own family), which increased the workers’ cost of living and decreased standards of hygiene. Condemned first of all by doctors and hygienists and later by workers’ organisations, in 1853 the lack of free washing places led the government minister Pedro Egaña to enact a decree by means of which the Charity Authorities set up a Washhouse and Public Baths for Poor People and by means of which a commission was set up to study the project.59 In Barcelona, the Tenants’ Union, which was founded in 1918, continued to request that ‘the Town Council sets up free public washing places in each neighbourhood, equipped with the latest advances for all workers to use’. The poor hygienic conditions of these establishments also led many people to consider washing as a public service. The municipal architect Rovira y Trías classed certain laundry owners as ‘public health speculators who spend their time searching for premises in the old part of town in which to set up these filthy, foul-smelling places which they call public laundries’. In spite of all these criticisms, washing continued to be a private service.60 These industrial laundries were owned by a different type of ‘businessman’ than the leaseholders who administered the washing places along the banks of the River Manzanares in the mid-eighteenth century and they had different types of problems. In Madrid, the Association of Owners and Tenants of Closed Laundries of Madrid was set up in 1911.61 Its articles of association illustrate the two main reasons for creating the association: the first was that of

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avoiding price competition among the businessmen by setting a fixed price, ‘bearing in mind the special situation of each laundry, its capacity and any other conditions’, which all members were obliged to observe. This fee did not only refer to renting out the sinks used for washing, but also the other services that they offered the washerwomen, such as the sale of bleach and soap: ‘Buckets of bleach must not be sold for less than five centimes each’.62 The second objective was to ensure that the washerwomen paid, checking up on them by means of ‘a document certifying that they were up to date with payments due to the owner or tenant of the laundry’ and obliging all its members ‘not to admit any washerwoman who does not present this document’. In addition, members were forbidden from allowing ‘their assistants to wash in the sinks assigned to their employers without paying the price stipulated for using a sink’ and were obliged to ‘keep a register of the washerwomen who washed in each of the laundries including details of their name, surname and address. The Secretary of the Association must be notified if a new washerwoman registers in the laundry or if any of the washerwomen leave’. At least in large cities, in the early twentieth century there were already enough laundries for there to be a certain degree of competition (and enough for the businessmen to radically oppose it) and for their clients, the washerwomen, to try and benefit from it.

The Mechanisation of the Washing Process and the Disappearance of a Profession: Washing as Part of Housework Washing as a profession began to disappear in the mid-1950s, when washing machines appeared on the Spanish market. The first people to buy them were those with the highest incomes, amongst whom were many of our older relatives’ and neighbours’ customers. M.J. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, p. 51.

When running water arrived in people’s homes, the washing process underwent a complete transformation and it was no longer necessary to have the washing done by a washerwoman who took the clothes away. The washing was done at home, by maids or by a washerwoman who specifically went to the house to do the washing once or twice per week.63 The advantages of doing the washing at home were a greater degree of control over the clothes and less damage because the owner of the house supervised and decided how the washing should be done.64 The houses of the bourgeoisie were designed to include washing rooms, with sinks and washing lines. In wet regions, the washing lines were situated on the roof of the building and were for the communal use of the neighbours. In sunny regions, the washing lines were situated on the outer windows, with ropes that sometimes even went from one side of the narrow streets to the other. This process of converting the washing process into a household task prepared the way for its mechanisation, the last phase of the historical transformation of the washing industry. In fact, mechanisation is only one of

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two transformations which the washing industry underwent. Technological innovation also had an effect on the soaps and bleaches, which were the basic raw materials used in the washing process. Advances in chemistry led to the patenting and marketing of industrial detergents which could remove dirt and grease much more easily and made the washing process a lot simpler. This meant that washing no longer had to be bleached and that it could be done in cold water. Each phase of the mechanisation of the washing process took place independently, that is to say that different innovations changed the soaping, the washing, the rinsing and the drying. The patents were adaptations of the machines used in industrial laundries, which initially used the technique of steam washing. In Madrid, at least, the first attempts to set up industrial steam laundries must have been towards 1835 or 1840, because in 1843, press reports stated that: Steam, that ever-present feature of modern civilisation, the marvellous, universal power behind the most innovative industry […] not long ago threatened the age-old laundry industry with a painful, sudden death […]. One single machine, operated by few pairs of hands, was going to leave uncountable living machines without bread and wine. One company […] was going to monopolise public decency and neither the seamstresses nor the ironers would have been saved from the impending cataclysm; the manufacturers of steam cleaners promised […] to change the dirty, worn-out clothes of the people of Madrid into clothes that could be whitened in no time at all and mended and ironed as if by magic […]. Luckily for the registered washerwomen, either the businessmen feared that the women would openly rise up against them in desperation, as heralded by certain alarming indications, or the first trials of the new system did not match the expectations of the public or even the company itself. Either that, or, as would appear to be the case, the essence of routine has prevailed in this issue’.65

However, the real washing revolution came about as a result of the development of the washing machine for domestic use, not industrial use, which made sense once houses had a supply of running water. The first ‘washing machines’ were simple wooden drums whose insides were lined with copper or zinc and which were moved manually by turning a handle. Later on, an inlet supplied clean water and an outlet removed the dirty water. It was not long before internal blades were added. These were wooden paddles which beat the washing but they proved unpopular because the paddles often got stuck in the washing and damaged it. Electric washing machines, which were the same drums powered by a small electric motor, represented the final stage in the washing revolution. Towards 1912, all U.S. manufacturers and various European manufacturers were making electric models for household use, although one million washing machines were not sold in the U.S.A. until after the First World War. Manufacturers stopped using wood and replaced this with metal, first copper, galvanised steel, aluminium and zinc. Towards 1961, they had been replaced by porcelain, which was resistant to high temperatures and the chemical elements of the

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detergents. The drum was powered by a one-quarter horsepower motor and the washing action was produced by rotation by means of an internal stirring rod. Depending on the type of device used to move the washing, washing machines were classed as either drum or turbine machines. Turbine machines had a tank and a rubber propeller situated at the bottom. The simple electronic system had three semiautomatic functions (the programmer had to be set manually): pre-wash, wash and rinse. The rotating propeller moved the water and the washing. Only the time and the temperature were controlled automatically. In automatic drum washing machines, the electronic control mechanism adjusted the washing process by means of various coded wash programmes. The drum, which had holes in it and which was connected to a motor, wrung out the clothes by spin-drying. The programmes had various functions, lengths, temperatures and drum speeds. The operation of automatic washing machines goes in cycles which reproduce the phases of the washing process which had for centuries been carried out by washerwomen: the washing is soaked, the clothes are washed and alternately rinsed and washed again, and finally they are spun dry, which is the same as wringing out the washing by hand. The whole process ends with the use of a clothes dryer, which uses heat to dry the washing after it has been washed and spun. The mass marketing of automatic washing machines, one of the signs of the modern home which was extolled as a symbol of Western prosperity from the 1920s, represented the disappearance of professional washerwomen who did other people’s washing in exchange for a day’s wage. Nowadays, washing is one of the household chores of ‘housewives’ who specialise in performing such services free for their families.

Notes 1. P. Malcolmson, English Laundresses. A Social History, 1850–1930, Urbana, 1986; A.P. Mohun, Steam Laundries. Gender, Technology and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880–1940, Baltimore, 1999; and B. Orland, Wäsche waschen, Technik und Sozialgeschichte der häuslichen Wäschepflege, Reinbek, 1991. 2. For example, in France the Ecomusée de Fresnes, near Paris; the museums of the Blanchisserie de Craponne and Grézieu-la-Varenne, in the area around Lyon; in 1938, there were still five hundred family laundries in the villages of Craponne and Vaugneray which collected, transported, washed and returned the clothes to the inhabitants of Lyon. 3. F. Wasserman, Blanchisseuse, laveuse, repasseuse. La femme, le linge et l’eau, Fresnes, 1986. 4. M. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona en la primera mitad del siglo XX: lavanderas y planchadoras’, Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, vol. VI/119:23 (2002). Thanks to Cristina Borderías for this reference. 5. In Barcelona, washing and ironing ‘were among the most common occupations of women after spinning and weaving cloth and knitwear’. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’. In 1905, from a population of just over half a million inhabitants, according to the Workers’ Census there were 1,553 laundresses; fewer than the 2,131 ironers, but more than the 1,205 dressmakers and the 1,085 seamstresses. 6. According to Bridget Hill, in eighteenth century London, the number of women washing clothes as a part-time job or in order to supplement another job was probably much greater than the number of women who said that they were professional laundresses. It is a wellknown fact that married women rarely said they had any kind of job. B. Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth Century England, London, 1994, 155.

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7. M.J. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, dos oficios tradicionales de La Canyada del Fenollar y Fontcalent, Alicante, 2002. 8. The clothes tended to be much dirtier than nowadays. This was due to the fact that less importance was given to personal hygiene, houses did not have running water, sick people were cared for at home, there were no disposable items for personal hygiene etc. ‘Dirty clothes should not be left to soak for too long because fermentation would occur which in addition to weakening the fabric would make certain stains more difficult to remove, thus complicating the already difficult task of washing […]. In general, the clothes are beaten with wooden clubs…the soaking process is laborious, expensive and damages the fabric and therefore must and can be avoided.’ Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana Espasa-Calpe (henceforth as Euciclopedia Espasa), Madrid, 1988 [1916], 1146. 9. Heating the water made washing much easier since it softened the dirt and allowed the soap to dissolve. However, it represented a technical problem for the laundresses in addition to making the process more expensive in terms of time and fuel. The author of the entry for the city of Orense in the Diccionario by Madoz insisted on this point when describing the advantages of the hot water spring at Las Burgas: ‘Las Burgas has been known since ancient times for its abundance of water and its high temperature […]. The Abajo [spring] flows into a large basin or tiled pool of 120 square yards and is used as the village washing place. The Surtidero spring, which flows into another basin of 2 square yards, is used by the locals as a place to pluck birds simply by immersing them, to peel potatoes, wash entrails etc. As well as generally using the springs for cooking, bathing, washing dishes etc; due to its high temperature, the water is also used to great advantage for washing clothes and offers a great saving on fuel costs’. P. Madoz, Diccionario geográfico estadístico de España y Ultramar, Madrid, 1844–1849, 16 vols. 10. Enciclopedia Espasa, 1146. 11. A. Surós, Lecciones de higiene y economía doméstica para uso de las maestras de 1ª enseñanza y madres de familia, Barcelona, 1892. Lesson XII: ‘Blanqueo de al ropa por la colada. Principios en que ésta se funda. Colada común y colada al vapor’. 12. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 47. 13. The clothes ‘were left to soak in large clay washbowls (cossis), with the ashes of a plant called Russian thistle, which was grown exclusively for this purpose. The weed was then cut, dried and burnt and the ash was placed in a cloth to avoid it staining the clothes. Ash obtained from burning almond shells was also used. The ash was placed in a cloth or scarf and the clothes were scrubbed with it’: Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 44. According to Madoz’s Diccionario, in Aznalcázar (Seville), ‘In summer, the grass from the aforementioned marsh was cut, burnt and the ash used to make soap’. ‘With regard to the ashes used to make bleach, it has been demonstrated that the best results are obtained from ash from fir trees, pine trees and plants in vegetation, such as potato plants and vine shoots. Then there are the ashes of fruit trees and oak trees, elm trees and ash trees. Thirdly, there is the ash which comes from burning white wood. Ash from chestnut trees stains the clothes, and ash from the alder tree produces black bleach’: Enciclopedia Espasa, 1146. 14. The soap called ‘Castilla’ was manufactured under royal levy in Seville from Russian thistle and oil. It was exported to the American colonies and to various places in Europe. J. González, Las reales almonas de Sevilla (1397–1855), Seville, 1975. 15. ‘Later on, raw soap was used, which was sold as a paste by weight made by Tío Saboner (soap maker) in San Vicente […] there was another home-made soap made from caustic soda and the remains of frying oil which was only used for coloured clothes. Subsequently, industrial detergent began to be used: Lagarto, La Mosca and La Herradura: Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 46. From the 1850s onwards, there was a soap factory in Madrid called ‘La Confianza’, which was situated next to the River Manzanares. It had a cauldron which could hold 200 arrobas of oil, another which could hold 60 arrobas, twenty-nine large clay jars to store oil which could hold 5.500 arrobas, seven oil mills, moulds etc. The factory’s production, ‘bearing in mind the fact that by using English caustic soda the operations take considerably less time’, was at least 1,200 arrobas of soap per month (a cauldron containing 200 arrobas of oil produced 300 arrobas of soap), in addition to cold soap. In 1863, the factory was being extended to construct ‘two or more upper floors to be used as workers’ sleeping quarters, keeping the ground floor for soap production’, when the work was brought to a standstill to make way for the railway. Memoria abreviada del pleito entre D. Pablo Cayetano Gippini y la compañía de los ferrocarriles del Norte, sobre indemnización de perjuicios causados por la última, al primero, en su fábrica de jabón ‘La Confianza’ con la construcción del ferrocarril de enlace de las estaciones del Norte y Mediodía de esta corte, Madrid, 1868. 16. The chemical process of saponification is described in many industrial monographs, such as F. Balaguer, Fabricación de jabones, Madrid, 1913. Domestic formulas based on olive oil can

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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

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be found in E. Aramburu, El olivo, el aceite y los jabones. Práctica agrícola e industria casera, Úbeda, 2002 [194?]. ‘It is best to rinse the clothes in plenty of water and, if possible, in running water […] the dissolving effect is aided by shaking, rubbing, squeezing and wringing the clothes in the liquid’. Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada, 1153. ‘To dry the clothes they were spread out on the ground on top of leaves and held in place with stones. Otherwise, they were hung from ropes and held in place by large pins, like the ones used for women’s hair’. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 50. G. Correas, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales, Madrid, 2000. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 47. For a study of different types of washhouses in Asturias see J.A. Diego et al., Fuentes y Lavaderos de Gijón, Gijón, 1992. All references in Madoz, Diccionario. Horta, an area with a plentiful supply of water, had more than eighty laundry companies and four hundred washerwomen, ‘in addition to men who were responsible for doing the washing using traditional methods, and, at times, for hanging the washing out to dry’. In 1863, a guide to Barcelona explained that: ‘every Monday, the washerwomen from Horta came to the houses to collect the washing, which they returned on the following Friday. It is easy to recognise them. They are peasants carrying large bundles of washing. They stay in the same place all day until the carriages come to collect them late in the afternoon. Their prices are extremely cheap’. They stopped at an inn beside what is now the Cathedral Square, from where they ‘split up and went all over the city to collect the bundles of dirty washing. When it was getting dark, they once again met up and started to walk back towards Horta […]. In the 1930s, the middle classes and the artisan classes still made intensive use of the services of washerwomen from Horta’. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’. V. Pinto and S. Madrazo, Madrid, atlas histórico de la ciudad, siglos IX–XIX, Madrid, 1995, 256. In the 1920s and 1930s, Emilia la lavandera (Emilia ‘the washerwoman’), from Renedo de Piélagos, 22 km from Santander, took in the washing of various families from the capital on Mondays. She travelled by train and carried the washing in two flour sacks, which she carried on her head (she placed one horizontally on a pad and another vertically on top of the first). She washed the clothes in the river of her village and returned the washing clean and dry on the following Monday (testimony of Alicia González de Riancho, born in 1923, whose family’s washing was done by Emilia). These families had servants at home who often did the washing, but they sent away everything whose size made it difficult to wash at home. Pastor, Lavanderas y canteros, 44. Diego et al., Fuentes y lavaderos de Gijón, 197. In England, port towns also required the services of a great many laundry workers: ‘Port towns […] usually generated a significant volume of laundry work […]. A large shipping industry generated much employment for laundry workers as well as sailors, doctors and suppliers. According to one estimate early in the twentieth century, Liverpool provided work for nearly 600 laundries of all sizes, employing many thousands of hands, while in 1901 nearly 3,500 women were employed in laundry work in Glasgow’. Malcolmson, English Laundresses, 9. Plumbing systems in the cities, the origins of which dated back to Roman times, received a major boost towards the end of the eighteenth century due to the serious health problems caused by consuming water which was not fit for drinking. Despite the financial problems of town councils during the first half of the nineteenth century, many cities embarked on projects to provide piped water and to construct public fountains (and to regulate their use). According to Madoz, in Pamplona there were six public fountains in 1848. ‘The water is supplied via an aqueduct which takes the water from mount Francoa, in the village of Subiza, two-and-a-half leagues from the city. […]. Since this construction is so important and so grandiose, it is worth a special description. From 1776 onwards, the town council started work on a project to supply drinking water which had already been drawn up. After spending considerable amounts of money on trials and tests, in 1780 the famous architect Ventura Rodríguez was entrusted with heading the project. He drew up the plans and levelled the passage of the water […]. The town hall, which was aware of the importance and usefulness of such building work (which represented one of the greatest glories of the city) spared no expense’. Madoz, Diccionario. References in Madoz, Diccionario. There were already references to women who washed in the river Manzanares at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Guía y Avisos de forasteros que vienen a la corte, by Antonio Liñán y Verdugo, which was first published in 1620, stated that: ‘not long ago I

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

Carmen Sarasúa went for a walk towards the Casa del Campo and after spending some time along the river bank, I glanced at the crowds of washerwomen or maids who were hand washing the clothes of the people they serve and telling each other their secrets’. Facsimile edition of the text from the Biblioteca Clásica Española, Barcelona, 1885, 206. Archivo de Villa (Madrid), Contaduría, leg. 3/565, 5, ‘Órdenes, Informes y testimonios del ramo de Bancas del Río Manzanares para su extablecim.to y destino de su producto. Año de 1750’. ‘Caudal del producto de Bancas. Año 1753. Cargo del Thes.ro Dn. Luis de la Azuela por lo que entregan en su poder los Arrendadores que ocupan los sitios para diferentes Bancas de la Rivera del Río Manzanares’, Archivo de Villa (Madrid), Contaduría, 1–440–1. R. Mesonero Romanos, Manual de Madrid. Descripción de la corte y de la villa, Madrid 1982 [1833]. Madoz, Diccionario, vol. 10, 922. Richard Ford, who travelled around Spain between 1831 and 1833, also bore witness to the washerwomen of the River Manzanares: ‘this miserable brook, although its water is barely enough for the washerwomen…The water of this stream, which has the appearance of a river but without a river’s flowing water, is attracted towards pools by water nymphs, who are responsible for looking after the underwear of Madrid, quos et venti subeunt et aurae. The washing, above all below the royal palace, is picturesque, because the multi-coloured clothes gleam gaily in the sun’. ‘Madrid in 1835’, describes the place called La Florida, before entering Madrid: ‘on approaching the gate of San Vicente, the long rows of white and coloured clothes, shirts and doublets, petticoats and drawers, hung out to dry in peace and good company; the songs of the women at the washing places, the trains of mules with their jingling bells […] the fast, lively rhythm of the castanets, and the strumming of guitars among the trees […] this all gives this shady place a cheerful, lively appearance’. Quoted in J.M. Ferrer, Visión romántica de Madrid en los relatos y estampas de los viajeros extranjeros del siglo XIX, Madrid, 1997, 62 and 64. R. Domínguez, ‘El Madrid isabelino visto por un francés: el barón Charles Davillier’, Villa de Madrid, 96:II (1988), 35–54. Madoz, Diccionario. There were 35 laundries in La Florida neighbourhood, 3 in the Canal neighbourhood, 9 in the Toledo Bridge neighbourhood and 28 in the Segovia Bridge neighbourhood, with 99 ‘companies doing work related to the laundries’. This represented the most numerous industrial or commercial business outside the city, followed by tile manufacturers (24), businesses related to tile manufacturing (16), inns (16) and plaster works (9). Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’. According to the author, in Barcelona the number of laundries per inhabitant was much lower than that of other European cities. In his Teoría de la Construcción de la ciudad (1853), Ildefonso Cerdá pointed out that in Barcelona, clothes were washed once every two weeks, not every week. This was something that he recommended changing ‘because of the infections caused by keeping dirty clothes so long’. As a hygienist, Cerdá was very interested in these public establishments and in his proposals for municipal by-laws; he devoted three articles to the conditions of laundries. Madoz, Diccionario, vol. X, 961. Convents were major users of laundry services. In Santiago de Compostela (despite the fact that the springs and fountains were often subleased: according to the mid Eighteenthcentury Ensenada Cadastre, there were 33 laundresses, yet in the Comprobaciones there were 81), the Monastery of San Martín Pinario sent out its normal washing to the washerwomen of the city (Santiago) and its liturgical clothes to the orphans of the Colegio de Huérfanas. Thanks to Ofelia Rey and Serrana Rial for this information. S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile [henceforth cited as RS], Madrid, 1985, vol. II, 153. Speech made by the Mayor of Utiel on 25 April 1926 before the Field Marshal, Civil Governor, Military Governor and the Marquis of Sotelo to mark the opening of the new buildings for use as a public Laundry and Abattoir. The ceremony was attended by members of the local authorities and various important people from Valencia, Utiel, 1926. ‘My mother has very small hands; and since she has been washing all morning since she left home, her fingers are wrinkled like an old woman’s skin, and her nails are shiny. Sometimes her fingertips sting from the bleach which burns. In winter her hands are raw and cracked because when they are wet and they dry in the open air, the water freezes and they get covered in little crystals. She bleeds just as if she had been scratched by a cat. Then she puts glycerine on them and they get better straight away’. A. Barea, La forja de un rebelde, Mexico, 1944, 12.

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44. According to Madoz’s Diccionario, the water from the River Monachil in Granada was ‘clean, crystal-clear and very good quality, although its excessively low temperature causes most of the women and some of the men from Monachil to go weak at the knees’. In the region of Mansilla (Logroño), there were ‘hundreds of natural springs with marvellous water’, but ‘the water comes down mixed with snow, hence the aforementioned illnesses [colds, sharp pains, pneumonia and rheumatism]. The women, since they have the river on their doorstep, do the washing in all weathers and at all times, which is why they all have more or less persistent coughs and illnesses which can easily become acute: a spring and a washing place would definitely prevent such illnesses and both things must therefore be constructed at once’. The fact that these women spent too much time in contact with water was made even worse by the fact that the only local industry was the manufacturing of cloth, ‘which the women dyed black, red, blue or purple in their homes’. The most fortunate were the washerwomen in places where there were hot springs, such as Molgas (Orense), where ‘the spring, a thick stone spout […] provides hot water at a temperature of 37 degrees according to the thermometer [Reumour], and falls onto a square stone basin where women do the washing […]. People from the village use the spring water for their household jobs and it is a great help because there is a shortage of firewood in this village’. 45. Any work which required arms and legs to be on display attracted a great deal of attention and it was the principal feature of the social stereotype of washerwomen as women of dubious morality (which in any case was common to all women who worked in the nineteenth century). Social contempt for these women recently caught the attention of Dacia Maraini, who reconstructed the events of a true story in his novel Isolina (1992). One day in January 1900, the washerwomen working on the banks of the river Adigio, in the Italian city of Verona, pulled out a bag from the river with a chopped-up female corpse inside it. Investigations by the authorities and the local press discovered the dead woman’s relationship with a lieutenant who had killed and got rid of her after leaving her pregnant. Society’s understanding of the crime meant that it went unpunished and the whole episode was simply considered to be an unfortunate incident (for the lieutenant). 46. References in Madoz, Diccionario. 47. Municipal Archives of Rute [henceforth cited as AMR], box 148, 2-E-1, leg. 184–1. ‘Document stating the fines imposed on the inhabitants of this village by the Judge in 1851, 52 and 53’. The other fines given to women were imposed in two cases ‘for cheating people in the sale of food’, in one case ‘for washing a receptacle for making hot chocolate in the El Moral fountain’, in two cases ‘for uttering unseemly words’, in two cases ‘for not showing respect for the Authorities’, and in two cases for unknown reasons. A few years later, in 1868, washerwomen were still being denounced and fined: ‘It was reported to the Municipal authorities of Arcos that Feliciana de Alba Moreno was found washing in the village fountain, thus contravening the published edicts. She is therefore issued with a fine of four hundred maradevis’ (15 January 1868). ‘It was reported to the Municipal Authorities of Arcos that Ana Romero and Mariana Repullo were doing washing in the village fountain […] a fine of four hundred maravedis is imposed on each of them […] 20 January 1868’. AMR, box 148, 2-E-1, leg. 184–85, 1868. 48. Washerwomen employed by laundries earned by the hour or by the day. In 1856, Cerdá divided the washerwomen of Barcelona into three classes according to their salaries: those who worked in the city and earned between 5 and 6 reals per day; those who worked in the surrounding villages earned between 4.5 and 5 reals per day; and the assistants, who earned 0.48 reals per hour. According to the census of 1905, washerwomen earned between 2 and 3 pesetas per day, one of the lowest salaries among female workers of the city. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’. 49. RS, vol. III, 463–67. 50. In a second budget for ‘a married couple with two children’, washing was no longer included, since ‘considering the fact that the woman is responsible for doing all the housework such as cleaning, washing and ironing, cooking and looking after the children, the amount budgeted for this item has been reduced. This also means that the woman is unable to work outside the home and as such, no salary has been assigned to her’. In real life, female workers did all the work mentioned here in addition to going out to work. 51. RS, vol. V, Linares, 13 June 1886. 52. Barea, La forja de un rebelde, 15. The mother walked to the washing place called ‘la Virgen del Puerto’, which had been the meeting place for immigrants from Galicia and Asturias since the early nineteenth century. ‘I don’t know why they call this the Virgen del Puerto…It seems that the Virgin is here for all the people from Galicia who live in Madrid. In August, Galicians and Asturians come to the Pradera and sing and dance to the music of bagpipes, eat

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

60.

61.

62. 63. 64.

Carmen Sarasúa and get drunk’ (13). We do not know which regions the washerwomen were from, which would have to be researched in the municipal registers, but remember that Davillier called the washerwomen of the River Manzanares ‘sturdy Galician women’. It would not be surprising if many of them came from the Cantabric regions, where most of the workers in Madrid came from in the nineteenth century. C. Sarasúa, Criados, nodrizas y amos. El servicio doméstico en la formación del mercado de trabajo madrileño (1758–1868), Madrid, 1994. Barea, La forja de un rebelde. La Ilustración Española y Americana, 25 July 1871. Blanco y Negro, 31 August 1901. These references in Madoz, Diccionario. In Madrid, the Isabel II Canal, or Lozoya Canal, was started with the Royal Decree of 18 June, 1851, signed by Juan Bravo Murillo, president of the Cabinet. The Canal, which centuplicated the flow of water supplying Madrid, was finished in 1856. Water was provided by means of a plumbing system in all streets and all houses (of the centre) up to third-floor flats. Barea, La forja de un rebelde. ‘In our beautiful Spain […] they tried to set up washhouses and public baths for poor people, like the ones in England, the United States of America, Belgium, France and certain German states; but the idea never went beyond the planning stage’. The Commission was made up of Senator Acebal, the Representatives Pastor and Echevarría, the Professor of Medicine Corral and the architect of the Academy of Fine Arts Álvarez. The decree was from 15 June 1853. The Commission ‘died soon after it was born due to a decree enacted by Sartorius on 21 September of that same year, in which the Mayor was left in charge of setting up the institution’. In short, responsibility was passed over to the town councils. ‘It goes without saying that such a washhouse was soon forgotten’. Speech made before the senate of the Central University by the director of bathing and mineral water of Arenosillo, Leopoldo Martínez y Reguera, during his investiture as a doctor in the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, Madrid, 1864. The same can be said of ironing: it could be done by a specialised servant or by a person paid to iron clothes who went to the house one or more days per week, whereas special garments or those which needed to be starched, with crimped flounces, lacework etc, were taken to professional ironers who had a shop or an open workshop. Guía de la planchadora o nociones generales de planchado, por E.O.M., Madrid, 1889; and Manual práctico del planchado, por el planchador americano, Julián Sanz y Macario, Madrid, 1893. Julián Sanz y Marcario owned ‘washing and ironing workrooms’ in 21 Corredera street and 41 Barco street in Madrid. In Barcelona, ‘the laundries were usually owned by small businessmen – only a few had more than one laundry in different parts of the city – who paid Rate 2 contributions corresponding to the Industrial Registration. There was a guild system and in 1920 there was still an Association of industrial laundries’. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’, p. 9. Article 13, Section V, Members’ Obligations. Association of Owners and Tenants of Closed Laundries of Madrid. Statutes, Madrid, 1911; ‘Recuelo: very strong bleach used to wash the most heavily soiled washing’, in M. Moliner, Diccionario de uso del español, Madrid, 1966. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’. ‘In large towns, the washing was generally not done by the housekeeper, either because the housework took up all the available time or also because of the fact that it was easy to find people to do this kind of work […]. There are distinct advantages to doing the washing at home. Firstly, it is markedly cheaper, the washing is whiter and there is less risk of garments getting lost. Secondly, if enough soap is used there is less need to beat the clothes which means that they do not wear out so quickly […] If the washing is done by a stranger, it is the housekeeper’s duty to carefully make a note of the washing given to the washerwoman each week in order to only pay the amount stipulated and so as not to lose any garment by mistake.’ Surós, Lecciones de higiene y economía doméstica. In order to avoid losing washing, ‘there were ways of controlling the number of items given to be washed without needing to write down any figures, which made the task a lot easier considering the fact that most of the women could not read or write. Firstly, there was a device consisting of a piece of cardboard with a list of garments printed from top to bottom and the number of items printed from right to left; the total number of items of each type was shown by means of a shoelace passed through the corresponding hole. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, other tables were widely used which used symbols to record the washing that was handed over to the washerwomen and thus avoided the loss or theft of any garments’. Tatjer, ‘El trabajo de la mujer en Barcelona’.

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65. M. Bretón de los Herreros, ‘La lavandera’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos, Madrid, 1843, 169. Steam washing could also be done at home: ‘When washing is not done very often, and as a result there are a lot of dirty clothes, steam is the cheapest means of washing. A large cauldron is placed on a purpose-built stove which runs on coal. The cauldron is covered, but certain holes are left so that the steam, which is released under great pressure, hits the clothes after they have benn treated with an alkaline solution. The water must be kept at a constant high temperature but it should not boil’. Surós, Lecciones de higiene.

CHAPTER 4

THE TOCCATA AND FUGUE OF THE URBAN FACTORY WORKING-CLASS CONFLICTS AND WORK DISCIPLINE IN VALENCIA, 1840–1880 Francesc A. Martínez Gallego

Sculpting or Moulding: The Adaptation of the Working Class In the 1860s, the need to mould the working classes, to adapt workers to the rhythm of work set by the manufacturing system, by large workshops and by new means of dividing work, was clearly visible in Valencia. It transcended the walls of the manufacturing centres – where it had existed for many years – and became the object of studies and dissertations by eminent jurists of the University.1 Such studies were limited to urban areas – to areas still within the city walls, which existed until 1865. The model put forward for workers in these cities was tough and conflictive and was considered to be a ‘problem’. And in effect, it was a problem. The city of Valencia, with approximately 100,000 inhabitants, had a population of craftsmen who, in accordance with the traditions of their respective trades and in order to foster links with the means of production, were supremely independent. There were approximately 30,000 craftsmen, more than half the active population. They clung firmly to the workshop and guild system and were reluctant to accept the loss of professional status which mass production represented. It was a subverted world reflected on by notable jurists. It is now time to introduce these jurists. Their names were Augusto Comas Arques and Fernando León de Olarieta and they both put forward their opinions and their fears regarding the effects of the industrialisation process on a city affected by the Industrial Revolution.2

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According to Comas, ‘the worker feels uncertain deep down in his conscience; the truth has not yet carved into their minds the notion of what is fair and what is unfair in work-related issues’. New values and new forms of discipline had to be ‘learned’ by the new working class, meaning workers who could still be ‘moulded’. There was no question of the time or the place being wrong: industrialisation was a fact. Comas believed that industrialisation brought with it the conditions which could put paid to the objectives of the bourgeois revolution – he always illustrated his point with examples from the French Revolution and transferred the consequences to the context at hand – and sensed fresh conflicts. Paternalism and the ‘tutelage system’ of the early revolutionary period managed to initiate the process of liberal society, but favoured a certain degree of working-class resistance which Comas considered to be destructive. The ‘middle classes’ adopted tutelage out of self-interest: maintaining the guild system allowed them to exercise regulated and organised control over specialised workers. Only the aspects of the guild system that hindered production were abolished, but not those that helped to keep workers together. United workers were seen as a seed of discord when their affiliation went beyond the framework of their freedom to work. Standing united meant allowing them to confront change with more guarantees and with greater stability. Comas suggested replacing this ‘tutelage system’ with industrial legislation to mould the worker without resorting to corporative practices or dangerous associations. His fears were not unfounded: some societies with the guild system became centres of republican socialism. León de Olarieta voiced the same concerns, but he proposed different methods of moulding based on the action of civil society shaped by Catholic doctrine. It was a kind of ‘bourgeois pietism’, which implied replacing social justice with charity, avoiding all things collective in order to concentrate instead on the individual, forfeiting the working class for the concept of helping the poor and the destitute; it implied rewarding good workers while depriving the ‘lazy’ ones of their liberties. The proposed change was abrupt and traumatic. For craftsmen, it implied leaving behind their whole way of life and uprooting a working tradition which had been regulated by guild associations. It meant changing their working culture or, it could be said, their moral economy. The new employers of capitalist industry were faced with an enormous paradox. While the potential supply of labour was more than enough to cover the needs of production, the real supply of labour was scarce. Employers faced serious problems when trying to find workers and above all, to make the workers in their workshop or factory accept the systems of work discipline involved in running a business, namely increasing productivity and maximising profit.3 Almost everywhere, the ‘habituation’ of workers depended on employers undertaking three lines of action: ‘attraction’, ‘stabilisation’ and ‘disciplining’.4 There was no automatic adaptation process between stripping the worker of the means of production he controlled during the pre-industrial

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age and his integration into the industrial capitalist system of production. The link between the two was the employer’s deliberate construction of a framework designed to guide the worker towards his new fate. Between the dispossessed and the factory, there was a ‘process of resistance’ set up by those who refused to change. There were many different forms of protest. They were associated with causality and brought about a number of consequences, one of which is especially relevant here: in urban areas, where the guild tradition was more deeply rooted, complicity resulted in workers ‘taking flight’ from the factories towards more auspicious circumstances. In short, the ‘location’ of industry, and this is a feature which does not only belong to the origins of industrialisation but which is reflected in these origins in all its crude reality, was not just based on adequate transport links and did not only depend on size. The labour force and the process by which workers adapted played a determining role. And they certainly played such a role in mid-nineteenth century Valencia.

Company Management ‘within’ the City Walls: The 1840s And 1850s Employers who had been involved in the early stages of the industrialisation process were perfectly aware of the problems they faced: the labour force was a fundamental concern. In 1842, a group of employers who were contemplating setting up textile factories in Valencia sent a number of questions in the form of a questionnaire to the city’s Board of Commerce. One of these questions was: ‘How many workers would be available to work in production; what is the current state of the proletarian class and what is the average daily wage for craftsmen?’. A reply was sent by the Board of Commerce; the terms used are quite surprising. Reference was made to an ample supply of labour: ‘There are enough workers to operate any machinery or work in any factory either in the capital or in any other village of the province. Until now, no company has been short of workers, evidence of which can be seen in the fact that the many mining companies of the province are not in need of workers’.5 The questionnaire had made special reference to craftsmen, to proletarians specialised in the arts. Why then did the Board of Commerce not cite the many craftsmen of the city as an example? Why was no mention made of the existence of twenty thousand skilled silk workers ready and willing to work in textile factories, exactly the kind of factory that the businessmen in question wished to set up? Instead, the example given made reference to mine workers, who had absolutely nothing to do with the textile industry. The province did not even have a particularly large number of mines. Silence speaks louder than words. The Board of Commerce avoided all mention of the capital city’s workforce, of those workers referred to earlier who attached so much value to their independence. In the capital, the dispossessed were treated as ‘lazy people’. Until a short time before they had

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been regarded as potential recruits for the levy of the provincial militia; now they were seen as potential criminals. According to the terminology of the Board of Commerce, the rest of the working-class population were not proletarians. They were ‘still’ independent craftsmen and as such not suitable for working in a factory. The Board of Commerce then stressed this last point by reflecting on ‘working-class morality’: an unavoidable condition for their employment. Here the reply was a criticism: ‘The morality of the proletarian class has been held back by the permissiveness resulting from the constant political wrangling which has prevented the government from establishing a system of public education, the results of which, even after its introduction, shall not be seen within a few years’.6 The nearest thing to the morality of the working class was that which belonged to the craftsmen of the capital. And their main permissiveness with regard to the ‘political conflicts’ was none other than their belonging to the Milicia Nacional, which provided them with a weapon and with their independence.7 Not only did they resist losing their independence, but at that time and until the democratic revolution was defeated, they did so with weapons in their hands. The members of the Board of Commerce, precisely those who overthrew the Liberal regent General Espartero in 1843 and disbanded the Milicia Nacional, relied on state tutelage through education to successfully bring about the moralisation of the working class. This took place in the workshops and in schools. This mutual dependence has already been dealt with in other studies8 and it soon culminated in ‘education’ becoming a means of ‘habituating’ workers. Finally, the Board of Commerce only gave a nominal assessment of the average daily wage, stating that ‘it was on average 8 reals (2 pesetas) per person per day’. Yet this wage, without taking other variables into account, bears witness to the fact that the situation of the working class got worse as a result of the Industrial Revolution. A worker’s daily wage went down throughout the 1850s and 1860s. The average daily wage of a worker in 1860 was the same as it was in 1840. However, the prices of subsistence items did not remain the same. Neither did taxes – especially indirect taxes – which increased appreciably during the same period. The result was clear: the ‘habituation’ of workers was not done by providing incentives of higher wages. Other practices were used and for the moment, there was considerable resistance. This was true to the point that when businessmen wanted to start mass production in the 1840s and 1850s, they resorted to strategies involving ‘subcontracting’ or the urban putting-out system. With no other alternatives at their disposal, they resorted to old methods of organisation. Let us look at an example. The structure of the silk industry in the 1850s remained halfway between a commercial and an industrial structure. The businessmen were, in most cases, large-scale dealers who contracted out the production to a group of master craftsmen with an open workshop. In turn, the master craftsmen were

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usually in charge of a small number of workers. This situation was described by one of the businessmen: The undersigned, just like all the other manufacturers, cannot guarantee the number of looms they have because from one day to the next the number can go up or down depending on the demand for the fabric. The looms are in different workshops and in each one there is a master craftsman who is in charge of his workers, without any kind of official regulations. It should be noted that the number of workers or master craftsmen goes up or down according to market demand.

In effect, subcontracting allowed businessmen a great deal of productive flexibility and it provided the contracting master craftsmen with little security. Under the system described above, the biggest workshops of the city had between twenty and forty workers. The company called Vicente Orduña e Hijo was said to be ‘spread’ among five workshops; José Paston’s company was split between two workshops. Lorenzo Lleó had only one workshop with some forty workers, yet curiously enough, he was not the person in charge. Instead, there was a master craftsman who also acted as foreman: ‘the [workers] are under the orders of a director, who makes them work the usual number of hours’.9 The guild leaders yielded, but subcontracting increased. This was not an isolated incident: ‘The birth of the factory system’, wrote Lis and Soly, ‘most certainly meant the end of many small workshops, but initially, it also favoured the expansion of cottage industries’.10 The disappearance of silk workshops can be regarded as a ‘long, painful death’. Subcontracting meant the persistence of the workshop system, where, despite clear differences in earnings, both the employer – who was subcontracted – and his operators maintained certain formalities and the lexis of the guild workshops. Certain customs were difficult to lose; professional pride only disappeared with proletarianisation and there was resistance to prevent that from happening. Businessmen were not entirely happy with such a system. In fact, at that time many preferred to organise the work in factories which concentrated the production and rationally divided up the work in order to reduce costs as a result of increased productivity. It was the resistance put up by the craftsmen – together with the advantages in terms of flexibility and the small amount of fixed capital that had to be employed – which determined the way work was organised. However, subsequently there were complaints about the lack of work regulations. The businessman Mariano Garín said: Our factories do not have fixed timetables and neither are there any particular rules and regulations: in general, they had one set which they referred to as the rules of the Association, which disappeared over time because they were incompatible with the enlightened times in which we live; in all truth, efforts are being made and I believe that it is now time, once the disturbances have passed, to draw up another set of regulations which, adapted to the freedom and advances of the day, would protect everyone’s interests and have a positive impact on the factory.11

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Once the guild system had been destroyed, it was difficult to take control of the workshop, just as it was difficult to eradicate certain customs of the independent craftsmen. For example, silk workers were used to getting up late and going to the tavern before starting work, they were used to singing and chatting while they worked, having a siesta, not working on Mondays and receiving an advance on their monthly salary on Saturdays. In addition to all of the above, the master craftsmen of the silk trade – either subcontracted bosses or simple foremen – outwardly expressed their position by wearing frock coats in summer and overcoats and gloves in winter.12 The businessmen waged small battles to try to ‘correct’ the craftsmen’s habits. They prohibited the spinners and weavers from singing, although they did not dare to do so directly and used the excuse that they had received complaints from nearby residents. This was most evident in the steam silk workshops, where due to increases in the rhythm of work, the workers had to get used to the new norms. Each silk loom required one worker to do the weaving; for every four looms there had to be a woman to prepare – wash – the silk and another to prepare the bobbins. Every four looms therefore needed six operators. Their skills were not easy to replace and that is precisely where their strength lay and where they focused their resistance. The urban putting-out system reached enormous proportions. One of the best examples was the company that belonged to Baltasar Settier which was involved in a type of manufacturing that did not traditionally exist in the capital: the production of straw hats. It was established towards the end of the 1840s after some industrial espionage carried out in Northern Italy. Settier brought with him a number of specialists from Italy to help him design the factory and he even grew special straw so that he did not need to import it. With regard to the work structure of his company: ‘My factory has between 106 and 116 girls of twelve years and over who do the plaiting and the matting. These girls learn the work in six to eight days and then they work from home, taking the straw with them, the weight of which is written down in a special book. As a result, they do not have to waste time travelling to and from their villages every day’.13 The work involved in plaiting the straw was therefore completely decentralised and it should be noted that it was not done in the capital by workers from the city, but instead by girls from the surrounding villages. This is where the issue begins to take shape. The hinterland appeared to be the most suitable place to recruit workers. This was an area which was badly affected by the disentitlement process of the land from the 1830s onwards and where there were fewer craftwork traditions which imposed specific forms of organisation on businessmen. Settier combined the putting-out system with an urban workshop where the hats were sewn and assembled and which employed approximately fifty women ‘of eighteen years and over’. However, this was soon decentralised too: the putting-out system was used to carry out the sewing work, which paved the way for the introduction of sewing machines towards the end of the century. Both in silk companies and in Settier’s company, workers were organised by resorting to craftwork traditions or cottage industries and also by means of

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the master-servant relationship which Bendix observed during the first stage of industrialisation in Britain.14 In the first big tile factory in Valencia, belonging to Rafael González Valls, the fifteen or twenty day labourers were called servants, despite the fact that ‘each one earns according to the work done’,15 i.e. piecework. As Pollard described, however, instead of maintaining decentralised traditions, what the employer needed was stability and a steady work rhythm, precision and normalisation, care of the machinery and the materials. Workers from the capital offered no guarantees in this respect, given their irregular work patterns, their individual style of workmanship and their overwhelming pride in their own work tools.16

Resistance Although resistance was greatest on a day-to-day basis – and was expressed, as we have seen, in the way businesses were organised – it also consisted of a series of specific struggles which contributed towards the formation of working-class consciousness in urban areas. The most important of all these elements was the survival of the guilds, which were given functions that the liberal laws had abrogated. The Royal Decree of 20 January 1834 stipulated that the ordinances of the guilds had to be changed to bring them in line with the proclaimed freedom of industry. However, ‘considering the reluctance of these corporations to meet such obligations, on 30 July 1836 the use and exercise of those Ordinances which did not satisfy the requirements was prohibited’.17 Despite this, they were still in operation and hampered the free development of the profession as much as they possibly could. In May 1839, the Town Council of Valencia came under pressure to intervene; in 1856 the governor was still reminding the corporations that, ‘according to the legislation currently in force, all industrialists and traders are free, without any restrictions’.18 The old guilds used all kinds of subterfuge to preserve their influence, although little by little this influence diminished. Some of them were changed into benefit societies and even reappeared. In any case, the transition lasted three decades, from the 1830s until the end of the 1860s, and active opposition was felt early on. Merchant Seamen and Dockers Valencia, a maritime city and a port, was not a city people passed through. However, the factors which made it difficult to recruit workers were firmly anchored in the port. The first planned attack of the capital’s bourgeoisie on a guild’s resistance ended traumatically in the first strike in Valencia. Since the beginning of the revolution – 1834 – Valencian traders had fought to abolish the Cofradía del Barco y de San Telmo (Guild of the Boat and San Telmo) from the port of Valencia. It was a guild of dockers who until then had enjoyed exclusive rights over the loading and unloading of ships anchored in the port. The Board of Commerce put pressure on the government until the guild was eventually

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stopped in 1842. The enormous resistance put up by the guild was due to two reasons. First, it was due to the peculiarities of the guild members, who were registered seamen in the service of the navy. For that reason, protected by a special privilege granted by the Naval Command, the Valencian commanding officer said in 1837 that ‘the poor wretched seamen know of no other reward for their long, gruelling years of service than their being granted the privilege of loading and unloading ships in the ports’. According to him, being a registered seaman was not a ‘profession’, but rather a ‘situation’ which could embody several professions, all linked by ‘their contractual obligation to always be ready for action when called to the Service of the Sea’.19 In short, they were the human embodiment of an institution which embedded itself in the new liberal legislation as the last ‘surviving element of the feudal system’. Secondly, it was a particularly egalitarian guild, which had historically regulated the loading and unloading work itself, in addition to taking care of the fishing tackle. Internal unity was very strong and this became evident in November 1842, when the dockers refused to load or unload any boats. They were unable to tolerate the pressure of the authorities and were forced to back down, but the experience was not totally in vain. From that moment onwards, and taking advantage of the fact that they were ‘registered seamen’, they organised themselves in different ‘associations’ and their members managed to set up a unified organisational network. When they again felt strong enough, in 1847, they asked the governor to make it obligatory for traders to use these associations for the loading and unloading of their ships. Once again there was confrontation. In fact, the confrontations never really came to an end, although the associations became resistance movements and these in turn became trade unions. Such were the responses of the future. The Construction Industry In the mid-nineteenth century, there was a rise in the construction industry. There were years of internal reform and disentitlement which had a profound effect on urban areas. The intense mobility of the urban market also increased the rhythm of building and rebuilding work. The workers in this industry also proved to be fiercely independent and keen to preserve the self-regulatory nature of their profession, in this case against the guild. Or rather they were against its reconstruction because, in effect, the continuity of the guild as an association was ambiguous: it may have defended workers’ interests, but in some cases it was the nucleus of management or professional corporatism, which was the case here. In 1841, the city’s builders drew up a ‘manifesto’ requesting the provincial government the banning of the Hermanos Congregantes (Congregational Brothers), an association which included architects and master builders who ‘intend to introduce exclusive measures and establish a monopoly the like of which only exists in times of ignorance; but that in 1841, a time in which healthy and urgent reforms are eradicating the repressive methods of industry, these socalled Congregational Brothers raise their heads to bind huge numbers of families to their ominous servitude’ could not be tolerated. The Congregational Brothers represented the beginning of a corporative

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organisation which intended to put pressure on landowners who wished to do building work and to influence the contractual conditions of the labour force. The builders demanded the rights embodied in the Decree of 2 December 1836 – regarding the freedom of industry – as their means of combat. They were workers who had already been dispossessed and who used to go the Plaza de la Constitución (Valencia’s main square) every morning ‘in search of work’. They may have owned the basic tools of the trade, but the scaffolding and the materials belonged to the master builder, who made the owner of the building pay dearly for it: ‘for every builder they demand fourteen reals per day from the owner of the building, as well as seven for the labourers; they give ten reals to the first and five or five-and-a-half to the second, meaning that the builders are left with one peseta per day and the poor labourers are left with two or one-and-a-half reals’.20 Such was the balance of capital gain. Yet paradoxically, the workers rose up in favour of freedom and against the feudal system. This explains why some of the dispossessed supported Queen Isabel II (1833–1868) against her absolutist (also called Carlist) enemies and it also explains the builders’ desire to become members of the Liberal militia. What would happen when the association that they had started carried on the wage-exploitation mechanism that they were protesting against? Dockers, builders, cobblers, locksmiths and rope makers. In all these professions, in the 1840s and 1850s there were protests which prevented the company bosses from immediately introducing their industrial projects. And threats were soon added to the protests, above all when the debacle affected a quarter of the city’s craftsmen.

Silk Workers: Unemployment, Strikes and Road Works Silk workers were subcontracted workers par excellence during the 1840s and 1850s. It was the profession with the greatest tradition in the capital and it had the guild with the longest ancestry, the Colegio Mayor de la Seda (the Silk Association). From 1854 onwards, they were also the workers who were most frequently affected by unemployment.21 During the most prosperous times there were approximately twelve thousand silk mills in the city, but in the mid 1830s there were no more than five hundred left. The crisis, which came about because of the peculiarities of the way production was organised, competition from Lyon and a disease affecting silk worms, affected the capital particularly badly. Of the almost 4,500 silk workers in Valencia in 1860, a third of them were women, for whom the seasonal nature of their work was accepted in such a sexist society. Another third of the workers lived almost permanently on the verge of ‘vagrancy’ or at the doors of the poorhouse. The rest of the workers either fought to avoid proletarianisation by gathering together in small cooperative associations – such as La Proletaria, whose name reflected what it was trying to avoid – or, in the case of those who were already proletarianised resorted to industrial action when their jobs were threatened by the introduction of machinery in the workplace.

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It was a precarious existence, but there were so many of them that the authorities could not simply sit back and do nothing. They attempted to redirect the silk workers, also in a disciplinary sense. When attempts were made to adapt the labour force, starting public works paid for by the state or the provincial government usually brought good results. This was why theories on this subject were written in Valencia as early as the 1820s.22 Forty years later the situation reached its lowest point. ‘Hundreds of valuable, hardworking, obedient families which make up the majority of the capital’s industrial population have been reduced to living in poverty’. At the beginning of the summer of 1860, the terrified Town Council provided work for three hundred silk workers in various public works around the capital. However, at the end of the summer and after the spread of cholera had left the public treasury empty – ‘because many wealthy families have moved away, leading to a considerable drop in municipal taxes which represent almost the entire income of the Town Council’ – the crisis got worse. ‘It may well affect the issue of public order, especially when for a while now it has not only been silk workers, but also workers from various different professions and trades who have continually come to me complaining about the lack of work and demanding jobs in public works which unfortunately I cannot provide’, said the mayor.23 What was to stop the silk workers going to find jobs in the many road works that the Provincial Council started in the province in the early 1860s? The work carried out by silk workers in public works had to be ‘subsidised’ by the authorities, otherwise the foremen refused to contract them. There were two reasons for this. On the one hand, the works were carried out using a special labour force: made up of workers receiving ‘personal benefits’, which affected day labourers from villages and which allowed reductions to be made in the cost of public works. On the other hand, in private works it was very common to contract children and this had the effect of reducing the daily wage of the men. Craftsmen from the silk trade were ‘workers who, since they are not used to working hard, cannot stand hard work and never have been able to’. In other words, they ‘refused’ to do heavy work because it was not part of their working tradition. There was clear evidence of this. In January 1860, work on the road from Sollana to Silla was undertaken by silk workers and builders from Valencia. They had been taken on under specific orders from the governor. They did the work, but on the first Saturday, they did not receive the usual advance on their wages. In addition, their wages were no more than 5 reals per day and this was barely enough to survive. This ‘caused a certain degree of turmoil among the workers who, angry about the low wages and the delay in receiving them, expressed their intention of stopping working’. This was strike action, which one journalist described as ‘scattered’, but which followed a precise course. The silk workers proposed that the works be brought to a standstill; they then asked for the support of builders and day labourers. They got their support and managed to obtain the result they wanted. In this case, the reaction of the authorities was particularly severe. The silk workers were quickly arrested and sent to prison. If news of the strike had spread, it would have been impossible to discipline workers.24 Together, the authorities and the captains of industry regarded the urban framework as a

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particularly unsuitable place for the attraction, stabilising and disciplining of the labour force. There were only two possible ways out: for the factories to move to the lowland area of the city and for employers to use workers from outside the city, from villages in rural areas.

After the Toccata, the Fugue Both methods were tried. We have already seen how Baltasar Settier employed workers from rural areas. The same practices were used by the tobacco factory, which employed the greatest number of workers in the city. There were more than three thousand workers, most of them women, who suffered the rigours of a system designed to mould workers’ behaviour. ‘The poor workers of the tobacco factory complain bitterly because they are made to work all day on Sundays for no reason, considering the fact that during the week they are not given nearly as much work as they could do’.25 The manager of the factory put discipline over productivity. The country girls had to go to the factory every single day of the week. In addition to spending many hours cutting and rolling tobacco, they also had to walk extremely long distances from their homes to work and back. It is a fact that many factories left the city in the 1860s and 1870s. Valencia was still a city which had a great many workshops, but they were small workshops and the big ones moved out of the city.26 The most obvious cause was said to be the urban bylaws concerning the danger factories represented to public health and which banished factories from urban areas. However, a look at the sentences regarding neighbours’ complaints about the location of factories disproves this hypothesis. The authorities, the same ones that drew up the ‘Edicts of Good Management’ and prescribed the norms concerning healthy conditions, broke them in the interests of businessmen.27 The real reason during the mid-nineteenth century was different. It was due to the labour force and its irrepressible persistence in maintaining the professional urban traditions of the capital. Of course it worked both ways. Some workers also left the capital and settled in rural areas. These were years in which the city relocated its inhabitants and evicted the popular classes from the city centre. In the city centre itself, rents were very high: To the extent that a large number of labourers who work in Valencia, unable to pay the rent for the dark, damp houses on offer in the capital, are forced to live in nearby villages. This results in a substantial increase in their tiredness and discomfort since they need to walk for an hour before they can start work. They are away from their families all day and before they can rest at the end of the day they have to walk the same distance as in the morning.28

With one thing and another, the working day was never less than 12 hours long and the normal working day was between 14 and 16 hours. The stabilisation process therefore began with the expulsion of the worker, of the urban craftsman. Businessmen who intended to set up factories which

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integrated and concentrated the work and production processes, those who intended to divide the work ‘according to modern methods’ and establish suitable factory regulations, left the city and went to rural areas. They did not move very far away; they did not want to be too far away from consumers or the port. Molla set up his tile factory in Meliana; Trénor established his spinning mill in Vinalesa; Mateu Garín set up his silk mill in Canals; Juan Pampló established his in the Vega de Valencia. There were plenty of examples like these.29 In such an environment, stability was much easier to achieve and although the means of enforcing discipline still had to be studied, it became a realistic objective. Above all, instead of employing a craftsman who had been expelled from the city or even a dispossessed peasant, it was preferable to employ their daughters. An advocate of free trade and industry confirmed this in the 1870s: Every day – says Sanromá – there are more and more women employed in workshops and factories. And this invasion, for it is worthy of such a name, has three features […]. The first is that women are not restricted to doing sedentary work or light work and neither are they restricted to working in the textile industry, for they have also begun to work in industries which require great strength and high levels of activity. The second feature is the fact that in certain industrialised countries we have seen, or we shall see, how they are replacing men in the most laborious and revolting jobs. And the third feature is the fact that, since industry is taking on so many women, it would appear that employers prefer the [workers who are the] youngest, most delicate ones, because the proportion of young women going into the manufacturing industry is increasing.30

The mosaic tile factory belonging to Nolla and Sagrera in Meliana had four hundred workers in 1866. More than half were women, which may explain the situation described by Sanromá. Both women and men had to comply with: carefully thought-out regulations [which] punish offences related to absenteeism, silence and manners with small fines. This money is then given to the priests of the villages to be shared among the poor and needy. Only workers with a record of good behaviour are employed, preferably those who can read and write. Religion is practised every day and a bonus system of up to 30 reals per month has been introduced to reward hard work and good conduct.31

Nolla, Sagrera and their fellow businessmen who, like they did, experimented with methods of adapting workers to the new rhythms and guidelines concerning the division of work in their factories, combined the carrot and the stick methods. The punishments were almost always in the form of the threat of dismissal or a fine and rewards were based on the bonus system. These employers were in business before Pavlov developed his theory of conditioned responses, but they used the application of stimuli – both positive and negative – in order to make workers react accordingly. This major task was carried out from the 1860s to the 1880s mainly outside the capital. Those affected were mainly women. In May 1881 and January 1882, the newspaper El Mercantil Valenciano contained articles by José Manero, a small-scale silk manufacturer from Gandia who, aggrieved by the unbearable competition

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from the large textile factories of the Vega de Valencia, attacked the way they organised and exploited the labour force. He described the factories as ingenios – a term meaning ‘mills’ but which also designated the Cuban sugarprocessing plants and slavery, which had just been abolished. He voiced his concerns that the factories only employed women and children, paid them very low wages and made them work between twelve and fourteen hours per day. Health and hygiene conditions were highly unsatisfactory and the factories had strict rules and regulations which not only forbade the workers from singing, but also from talking to each other. The only men employed in these factories were those who worked as stewards or foremen responsible for maintaining discipline. ‘They are in control and are obliged to impose sanctions of one, two, three or eight days’ work – which is the same as imposing hunger – on any poor woman who commits the extremely serious offence of talking to one of her colleagues’.32 In short, faced with such a system of industrial organisation and the competition it created, despite the fact that the process lasted for decades, not only unskilled workers yielded to the pressure, but also skilled craftsmen. In the capital, craftsmen attempted to avoid proletarianisation by creating manufacturing associations. They put into practice a type of association advocated by democrats during the mid-nineteenth century, sometimes making use of the old guild structure or what was left of it. However, these associations were unable to compete with the factories which reduced their production costs by means of the methods described earlier. Thus, in the 1870s and 1880s, the industrial associative-cooperative system, without fully succumbing, underwent a serious crisis from which resistance movements arose with might and main. The factories – which were, of course, still referred to as workshops – gradually undermined the craftsmen’s resistance, their organisational system, their means of fighting and their way of thinking. Certain parts of their vocabulary survived for a long time, but words must not cloud the facts. And the stubborn facts indicated new directions, new forms of organising the working class and the consolidation of the manufacturing system.

Notes 1. See the texts by A. Comas and F. León de Olarieta, Discurso sobre la consideración que ha merecido la industria al Derecho en las distintas épocas y la que hoy aspira a alcanzar, Valencia, 1862. 2. With regard to the concept of the industrial revolution in the context of Valencia, E. Sebastiá and J.A. Piqueras, Agiotistas, negreros y partisanos, Valencia, 1992, 9–60. On the role of craftsmen during the industrialisation period, W.H. Sewell Jr., Trabajo y revolución en Francia. El lenguaje del movimiento obrero desde el Antiguo Régimen hasta 1848, Madrid, 1992, 219–28. 3. J. Sierra, El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990, 7–21. 4. The classic example is from E.P. Thompson, ‘Tiempo, disciplina de trabajo y capitalismo industrial’, in Tradición, revuelta y consciencia de clase, Barcelona, 1979, 238–93; and H. Braverman, Trabajo y capital monopolista: la degradación del trabajo en el siglo XX, Mexico, 1980.

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5. Archivo de la Diputación de Valencia [henceforth cited as ADV], E.10.1, box 15, dossier 365. 6. ADV, E.10.1, box 15, dossier 365. 7. More than half of the Guardia Nacional and of the Milicia Nacional – 1834–1840 – were composed of craftsmen from the capital; in addition, the institution was a framework of solidarity for craftsmen undergoing the process of proletarianisation, who found financial assistance from their comrades in the militia. M. Chust, Ciudadanos en armas (1834–1840), Valencia, 1987, 135–47; and C. Charle, Histoire sociale de la France au XIXe siècle, Paris, 1991, 50–55. 8. J.A. Piqueras, El taller y la escuela en la Valencia del siglo XIX, Valencia, 1983, 117–25. 9. Statements made by employers in 1850, in the ADV, E.10.1, box 35, dossier 931. 10. C. Lis and H. Soly, Pobreza y capitalismo en la Europa preindustrial (1350–1850), Madrid, 1984, 180. 11. ADV, E.10.1, box 15, dossier 365. 12. Los valencianos pintados por sí mismos, Valencia, 1859, 291–96. 13. ADV, E.10.1, box 15, dossier 365. 14. R. Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry, New York, 1956, 203–20, quoted in S. Pollard, La génesis de la dirección de la empresa moderna, Madrid, 1987, 244. In 1860, the number of servants in Valencia was approaching ten thousand according to the official census. 15. ADV, E.10.1, box 15, dossier 365. 16. Pollard, La génesis, 244. 17. ADV, E.10.1, box 13, dossier 311; and Boletín Oficial de la Provincia de Valencia, 26 March 1856. 18. This issue has been examined by F.A. Martínez Gallego, ‘Disolución gremial y constitución societaria: los términos del vínculo. Valencia, 1834–1868’, in S. Castillo (ed.), Solidaridad desde abajo. Trabajadores y Socorros Mutuos en la España contemporánea, Madrid, 1993, 51–69. 19. ADV, E.10.1, box 10, dossier 255; E. Ortega, ‘En torno a los orígenes del movimiento obrero en Valencia: la huelga de los estibadores del Grao en noviembre de 1842 y sus antecedentes’, Estudis d’Història Contemporània del País Valencià, 8 (1990), 133–57. 20. Manifiesto de los oficiales prácticos albañiles de esta capital al señor gobernador político de esta provincia sobre las pretensiones y procedimiento de los Arquitectos y Maestros de obras de la misma, titulados Hermanos Congregantes de la que intentan restablecer, Valencia, 1841. 21. With regard to the crisis, J. Azagra, El Bienio Progresista en Valencia, Valencia, 1978, 66–71; and V. Martínez Santos, Cara y cruz de la sedería valenciana, Valencia, 1981, 219–55. 22. F.P. Alguer, Memoria sobre los medios más fáciles de emplear y mantener a los trabajadores del arte de la seda, cuando temporalmente cesan sus talleres, Valencia, 1830. 23. ADV, Census. Municipal Elections, box 50, dossier w/n. 24. Diario Mercantil de Valencia, 25 January 1860. 25. El Valenciano, 9 June 1860. 26. C. Navarro, Guía-Indicador general de Valencia, Valencia, 1876. 27. The sentences of these trials, imposed by the Provincial Council in the cases brought against the State, can be seen in my Ph.D. diss. ‘La política de la Revolución industrial; el País Valenciano durante los gobiernos de Unión Liberal (1856–1864)’, Universidad de Valencia, 1992, vol. II, 830. 28. A. Ximénez, Estudio sobre el estado moral, intelectual y económico de las clases trabajadoras de Valencia, Valencia, 1888, 22–23. 29. F.A. Martínez Gallego, Desarrollo y crecimiento: la industrialización valenciana (1834–1914), Valencia, 1995. 30. J.M. Sanromá, Política de taller, Madrid, 1876, 58–59. 31. Comisión Regia de España, Exposición Universal de 1867, Paris. Catálogo General de la sección española, Paris, 1867, 401. 32. El Mercantil Valenciano, May 1881 and January 1882.

CHAPTER 5

CRAFT WORK, INDUSTRY AND RADICAL CULTURE IN THE AGE OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL José A. Piqueras

the red flag of the social Revolution […] is the flag of labour and justice (IWA Correspondence, 11 March 1873)

For most European workers, the decades between 1860 and 1880 represented a period of transition in terms of how they were organised and how their social and political aspirations were expressed. The founding of socialist parties and workers’ unions, coupled with the proliferation of labour and co-operative associations, friendly societies, educational and leisure organisations etc., meant that in general terms, the working class of the 1880s was organised in a way which, though restructured after 1918, lasted until the second half of the twentieth century. The First International (IWA) played an important organisational role in this process of change as well as generating ideas and dynamics.1 Rather than seeing it as a new type of organisation in the new age of social and class struggles, we should consider the IWA as yet another expression of the process of transition which united the traditional stand against capitalism and the death of numerous myths inherited from the French Revolution and from the early stages of industrialisation. It also signalled the adoption of new strategies to confront class domination. The presence of self-employed craftsmen and a majority of skilled workers in the management of IWA national sections, delegations for international congresses and the General Council, reveals not only the cultural and political superiority of these social categories compared to salaried factory workers, but

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also the existence of an earlier, on-going political mobilisation. This outlived the intermediary role that the IWA played between the activities we associate with craftsmen and the trade union and political practices of industry workers. This chapter aims to investigate the social categories which promoted, led and often made up the majority of members belonging to workers’ organisations linked to the IWA. We will try to situate these categories within the productive framework of the capitalist economy and search for elements of continuity and rupture in the cultural expression of labour.

Craftsmen and Skilled Workers in the Radical Tradition It is a currently accepted fact that during the first decades of industrialisation, skilled craftsmen rather than factory workers from the new industrial sectors instigated the workers’ movement. Consequently, the movement ‘was born in the craft workshop, not in the dark, satanic mills’.2 Shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, bakers, bricklayers, printers, and locksmiths were the most frequently active trades during the first half of the nineteenth century, which is the period Sewell referred to when listing the professions most committed to social and political activity. Sydney and Beatrice Webb pointed out that the prevailing attitude of most skilled manual craftsmen up to 1848 was ‘decidedly radical and their leaders played a decisive role in all the working class politics of their time’.3 Edward Thompson highlighted the fact that around 1820–1830, specialised workers ‘in London and all the major cities […] were at the true heart of the cultural and political movements of craftsmen during that time’.4 These sectors became the mouthpiece of the English working class and found an answer to their demands in democratic radicalism. Eric Hobsbawm discussed the continued existence of these categories throughout the nineteenth century. He commented on the rupture of the working class, which Thompson considered to be established in 1830, and the industrial working class, which in the British case was established between 1873 and 1895. In the first period, which Thompson’s study deals with, we can see ‘the appropriation of all types of social strata into the working class’. They were ‘strata which in fact continued to exist but had, in a manner of speaking, become socially invisible’. However, from then on, it was the skilled worker who continued to predominate – wage earners rather than selfemployed workers in England – and a productive structure based on small workplaces. The Great Depression meant that large factories began to prevail and casual or unskilled labour became the norm. Hobsbawm claimed, however, that up to 1874, the dividing line between craftwork and salaried work was unclear, in the same way that the division between political and economic militancy was.5 He also added that until the last quarter of the century, ‘British capitalism consisted of, in general terms, small, individual and highly competitive entrepreneurs’.6 The International years coincided with the linchpin between two periods of economic and social development as well as two types of workers’ organisations. Here is where the merging of types of association, ideas,

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strategies and leadership may be seen; types corresponding to the tradition of craftsmanship and to what would later be the modern workers’ movement. The initial structure of the IWA reveals the diverse tendencies which were attracted to the organisation: trade unionists, mutualists, Proudhonists, cooperativists, Fourierists and Owenites, radical democrats, former Chartists, Blanquists, Marxists and anarchists. It also reveals the impossibility of integrating all these groups while two defining features were emerging. These features were eventually to determine the movement: the enhancement of class consciousness and the independent activities of the working class according to its specific needs and the means within its reach. This implied class struggle and the use of ‘guerrilla’ tactics against capital, while strikes became a bargaining tool for improving working conditions. The French instigators of the International in 1864 were all small artisans: two mechanics, two brass workers, a bricklayer and a shirt maker. The preparatory document of the first congress was signed in the Paris branch by a carpenter, two coach-leather workers, a painter, a cabinetmaker, two brass fitters, a mechanic, a bookbinder, a coach worker, a plumber, an engraver, an optician, a gold-plater and a print worker. In the Geneva Congress of 1866, a shoemaker, a perfume maker, a watchmaker, a tailor and a carpenter represented the London Central Committee. The French and Swiss delegations were made up of similar members.7 The opening ceremony featured flags representing cabinetmakers, carpenters, sawmill workers, stone masons, stone breakers, jewellers and typographers. Of the London General Council’s four representatives in the Lausanne Congress (1867) – Eccarius, Lessner, Carter and Dupont – two were tailors, one was a perfume maker and the other a musical-instrument maker. There were virtually no industrial professions among the congress delegates.8 The English organisations belonging to the IWA had nine thousand members at that time. More than half were shoemakers, together with numerous professions which had little to do with factories.9 The large textile, metal manufacturing and mining unions never joined the International. In the Brussels Congress (1868), only the host country, Belgium – then the most industrialised nation in Europe – included some miners and textile workers among its delegates.10 Of the sixty-five delegates who attended The Hague Congress of 1872, the activities of forty-five were recorded. Professionals were well represented: four teachers, four writers, three doctors and two engineers. Among the trades listed, there were five tailors, four typographers, three shoemakers, two carpenters, two tanners and two mechanics. There were also two draughtsmen, a chemist, a brush maker, a shop assistant, a musical-instrument maker, a weaver, a jeweller, a lithographer, a florist, a porcelain painter, an engraver and a shoehorn manufacturer. One delegate registered himself as a gold-digger.11 The detailed listings of job categories reveal the overwhelming presence of trades – and to a lesser extent professions – in the social mobilisation of the International. The virtual absence of unskilled factory workers in the leadership of IWA national sections and branches did not mean that they remained on the fringes of the organisation. However, everything indicates that they were not

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involved in the process of organising the working class during the time of the International. It was the traditional sectors which took a leading role. These groups were subject to changes in their working conditions and the system of social and cultural values that they had considered to be their own. The case of Spain shares similar traits. Its analysis enables us to take an indepth look at the complex relationships between manufacturing structure, work culture and political attitudes.12 The IWA started to get organised in Spain in late 1868, after the September Revolution of that same year, which recognized basic rights and liberties. Although the initial number of members was modest, from 1872 onward it grew considerably. A year later, it had become one of the most numerous and active divisions of the International.13 The IWA’s growth in Spain was to be dynamic, fragile and short-lived.14 With the exception of the French divisions, the Spanish Internationals were the only ones that would witness a revolutionary situation during the IWA’s fifteen years of existence. This went from the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty in 1868 to the coup d’état of 3 January 1874 which restored it (but now in the name of Isabel II’s son, Alfonso XII). This was a plethoric period of uprisings and disputes, reaching its highpoint with the 1869 federalist republican rebellion and the Cantonal (radical federalists which aimed at local rather than at provincial autonomous entities) uprising of summer 1873. A look at the list of the founding members of the International’s branches in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities, as well as the delegations for the inaugural congress of the IWA’s Federación de la Región Española (FRE) in 1870 and the composition of its Federal Councils (1870–1872) and Federal Commission (1872–1874) confirm the significant presence of pre-industrial artisans and tradesmen among founders and leaders. There were shoemakers, tailors, engravers, typographers, rope-makers, painters, wood gilders, carpenters and cabinetmakers, upholsterers, locksmiths, brass-workers, iron turners, bricklayers, coopers, silk weavers, publicists and a draughtsman.15 The first Actas of the Federal Council reported that two of the members supplied the tools necessary for setting up the office. Ángel Mora carried out carpentry work while Morago, an engraver by profession, produced the official stamps.16 There were also middle-class professionals who held considerable responsibilities or became delegates for the International’s congresses. José Mesa was a journalist and former typographer; Gaspar Sentiñón was a doctor: García Viñas and González Meneses were medical and engineering students respectively; Celso Gomís was a civil engineer. We also find a former seminarian, Nicolás Marseláu, and a schoolteacher, Severino Albarracín. However, most of the IWA leaders were skilled manual labourers. They were masters of trades that were being adapted, pressured or reduced by competition from factories and capitalist production methods which were rendering previous systems of small-scale merchandise production obsolete. None of the above individuals or members of the first two Federal Councils (1870–1872), and very few members of the third (1872) or of the Federal Commission (1873–1874), were engaged in the trades represented by the largest number of FRE members. Quantity did not appear to have any relation to quality when it came to determining who would shape, coordinate or

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provide ideological guidance for the internationalist movement. Thus, the Unión Manufacturera comprised the mechanised and manual textile industry and provided between half and two-thirds of the Spanish members, even though not all the organisations that made up the ‘Unión’ became part of the IWA.17 Nevertheless, its influence in the ideological and strategic course of the IWA was extremely limited.18 After the manufacturing unions, the following trade unions were the most important: the building trade, land workers, shoemakers, papermakers and coopers. The FRE’s influence on Spain’s major work sector – land labourers – was relatively limited in relation to the percentage of the active population it represented in the country. Until 1873, most of the organisations were from Catalonia and not from Andalusia, where there was the highest concentration of landless journeymen.19 In conclusion, reading a list of IWA trade members means taking an extensive journey around Spain’s manufacturing landscape at that time (Appendix 5.1). The labour categories used are not so different from those found in other countries. We therefore need to study the country’s domestic economy in order to discover what they represent, and to what extent they are indicative of Spain’s labour structure.

The IWA and the Productive Structure in Spain Our knowledge of the distribution of labour activities and the size of workplaces in Spain in the 1870s is far from satisfactory. There is a lack of basic studies and the statistics available should be viewed with a certain amount of caution. What we can acknowledge, however, is that Spain’s economic structure at the beginning of the late-nineteenth century was tremendously uneven. This industrial imbalance clearly favoured the textile sector, and within this sector the cotton industry. According to Francisco Giménez’s unofficial studies in Guía Comercial e Industrial, the major manufacturing activities in 1861 included barely 200,000 workers, half of whom were from the textile industry (Table 5.1). This data is incomplete and was taken from tax sources which were questionable even at that time. When Fernando Garrido used these figures four years later, he believed that in Catalonia there were 112,745 workers in the cotton industry and its ancillaries alone – twice the figure quoted by Giménez.20 Moreover, the 1860s witnessed a period of unprecedented industrial growth and this modified the conditions in which the IWA operated. The precise extent of the change is unknown, but there are no doubts as to the direction it took. The changes were due perhaps not so much to the disappearance of small workplaces than to the growth of larger ones. The figures enable us to confirm that small workshops still dominated and that independent production was abundant. On average terms, the smallholding structure in sectors such as the textile industry was larger than these statistics suggest. This was due to the simultaneous development of large and standard-sized industries. Thus in 1872, La Industria Malagueña yarn and fabric factory had 2,000 employees, while the Tres Clases de Vapor

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union in the province of Barcelona called nine strikes in October 1873, affecting 1,474 workers. Some were employed in small factories, but most were in factories of more than 100 workers.21 Table 5.1 Manufacturing Activities in Spain (1861) Sectors

Workers

Factories*

Number of Workers per Factory

Textile Cotton Wool Silk Hemp & linen manufacture Silk, wool, cotton & yarn fabrics

52,859 25,181 8,709 6,401 5,936

3,256 (a) 1,630 (a) 428 (a) 471 621 (a)

16.2 15.4 20.3 13.6 9.6

Agroalimentary Flour Oil Eau-de-vie

22,107 19,838 4,577

12,752 (b) 7,429 (b) 1,702

1.7 2.7 2.7

Metal Iron, steel & copper Metallurgy

11,092 10,873

429 353 (c)

25.9 30.8

Others Tanning Paper Cork Soap Total Workers Quoted

7,060 5,824 4,727 2,745

1,240 355 488 1,259

5.7 16.4 9.7 2.2

187,929

Source: F. Giménez, Guía Comercial e Industrial (1862), quoted by F. Garrido, La España contemporánea. Sus progresos morales en el siglo XIX, Barcelona, 1865, vol. II, 883–96. Table elaborated by author. * (a) Number of owners, (b) Number of Mills, (c) Number of Foundries.

From the information available, the structure of the Spanish labour market and its possible impact on the organisation of workers appears to combine factories with a huge number of small workshops which were at different stages in terms of their technical development and the use of professional skills. Table 5.2 provides an overview of the structure of the labour market and the IWA. It is drawn from information given by the Federal Council in the second half of 1872 and the early months of 1873. In Table 5.2 we can see a traditional, pre-industrial structure in Aguilar (Córdoba) and Manzanares (Ciudad Real). The large number of land workers indicates that they were farming areas, although both were major regional towns. Craft trades reflect the internal secular structure of small manufacturing systems: a master craftsman, a skilled worker and an apprentice. This ratio is found among the shoemakers of Manzanares, the ironsmiths, potters, and virtually all the

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milliners and shoemakers of Aguilar too. In the building trade, each master craftsman headed a team of seven skilled workers, seven apprentices and an average of nine labourers. Table 5.2 Structure of the Labour Market I Trade

Mc

Sw

W

L

A*

Aguilar Land labourers Bricklayers Potters Blacksmiths Milliners Shoemakers Cobblers

– 4 5 8 4 10 –

– 30 5 8 6 30 25

1,800 – – – – – –

– 40 – – – – –

– 30 5 8 4 – 25

Manzanares Farmers Carpenters Shoemakers

– 10 100

– 4 100

1,700 – –

– – –

– 7 100

Source: Actas, October 1872–March 1873. Table elaborated by author. * Mc, Master Craftsmen; Sw, Skilled Workers; W, Workers; L, Labourers; A, Apprentices.

The urban areas of Catalonia (Manresa, Pont de Vilumara, Sabadell and Sant Martí de Provençals) and the Region of Valencia (Alcoy and Cocentaina), reveal industrial features, although they do not present a uniform pattern (Table 5.3). The information takes into account IWA members and non members. The existence of master craftsmen is not mentioned, since the Internationals considered them to be employers. We can distinguish mechanised industrial activities, manufacturing industries and craft activities. The most relevant feature of the cotton textile industry (Manresa, Sant Martí de Provençals) and wool textile industry (Alcoy) is the large number of women workers. In the case of Alcoy, we know that 40 percent of the apprentices were young girls. Apprentices’ wages were roughly one-quarter of what weavers and skilled workers earned. Women’s wages were 50–60 percent of men’s. While mechanisation was wide-spread in the Catalan cotton-producing towns and it would not be long before the factory system was introduced, Valencia continued to use manual methods. A certain number of craft trades still existed in both areas and their structure corresponded to the traditional model. In Alcoy, the massive presence of workers from the same sector may give rise to a certain degree of ambiguity regarding the manufacturing nature of the industry. Work was often carried out at home, and if we look closely, it can be seen that the number of apprentices was the same as that of weavers and practically that of quillers. This was an exact copy of a coordinated production pattern, often concentrated in a complex system of production organised by the ‘manufacturer’. The ‘manufacturer’ provided the workplace and the energy supply, in addition to channelling demand. The correlation based on

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weaver/apprentice/quiller corresponds to the model of the age-old work team of a manual loom, in which the apprentice sends the shuttle back while the quiller prepares the reel. It is evident that the craft trades still used different labour categories: skilled workers, labourers and apprentices. The industrial sectors grouped salaried skilled and unskilled workers under the heading ‘workers’ – which referred to labourers and casual labourers. The category of apprentice was still included for reasons of age, not initiation into the job. Far from being descriptive, the term ‘worker’ was undoubtedly a militant statement. In fact, the paper-mill workers of Cocentaina still made a distinction between skilled workers and labourers (non skilled work). Meanwhile, those of nearby Alcoy – who had a similar structure – did away with this distinction, as was also the case in other trades in that town or in the Catalan towns mentioned earlier. It is also apparent that the term ‘worker’ was used extensively in Catalonia to describe craft categories. In late 1872, the Federation of Alcoy undertook an active propaganda campaign in the area. It was aimed specifically at paper workers’ and wool weavers’ cooperative organisations, which were considered to be privileged interlocutors. Undoubtedly this was because they revealed both initiative and a clear wish to improve the conditions of isolated work, which either made production totally inviable or increased the level of dependency and exploitation. The result was immediate: 150 paper workers from Cocentaina, who were members of a cooperative, left the organisation ‘once they were introduced to the stimulating ideas of the International’, and became the International Branch of Paper Workers.22 They went from being trade workers, determined to rebuild the structure of the craft industry, to identifying themselves as members of the working class. The terms used to categorise labour, which had been erased by the international worker movement in nearby Alcoy, were still used for a while. Nevertheless, first and foremost they considered themselves to be workers exploited by capital. In 1873, the lengthy paper-mill strike in Cocentaina gave rise to the solidarity movement in Alcoy which culminated in the July uprising.23

The Value and Myths of Independent Work and Craft Workers The predominance of trades involving a certain degree of skill was overwhelming in the International. They were generally activities from the pre-industrial period that had an associative and political tradition dating back at least to the beginning of the century (if not to the eighteenth century). The role of the IWA as a continuation of the sectors which had previously been mobilised appears unquestionable. These very same trades established a line of action based on the need for the working class to fight capital exploitation and the ruling classes in favour of social emancipation. They opted for the use of strikes and trade union organisations to improve living conditions. We should bear in mind that the more or less archaic terminology of the trades does not necessarily describe with accuracy either the productive

17

10

Sant Martí de Provençals Tres Clases de Vapor Gas Stokers Bricklayers Ironsmiths

200 48* 39*

75 55

2

Sabadell Mechanical weavers Others

100

Pont de Vilamura Tres Clases de Vapor

18

20 23 17 8 23 19 8 11

Manresa Tres Clases de Vapor Cotton dyers Dyers Handweavers Locksmith Shoemakers Bricklayers Espadrille makers

10

10

1 3

9

A

375

6

103

FW

13

20* 44*

4 45 20 14 190 12

W

SW

L

SW

W

Non Members

IWA Members L

Table 5.3 Structure of the Labour Market II

10

34 17

2

A

400

60

40

6

4

FW

10

31

SW

200 48 59 44

100

20 23 21 53 43 33 190 23

W

Total**

17

2

8

L

10

20

35 20

11

A

775

60

46

6

4

103

FW

114 José A. Piqueras

130

28 112 94 22

57

20

20

4 104

2 73

16 17

41

500 108 686

2

80

22 2 6

2

520

130*

14 2

20 40

10

780 300

43*

Source: Actas, October 1872–March 1873. Table elaborated by author. * No categories are listed. ** Includes members and non members when information about the latter is given. SW, Skilled Workers; W, Workers; L, Labourers; A, Apprentices; FW, Female Workers.

Cocentaina Wool-loom operators Paper-workers Shoemakers

Alcoy Weavers Quillers Woolworkers Dyers Paper workers Masons & bricklayers Carpenters Ironworkers Shoemakers

Furnace workers Ropemakers Coopers

5 9

3 60

1220

2

20

700

150 40

28 112 94 22

57

20

30

1300 300 500 108 686

130

57

4 109 9

22 2 6

2

5 133

16 17

41

1300

4

20

700

2

Craft Work, Industry and Radical Culture in the Age of the First International 115

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structure or the different labour categories. Likewise the language used to designate work hierarchies and corporate relations persisted for many years when defining jobs, as well as in the modern trade unions. The mobilisation of the Internationals was directly linked to those who were masters of a trade, who considered themselves to be the heirs of associative tradition and bargaining practice. In addition, they earned a wage and had a cultural level that placed them above labourers and casual labourers. The better position of skilled workers in terms of wages and culture did not, however, exclude them from the effects of mechanisation. Whether they were part of this process or competed against it in manufacturing structures, it meant their skills or ‘trade’ were becoming gradually less necessary and it was precisely this trade that gave them their status and wage level. To sum up, the dividing line in terms of wage and work conditions between skilled worker, worker or unskilled casual labourer was becoming blurred and increasingly uniform. Social historians have tended to stress the ‘privilege’ of the craftsman and his independence with regard to the salaried factory worker. As militant, working-class history has become more impracticable over the past few decades, a romantic view of the artisan and small- and medium-sized trade workers has gained more supporters. Conclusions have often been drawn from studies about the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries without bearing in mind the various stages of economic development. The creative, associative, cultural and political variety of the groups that tried to withstand the industrial system – or were not absorbed by it due to insufficient capitalist growth – most definitely enriches our vision of society. It acts as a counterweight to the mechanistic view that the craft profession disappeared when the industrial proletariat arrived. However, the attraction of studying these activities, the tendency to overestimate and attribute to them unchanging characteristics over long periods, raises certain issues. Is the intention to perhaps project an anti-industrialist slant on these social categories? Is it perhaps the recollection of a heroic but pointless struggle which enables the social historian to identify with emotional or political ideals? The study of the skilled workers’ mobilisations in 1860 and 1870 is inextricably linked to the changes the economy underwent from the 1850s. In this period in England there was the triumph of the Mancunian (School of Manchester) system; industrial and trade growth in Belgium; the situations following the 1848 revolutions in France and Germany, the Austrian monarchy, Italy and Switzerland; the 1854 revolution in Spain; and the reforms of the Tsarist empire after Russia’s defeat in Crimea. The development of capitalism in these countries meant that industrial processes were intensified in a similar direction and with renewed vigour, even as development varied according to the particular conditions in each country. While in some cases small-scale manufacturing gave way to the factory system, in others it developed together with it on a previously unknown scale and with results that are an intrinsic part of any industrialisation process. Here we see an advanced stage of what Marx referred to as organic small-scale

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production, where different skill levels among workers provide the basis for varying workforce values and give rise to a labour hierarchy and wage scale. Provided the segregation and division of labour is well established, such differentiation enhances the presence of cheap, unskilled manpower and workers with no training costs. The simplification of tasks carried out by the skilled worker in this specialist field reduces the value of his work (except when the production process is divided and results in the creation of tasks which did not previously exist).24 Secondly, the growth of the factory system, besides increasing ‘the scale of production in all other branches of the industry […], modified its very nature’. The principle of mechanisation became decisive in the composition of the workforce both in factory production ‘with or without machinery’, as well as in ‘the so-called cottage industry, where work was carried out in the workers’ homes or in small workshops’. The distinguishing features and jobs of both areas changed in relation to existing patterns. Marx went on to state: ‘today’s so-called cottage industry has nothing in common, except the name, with the old-style cottage industry that represented a self-employed, urban craft worker, an independent peasant economy and, above all, a homestead where the working family lived. Today this industry has become the external department of the factory, the small-scale manufacturer or the large store’. In short, besides imposing itself on the factory and small-scale manufacturer, capital was also mobilised ‘by means of another army of workers: the home workers, dotted around the big cities and the countryside’. He went on to add that exploitation increases and becomes ‘more shameless’ than in the factory, since here it lacks a skilled foundation and suitable machinery and production is based on extreme physical effort. Poverty gives rise to poorer working conditions, the segregation of workers reduces their capacity to resist, while competition between workers increases. A series of ‘parasitical scavengers’ come between the employer and the worker and, more importantly in our case: ‘work carried out at home must compete with mechanised industry or, at the least, with small-scale production in all places and in the same branch.’25 The groups that made a more decisive move to organise ‘class’ societies in the times of the IWA belonged to those workers who were subject to competition from mechanised production and unskilled labour. Those were skilled workers, gradually subjected to professional and retributive devaluation; workers from the modern cottage industry grouped into small workshops – often referred to as ‘the external department of the factory or small-scale industry’; and craftsmen replaced by small-scale workers and industry. It should be remembered that the notion of ‘class’ ceased to have the descriptive meaning it might have had around 1848, and took on instead full economic and political connotations.26 In short, the presence of social and trade categories with pre-industrial overtones in the International was vastly different from the corporate pattern that might have stemmed from the mere link between these trades. When studying independent production which defined craftsmen, it is impossible to separate this from its context, from the role it plays in the

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economy in general or from the ties that bind it to all the other production methods that exist at a given time. Just as capital operates in a different way within the context of feudalism and capitalism and, as Vilar reminds us, it is only in the latter that it organises the production system, independent workers also played a radically different role before, during and after the process of industrialisation and, in general, the implementation of capitalist production. The concept of the ideal craftsman is as unreal and imprecise as that of the temporary labourer. In what respect were these ‘independent’ producers actually independent? In the Ancien Régime, they were not independent from the rules governing the guilds or the co-active authority which, through the corporation, determined who entered and worked in the trade. Independence was considered in relative terms insofar as they owned the work instruments, traded their products freely and were not subject to give up any part of the product or surplus to a superior entity. In the process of taking over production methods or, as appears more frequently, depending on the figure of the trader according to the ways highlighted by Marx,27 craftsmen played an essential role in producing market goods and shaping capitalism. However the craftsman’s gradual subordination to capital was in detriment to the economic independence of the small producer whose social condition became that of a manufacturer’s employee. He thus moved to the ‘capitalist’ cottage industry, a contemporary of and compliment to the emerging factory industry.28 As Maurice Dobb reminds us, until the 1870s the production of nails in England’s Black Country was in the hands of small-scale master craftsmen and owners of small workshops. Until the end of the 1850s, the growth of the metallurgy trade in Birmingham had meant the growth of small-scale craftsmen who, before the development of large factories, employed five or six workers. In the 1860s, the manufacture of arms, jewellery, belts, harnesses and brass smelting, for instance, depended on the small workshop to organise production among cottage craftsmen. In the 1850s, the hosiery industry was based on the system of master craftsmen, each of whom was assisted by an average of two salaried workers. At that time, only one-quarter of cotton manufacturers employed more than one hundred workers, and this figure dropped by 10 percent in the wool and woollen yarn industries. The tailoring and footwear industries were in the hands of workshops which did not have more than ten employees and where selfemployed staff was the norm; i.e. manufacturing activities were decentralised. All of these factors led to a segmented industrial system and tremendous variety in the workforce. Its labour structure was usually very basic in nature.29 As late as 1896, 80 percent of French workshops had five or fewer employees and accounted for 36 percent of all workers. Another 36 percent of salaried staff worked in factories with more than fifty employees. In 1882, 60 percent of industry and small-scale manufacturing employees in Germany were in workshops with five or fewer workers. Only 23 percent of employees were in companies with more than fifty workers.30 Statistics from 1875 indicated that 33.3 percent of German workers were employed in factories,

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20.4 percent were cottage industry workers, and 46.3 percent craftsmen. Jürgen Kocka points out, however, that at the time ‘craftsman’ was used to describe somebody who was no longer independent and who was a hired artisan or cottage industry worker.31 When comparing this information with the table for the manufacturing situation in Spain (see Table 5.3) it can be seen that although the scale differs, the same pattern is clearly visible in both countries. During the period when capitalist structures were being introduced and when industrial development was still in its infancy, craftsmen helped to shape the emerging system. It was only with the progressive consolidation of the factory system in the late nineteenth century that craftsmen were relegated to carrying out subsidiary and increasingly marginal tasks. The small-scale producer’s progressive dependency forced changes on how the organisation of labour and the activity itself were regarded. The artisan did not rely as yet on a wage and thus dominated particular production stages of the articles he made. Undoubtedly, he still identified himself with the job he performed, continued to uphold the labour hierarchy based on experience and know-how (master craftsman, skilled worker, apprentice and labourer), and replaced the dissolved guild system with voluntary and mutual help associations. However, it is questionable whether the increasing pressure exerted by industry and price competition still allowed the craftsman to feel as proud of his work as he did in the past, when the volume of production was second to the quality of the finished article, contrary to the pressures imposed by piecework. Particular sectors and situations aside, when craftwork coexisted in a system where capitalist structures based on salaried work prevailed, as in the period of study at hand, it fell into two distinct categories. In the first, the craftsman was employed in peripheral activities within the overall economy. This was either because his limited importance enabled him to serve a small number of local clients, or his trade specialisation enabled him to make up for low production by demanding a higher price in the market. This situation is usually of particular interest to scholars, because it contains a world of ideas, relations and values which are greatly appreciated in anthropological studies. In the second category, the craftsman was involved in specific stages of the production process or controlled the manufacturing of particular products but was completely subject to industrial or commercial capital. This often took the form of the producer; meaning the individual who determined the terms of production by providing material, loans, energy and access to the market. Working at home or in concentrated units concealed the overexploitation of both the individual and the family. Here each person continued to own the work instruments and paid a nominal fee for using the premises and energy consumed. At this point, the system removed the craftsman’s control over working time and production. He increasingly resembled a paid worker, becoming another cog in the machine. These skilled craftsmen – who replaced the master craftsman with manufacturers – often worked with unskilled labour, casual labourers, workers or, when age permitted it, apprentices. These workers assisted the craftsmen by doing

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preparatory or complementary work and were paid very little. This type of independent work was quite widespread during the initial stages of industrial transformation and remained for quite some time. The case of Alcoy is a perfect illustration of this. An in-depth look at the town’s labour structure reveals elements worthy of reflection insofar as the town was an example of a productive form of transition and those same workers were involved in Spain’s most significant ‘proletarian’ uprising of the time in July 1873. Leaders of the IWA referred to it as being the only ‘purely worker’ and ‘socialist revolutionary’ movement of those in Spain in 1873.32 According to statistics from the Alcoy-based union of wool workers, in the first few months of 1873, there were a total of 3,600 workers in the trade, out of a total population of 32,000. Of those, 1,300 were weavers and a similar number were apprentices (some 500 were women and girls). There were a further 1,000 quillers, of whom two-thirds were female.33 In total, one in two workers was female and a slightly lesser proportion was made up of child labour. The industry had 1,300 looms. According to the organisation affiliated to the International, the weaver was often the owner of the loom and paid rental for the premises. The weaver usually worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, but production only took place for eight months of the year. The work was on a piecework basis and the weaver received a weekly fee from the manufacturer or dealer. A sum was deducted by the loom owner for the depreciation of the loom, after which the apprentices and quillers were paid. Profit margins were greater when the weaver was the owner of a jacquardweaving machine as its productivity was far greater while maintaining similar running costs; in this case daily income was greater than 10 reals (2.5 pesetas). Both the craftsmen/proprietors and craftsmen/workers would refer to themselves as ‘workers’. Both groups belonged to the local branch of the International, which at that time had 600 members. Of the 600 International woollen-industry members, 520 were weavers and no formal distinction was made between proprietors and mere salaried workers. There were barely 80 apprentices and there is no record of a single quiller. The apprentices earned between 3 and 6 reals whilst quillers only received half that amount. It is worth pointing out that according to information supplied by International organisations of the town, lower wages coupled with a lack of basic formal training resulted in people being less willing to associate. It was only through self-exploitation and exploitation by others that those who still belonged to the category of independent producers – even though their production was controlled externally – could hope to compete with factory-based production and new technological advances in the industry.

Trades and Industrial Competition Exploitation was not the exclusive reserve of the factory-based system in relation to a supposedly balanced, moral economy common to small-scale production. It had not been the case in the phase preceding capitalism and it

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would prove not to be so in the adaptive phase of the new social relationships, where the workshop was often a privileged laboratory for the transformation of capitalist relationships. The rivalry between master tradesmen/factory owners and factory/workshop led to a dramatic increase in competition for small producers, who attempted to overcome their lack of economies of scale by reducing wages and increasing the working day.34 A similar situation occurred in home-based subsidiary industries where a reduction in prices was offset by an increase in piecework. The advent of industrial capitalism in the small workshop effectively meant a devaluation of artisan trades that had been forged out of common labour; there was a consequent loss of recognition and income together with a lengthening of the working week. In the 1870s, the workshop was still recognised as playing a key role in the manufacturing of goods, but such recognition was soon to be lost. The master-owner was no longer able to command the same respect from workers and apprentices in the workplace and this was even true outside the work place in the neighbourhood and in other public places. Relations within the workshop or between manufacturers and independent producers had formerly been – under the feudal system – of a regulated or a corporate nature and even paternalistic. The break with the past was now abrupt and radical. At this point, insults aimed at the owner appeared, including terms such as ‘capitalist’, ‘bourgeois’ and ‘exploiter’. The revolutionary discourse of workers of that early period was rich in anticapitalist language and reflected a struggle for workers’ control of labour and the preservation of trades. In contrast, in the factory-based sector there was a predominance of pragmatic demands (emanating from the unions which were not necessarily moderate and which did not move entrepreneurs to accept them). The reality was that by that stage, labour was well and truly controlled by capital. The fact that small-scale production and the factory system coexisted at the same time did not in itself give rise to changes within the structure of the former. The essential features of capitalism which had a decisive influence on the destruction of independent work were also the reasons why capitalism was able to spread and triumph. These included continued increases in productivity owing to the concentration of capital, the incorporation of technological advances and the increased use of non specialised labour which, owing to reductions in costs made for increased returns for the entrepreneur while at the same time making manufactured goods cheaper to buy. It was perfectly coherent that the artisan-producer and the worker in a trade were to perceive industrial capitalism – though they could not quite explain it – as a threatening new order of things governed by something quite antagonistic to their productive practice: competition. At the Second FRE Congress in 1872, the problems of coexistence between industry and small-scale production as outlined by Marx’s Capital became clearly manifest. One of the texts presented expressed the crux of the problem: ‘The manual weavers of Catalonia are currently facing ruin due to the coexistence of steam-driven weaving machines; in order to keep up the

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struggle they are forced to double their efforts, to live more frugally, in short to live an agonising existence making futile attempts to survive; they are doomed to disappear due to economic forces […]. Steam-driven machines are springing up everywhere, manual methods are doomed’.35 An analysis by the Unión Manufacturera (Union of Manufacturing Workers) the largest trade union in the country, provided additional data that confirms the same perception. By the end of 1872, the union had almost thirty thousand members and 218 branches.36 As can be deduced from FRE Council memos, trade union pressure became more intense in the mechanised sectors, where unqualified labour was common, wages were lower and the working day was longer in order to maximise returns on fixed capital. On the other hand, the manual weavers were reluctant to go on strike and join the IWA, although a substantial number did belong to the union.37 In fact, the first organisations of manual weavers in Barcelona had been established around 1840 to prevent a decrease in wages caused by mechanisation, not to demand wage increases.38 A detailed examination of the conflicts reveals the same diversity of social relations in both the Spanish productive structure and in the composition of the International. We can observe that conflicts based on demands for wage increases and the shortening of the working day – these were the most common39– were accompanied by the desire to limit the use of both child and female labour, which in turn represented competition. We can also observe demands made by associated independent producers to limit the number of auxiliary workers in the production units (e.g. weavers and dyers) when this factor escaped their control. This was the case of the silk-dye workers in Valencia who called a general strike for over one month to demand a reduction of the working day from eleven-and-a-half hours to ten hours. In addition, they requested that no more than two apprentices be employed at each dye workshop. The shop owners agreed to the first demand yet ignored the second; the strike ended nevertheless. The demand which was not met was without doubt the most important, but it affected the productivity of each dye operation and overall wage costs.40 As the first category of craftwork mentioned earlier became increasingly marginalised and while the second category continued to expand in an increasingly degraded form, skilled salaried workers who had lost their independence and those craftsmen who lived under the familiar spectre of proletarianisation gradually began to idealise work methods and means of subsistence which were no longer valid.41 The description by Anselmo Lorenzo, a printer and major literary publisher, of his colleague Tomas Gonzalez Morago, another of the founders of the Spanish branch of the International in December 1868 and an early follower of Bakunin, is very revealing: ‘He enjoyed considerable freedom – he worked at his own pace, stopping to chat and then getting back to work. He would often spend whole days sleeping soundly in his bed and not even his patient wife, nor his friends, nor any work that was due could get him up. His workshop was the meeting point for all his carefree friends and there was permanent debate over all the main issues of the time’.42 Morago was an

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engraver and had set up a small workshop in the entrance hall of a house with an apprentice to help him. He had a republican background and had supported the defenders of individualism against the ‘socialist’ ideals espoused by F. Pí y Margall and Fernando Garrido in the early 1860s. Such socialist ideals were presented as the state having the right to ‘moderate and regulate economic relations’ and the defence of associationism as an alternative to the growing ‘social question’.43 In this context, there was full recognition and acceptance of the secular notion of obtaining the ‘integral product of labour’, which was characteristic of a mercantile transaction carried out without intermediaries. It was an issue which was incorporated into the International’s anarchist discourse and which was quickly spread as an accurate reflection of the expropriation that the producer was subjected to. He was being deprived of the wealth he was creating, of his increasingly essential professional skills and of his capacity to organise production, which was now in the hands of the owners of capital and their representatives. The solution supposedly lay in the ‘emancipation of labour’ from the slavery of wages and submission to productive discipline. In the tradition of Proudhon and Bakunin, it was envisaged that this could be substituted by a free federation of associations, while emphasising the autonomy of individuals. The radical democratic tradition of greater social sensitivity had advocated the emancipation of the fourth estate by means of universal suffrage, education and fostering production methods which permitted social harmony, among which emphasis was placed on independent labour in agriculture and manufacturing. The cooperative movement – both Owenite and Fourierist – had been introduced in Spain between 1850 and 1860 by the democrats and was still a powerful pole of attraction as late as 1870.44 Through mutual collaboration, it was also a means of limiting free competition between producers. The ideas held by the International regarding the resistance to capital clashed with the gradual ‘emancipation’ of small groups of workers who had created cooperative workshops. There were cooperatives of producers that directly became branches of the IWA (silk-makers in Valencia and paperworkers in Cocentaina). Similarly, there were workers who, encouraged by the climate of solidarity fostered by belonging to the IWA, set up cooperative workshops. The barrel-making trade, which found itself in expansion together with increased wine production, put forward the small amount of capital needed – undoubtedly due to market demand – to set up a workshop and introduced the practice of getting workers to bring along their own tools.45 The union of coopers went so far as to recommend the setting up of permanent cooperatives. This move was severely criticised by the Federal Commission of the IWA, as it was seen as ‘having the deliberate aim of getting branches to break away from the International by creating privileged groups and creating restricted interests’.46 There was a precedent of a cooperative workshop, which had been set up as a mercantile company, and where two partners had imposed a ban on talking about the IWA on the shop floor.47 Consumer cooperatives nevertheless continued to enjoy considerable prestige and became very important in places where International membership

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increased soon after the cooperatives had been created, as was the case in Alcoy and Sanlúcar de Barrameda.48 On several occasions, the Federal Council made declarations against the creation of production cooperatives ‘because they only make workers let down their guard’.49 Nevertheless, in light of the effect that these ideas had on the working population and the success of certain initiatives, the very leaders that cast their doubts on cooperatives commended their accomplishments – perhaps to avoid conflict with members in favour of cooperatives at a time when the FRE was going through conflicts with its Marxist nuclei – and went so far as to justify them ideologically. A letter to the local committee of Sanlúcar stated: ‘you have freed yourselves from the bourgeois claws in every way that is humanly possible by establishing the furnace and barber’s shop in a spirit of solidarity. You have formed a model collective of the future where exploitation will disappear and where justice will control its actions’.50 By 1873, Sanlúcar had over three thousand federated members in a population of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Apart from job categories, there was without a doubt a clear consciousness that the working class was made up of those that work for a living. It is not surprising that, in the Conference of the FRE held in Saragossa in April 1872, there were such varied views when the question of what actually defined a worker was raised. Those delegates from a craftwork background (González Morago) and non workers (the science student, Trinidad Soriano) had a view of class based on a revolutionary consciousness. A printer from Madrid defined a worker as ‘anyone who performs any work which is useful to humanity and which does not go against justice and morality’. The Malaga Federation defined a worker as someone who carries out a job by means of a trade. The approved definition held that the worker was the creator of a socially useful product and it included those who did necessary yet unpaid work for human wellbeing.51 The International included salaried workers encouraged by the prospect of improving their situation through union pressure; home workers who were threatened by the extortion of external ‘manufacturers’; and producers who owned the means of production but worked together in the same workshop and were subjected to the conditions established by the industrialist, whose orders regarding prices and the use of employees they tried to resist. There were mechanised and manual activities, modern and pre-industrial trades, trades that were in expansion and others that were doomed to disappear. Belonging to both the trade association and the International meant that they referred to themselves as proletarians and shared the common goal of establishing a new social order. Nevertheless, the diversity of backgrounds generated a wide range of demands. The greater ‘visibility’ of craft workers and tradesmen and their ability to attend and play a leading role in the IWA was related to a number of factors, including the inherent problems they experienced with their new social relations, their traditional willingness to protest and their cultural level. Let us focus on the latter factor, having examined the first two. Some fragmented data is available on labour activities in certain towns from a survey

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carried out by the Federal Council on local IWA federations. Though the data is limited, it is nonetheless of interest to provide a rough idea. In Pont de Vilumara (Barcelona) the sections of mechanical weavers, spinners and workers had 230 members of which barely 3 men could read and write, while 17 men and 110 women had no formal education whatsoever. In the same sections in Manresa (Barcelona), there were 20 male and 103 female workers nearly all of whom could read but few of whom could read and write. In the rest of the craft trades, where there were no more than 20 members in each of the trades, the majority were literate. In San Fernando, Cádiz, there were 113 federated members (110 workers, 1 unskilled labourer and 2 apprentices) belonging to the mechanical and carpentry sections and both related to the naval dockyard. One hundred of these could read and write (88.5 percent). In Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, the winemakers’ section had 220 members of which 120 (54.5 percent) were completely illiterate. Sixty could read (27.3 percent) and 40 could read and write (18.2 percent). The agriculture section had 106 federated members, 36 of whom were illiterate (34 percent), 50 could read (47 percent) and 20 could read and write (19 percent). On the other hand, the shoemaker’s section had 28 members, of whom 22 could read and write (78.6 percent). In Carmona, Seville, the agriculture section had 654 members and figures were similar to those for the day workers in Sanlúcar, though somewhat better, perhaps due to the announcement of the opening of a school. There were 146 totally illiterate people (22.3 percent), 300 could read (45.8 percent) and 208 could read and write (31.9 percent).52 For that period, the literacy rate for the whole of the Spanish population over the age of seven years was slightly over 30 percent.53 This data allows us to draw certain conclusions: (1) Workers affiliated to the IWA had acquired a generally higher educational standard than the average population. (2) In factory-based industries, the situation was the opposite. Where the most unskilled labour was performed (work such as spinning and preparing textiles, which was carried out by women and children), illiteracy rates were very high. This may help to explain their very limited role in the leadership of the FRE, in spite of their organisation and their ability to apply pressure. (3) In areas with a predominance of day labourers, the cultural level was also very low although it is worth noting that a considerable number knew how to read even if they could not write. Together with those that could read they made up between 45.5 percent and 78 percent of those workers in our small sample, which is a far cry from the most common preconception held for these groups. (4) The affiliated craft workers and tradesmen had quite a high literacy rate for the period, which in turn offered them privileged access to the workers’ press, manifestos and pamphlets, social literature and the most elementary correspondence. This allowed contact with sections in other locations and last but not least, with the trade union or the FRE committee.

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The printed word became instrumental in the propaganda and organisation of workers, even more so than the spoken word in the process of establishing international networks of associations. The workers were even the subjects of advertising slogans in that their habits were taken into account, i.e. their recent associative tendency and certainly their ability to read. The expansion of the IWA in Alcoy at the end of 1872 prompted a manufacturer of tobacco paper to print a seal of similar design, lettering and size to that of the Federal Council. The slogan read: ‘Every member should smoke with such fine paper’.54 It was a slogan that only bore relevance if the purchaser could read it.

Democratic Radicalism and the International The social make-up of the International, the background of its leaders and the general discourse that shaped the propaganda allow us to regard it as a manifestation of radical culture which existed throughout most of the nineteenth century. There was of course an evolution of this radical culture that cannot be understood on the basis of generic postulates from the previous twenty or thirty years. From a situation in which the majority of the population were excluded from political life, which contravened the principle of the universality of rights, there was a transition towards a consciousness of exploitation held by large sections of society and defined in terms of class. Exploitation was seen as the direct consequence of an economic order based on the appropriation of labour by the owners of capital who used the state and the laws of the land to perpetuate their dominance. The social condition was set to become the basis of future collective demands rather than the exclusion of the working masses from political and civic participation. We can better ascertain whether these ideas filtered into society by examining local activities and involvement rather than analysing the texts of the indoctrinated leaders. A case in point is a response given at a republican meeting that took place in Bilbao in 1872. ‘A worker held that freedom without economic guarantees was little use to the working class and that the most important thing was that workers should organise themselves into Trade Sections and through federations of committees of resistance, to be in a position to demand our rights from those who disregard them’. It was said that there would be no freedom for workers in a bourgeois republic, but instead ‘it is up to the workers to guarantee it for themselves by means of the union and solidarity within the IWA’.55 The evolution of radical political culture is linked to the accumulated experiences of the early six-year revolutionary period (1868–1874), between 1868 to 1871 in particular. This period was marked by the recognition of basic political rights and liberties. At the same time, the military call-up intensified for the unpopular colonial war in Cuba, and the effects of the agrarian crisis were ignored while new public land was taken away from the peasant communities and sold. Furthermore, there was harsh repression of the Republican attempts at revolution and labour conflicts were overcome

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with varying degrees of success. This evolution was not solely based on unfulfilled expectations, since workers did not, on the whole, turn massively and irreversibly away from the Federal Party, in spite of reservations against republican proposals. Then, social demands took priority over political oneseven though the latter were not excluded – and emphasis was placed on social rights and economic demands. The structural roots of change in radical culture in Spain can be found in the material realities and transformations which intensified from the second half of the 1850s. The concepts of civil and political equality, of work as the only legitimate source of income and of justice understood as fair treatment, formed the nucleus of a radical culture that artisans had for decades identified with democratic and republican aspirations. These aspirations were reformulated in the light of the economic praxis and experiences in the years subsequent to the 1868 revolution. In the International, we find clear elements of continuity and change. The fourth estate acquired a profile in the form of a salaried worker; labour continued to be the articulating element of the social collective and a production-based vision developed while capitalist relations expanded and craft work declined. The state continued to be seen as an instrument for domination which denied the rights of individuals. A mistrust of the parliamentary system continued as long as certain conditions were still to be created: the destruction of the traditional power system or the substitution of private property by an egalitarian social structure. The discontinuity of radical practice was highly influenced by the factor that most greatly influenced the affiliation and growth of the IWA: organised pressure to meet labour demands. ‘The new society’, wrote the sociologist Pérez Pujol in 1872, referring to the International, ‘is in the eyes of most workers merely a new and strong organisation that certainly affords the possibility of wage increases; for now this is enough to get them to rally behind the new flag […]; if they join the rank and file, it’s only for today’s battle, for today’s strike action which they hope will mean a wage increase tomorrow’.56 There is a wealth of information that confirms the following sequence: demands put forward by workers, strike, effective solidarity, demands met, stable union organisation and affiliation to the IWA. By the same token, the failure of strikes or repression tended to discourage membership.57 The General Committee of London, in reference to the French social movement, wrote that: ‘It was not the International that got the workers to go out on strike but the strike that drove them to the International’.58 Generally speaking, the demands of wage earners became more prominent in Spain in 1872 and 1873, while at the same time the IWA increased its membership. The evolution of new attitudes came together with a new classbased discourse – though in the majority of cases, it did not mean a complete transfer of loyalties and the repudiation of past credence, as was the case with its anarchist leaders or with those who were to be future Marxists. After a closer look at the FRE, it becomes apparent that the culture of the International sprung directly from democratic radicalism fostered by craft workers and to a greater extent, skilled workers in trades. They were

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undoubtedly influenced by new ideas and the systematic practices of organisation for resistance that culminated in the main break with the former harmonious tradition. The complex relations of the Internationals with republicanism built up many links as well as breaking them. The international workers’ movement in Spain was to coincide with the high-point of radical democratic unrest organised by the republicans; it was their party that most represented democratic radicalism until the downfall of the Republic in 1873.59 Within this radicalism, flavoured by streams of solidarity and of individuality, a tendency to associate emerged while a vaguely egalitarian spirit prevailed: ‘Few republicans have reached socialism but all socialists are republican’ wrote Elías Reclús in his diary at the beginning of 1869.60 Given these circumstances and experiences and without denying the existence of workerbased popular republicanism, we find that after 1873 in Spain, there was an autonomous and clearly profiled working-class movement that was to consolidate itself in the last decades of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century.

Appendix I Trade Unions of the FRE-IWA Agricultural workers Bakers Barbers Beam makers Binders Blacksmiths Boiler makers Brick makers Bricklayers Bronze-foundry workers Builder’s labourers Cabinet makers Carpenters and Cabinetmakers Cart drivers Cart makers Chandlers Chemical workers Chocolate Confectioners Cork makers Corset makers Cotton workers, weavers and quillers Cotton-loom operators (steam) Cylinder makers Espadrille makers Fan makers Farm hands Fishermen

Marble workers Mechanical woollen-loom operators Mechanics Millers Milliners Miners Painters Paper makers Pastry and sweet confectioners Piano makers Potters Printers Quarry workers Quillers Rope makers Saw operators Seamen Seamstresses Sheet metal workers Shoe and Boot makers Shop assistants Silk dyers Silversmiths Slaughterhouse workers Spoolers Starchers Steam-engine drivers (railways, maritime & land)

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Furnace men Gas workers Gas-furnace operators Handweavers Harvesters Hat makers (all types) Ink makers Iron workers Ironers Iron-foundry workers Leather workers Lithographers Locksmiths Loom Operators Machinists

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Stevedores Stone breakers Stonemasons Stucco workers Tailors Tanners Tannery workers Typographers Upholsterers Waiters Wood turners Wool dyers Wool knitters Wool workers

Source: Actas y Correspondencia de la AIT (1870–1874), La Solidaridad (1870–1871), La Emancipación (1871–1873), La Federación (1869–1874).

Notes 1. For the role of the International in European society, E. Labrousse (ed.), La Première Internationale. L’Institution. L’implantation. Le rayonnement, Paris, 1968; and J. Freymond (ed.), ‘Introducción’ to La Primera Internacional. Colección de documentos, Madrid, 1973, 7–40. See also the brief national syntheses in J. Droz (dir), Historia general del socialismo, Barcelona, 1976–1977, 2 vols. 2. W.H. Sewell Jr., Trabajo y revolución en Francia. El lenguaje del movimiento obrero desde el Antiguo Régimen hasta 1848, Madrid, 1980, 15. 3. S. Webb and B. Webb, Historia del sindicalismo, Madrid, 1990 [1902], 8. 4. E.P. Thompson, La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra, Barcelona, 1977, vol. 2, 82. There is an express reference made to tailors, shoemakers, bookbinders, typesetters, bricklayers, hatters, tanners, silversmiths, barrel-makers, saw-millers, boiler-attendants, cablemakers, ironsmiths, silk printers, rope and string-makers, tin and bronze smelters, watchmakers etc. 5. E.J. Hobsbawm, El mundo del trabajo, Barcelona, 1987, 177 and 238–40. 6. E.J. Hobsbawm, Trabajadores, Barcelona, 1979, 318. 7. The French delegation was made up of a musical-instrument worker, an engraver, a gas technician, a sculptor, a bronze worker, a mechanic, a bronze fitter for furniture, a contractor, a darner, a journalist, a bookbinder, a printer and a lithographer. The Swiss delegation was made up of four engravers, a carpenter, a salesman, a clock adjuster, a container maker, a commercial agent, an employee, a teacher, a ribbon maker and a shoemaker. 8. Gathered in Lausanne were representatives of ribbon-makers, embroiders, sheet-metalworkers, mechanics, printers/typesetters, draughtsmen, tailors, shoemakers, builder’s labourers and plasterers, painters, bookbinders, tanners, carpenters, coffee brewers, knife-makers and a sole weaver from Basel. There were also doctors, journalists, shopkeepers, teachers, accountants etc. 9. In the English IWA, the most important group were the shoemakers, followed by bricklayers, cabinetmakers, tobacco workers, barrel makers, bookbinders, ribbon makers, trunk makers, canister makers, embroiders, coachmen, coach upholsterers, varnishers, organ-makers, painters, wood guilders, tanners, tinsmiths, weavers of elastic textiles and ladies’ shoemakers. 10. The trades of the English delegates at the Brussels Congress were: chair maker, brush painter, tailor and watchmaker (these four were represented by societies which were in turn members of the General Council), cigarette-maker, tailor, blacksmith, carpenter and two mechanics. Representing Germany, there was a knife-maker, a diamond cutter and a carpenter. For

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

José A. Piqueras France, there was a tailor, an engraver, a mechanic, a bronze worker, a tinsmith, a jeweller, a carpenter, a bookbinder, a porcelain maker, a harness maker, a printer, a marble worker, a cabinetmaker and two weavers from Lyon. From Switzerland there were two watchmakers, a quarry worker, an enamel painter, a teacher and a manufacturer of printed paper. The Belgian delegation was made up of eleven coal miners, five weavers, four tailors, three shoemakers, two glass workers, two typographers, two carpenters, 2 agriculturists, a printer, a brush painter, a jeweller, a sculptor, an ink maker, a glove maker, a haberdasher, a press worker, a worker in marble, a journalist, a wandering musician, a bread baker, a railway mechanic, a teacher, a surveyor and a mechanic. See the minutes and verbal transcriptions of the IWA Congresses pieced together by Freymond, La Primera Internacional, vol. I, 65. The delegations at the Geneva conferences, vol. I, 75–76 and 121; Lausanne, vol. I, 187–89, 193 and 254–55; Brussels, vol. I, 608–12; and The Hague, vol. II, 386. In order to study the Spanish section of the IWA, apart from the periodical press, I have for some years now had access to printed copies of the Minutes of the Councils and Federal Commissions of the Spanish IWA and books which have copied the correspondence of a total of 3,621 letters. The inferences and conclusions of my work related to the case of Spain rests on the analysis of this material: C. Seco (ed.), Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores. Actas de los Congresos y la Comisión Federal de la Región Española (1870–1874), Barcelona, 1969 (henceforth cited as Actas); C. Seco and M.T. Martínez de Sas (eds), Correspondencia, comunicaciones y circulares de la Comisión Federal de la Región Española, (1870–1874), Barcelona, 1972–1979, 3 vols.; and M.T. Martínez de Sas (ed.), Correspondencia, comunicaciones y circulares de la Comisión Federal de la Región Española, Barcelona, 1979–1987, 4 vols. [henceforth cited as Correspondencia]. In September 1873, the Spanish branch of the IWA stated in the Memoria for the Geneva Congress that it had more than 50,000 members, 162 local branches, 454 trade unions and 77 other unions of workers. Cit. by M. Nettalu, La Première Internationale en Espagne (1868–1888), Dordrecht, 1969, 181. It also gave information regarding the setting up process of another 108 local branches, 103 trade unions and 40 other labour organisations. According to F. Mora, Historia del socialismo obrero español desde sus primeras manifestaciones hasta nuestros días, Madrid, 1902, 149–50, at the peak of its growth, the Federación de la Región Española [FRE] had 60,000 members made up of those that paid their dues and passive members; there were 190 local branches and 800 unions. Seco, Actas, LXI, considers with caution that the maximum membership lay between 40,000 and 50,000 for Spanish workers affiliated to the IWA. Nettlau states: ‘Of all the sections of the IWA, the Spanish one was the biggest, the most solidly organised, the most homogenous and the one that lasted the longest’. According to Nettlau, at the 1872 The Hague Conference, the FRE was the most important workers’ organisation of the IWA in terms of number of sections and number of affiliates (Nettlau, La Première Internationale, 140–41). The crisis of the FRE became apparent with the proclamation of the Republic in February 1873 and which brought about the atomisation of actions undertaken by the Federal Councils; the situation became tenser with the events at Alcoy and the cantonal movement. The crisis did not undermine membership as it continued to increase. The weakening of the FRE came about as a result of the repression after the military uprising on 4 January 1874 and the outlawing and subsequent separation of the Catalan industrial union movement that was at loggerheads with the nihilistic, insurrectional stance of the FRE leadership. See studies by C.E. Lida, Anarquismo y revolución en la España del XIX, Madrid, 1972; J. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España. La Primera Internacional (1864–1871), Barcelona, 1977; and J.A. Piqueras, La Revolución democrática (1868–1874). Cuestión social, colonialismo y grupos de presión, Madrid, 1992, 119–256 and 621–76. The Madrid-based founding nucleus of the International and also the provisional central region section of Spain, in A. Lorenzo, El proletariado militante, Madrid, 1974 [1901], 43 and 85. The founding memo in La Solidaridad, 15 and 22 January 1870. J.J. Morato, Historia de la sección española de la Internacional (1868–1874), Madrid, 1930, 42–43; by the same author, Líderes del movimiento obrero español 1868–1921, ed. with remarks by V.M. Arbeloa, Madrid, 1972, passim.; and Mora, Historia del socialismo obrero español, 50–53.

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16. Actas, 20 July 1870. 17. By mid-1872 the Unión Manufacturera declared that it had 28,000 federated members (Actas, 2 June 1872). In April 1872, the FRE had 25,000 members and by December the figure had reached some 29,000. 18. It was only in July 1873 that they managed to assume the leadership of the Barcelona Federation, to the detriment of the faction focused on insurrection and hence support switched to the Republican candidates. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo, 215. 19. The active population in agriculture in 1877 – the date of the closest census available for the period under discussion – was five million, while just over one million were engaged in tertiary activities. Around 900,000 people were engaged in the secondary sector of which some 700,000 were classified as belonging to the ‘arts and crafts’, though this must not be confused with the independent producer; rather, the classification alludes to those earning wages by carrying out a trade in workshops and small-scale production units. Censo de la población de España, según empadronamiento hecho en 31 de diciembre de 1877, Madrid, 1883–1884. 20. F. Garrido, La España contemporánea, Barcelona, 1865, vol. II, 900. 21. ‘La industrial malagueña’ in Actas, 16 August 1872. The 1873 strikes took place at factories belonging to Puig and Llogostera (300 workers), Puig y Carsí (319), Manuel Balet (140), Puig Barte (300), Fiol (20), Ramon Basté (24), Brunet y Serrat (16), José Pardo y Solé (55) and Santacana (300). Actas, 10 October 1873. 22. Actas, 21 August and 17 September 1872. 23. Lida, Anarquismo y Revolución, 212 ff. 24. K. Marx, El Capital. Crítica de la economía política, Madrid, 1979, vol. 2, 425–26. 25. Marx, El Capital, 461–63; an illustration of the process of transition of both the modern manufacturing industry and the domestic system pertaining to England’s large-scale industry in the 1860s, on pages 572–85. In relation to the aforementioned process, Marx concludes: ‘The economisation of the means of production […] as well as the stripping-away of the basic assumptions of the function of labour, now more than ever obviates its antagonistic and murderous aspects, particularly in relation to the weakness of the productive social force derived from work and the technical basis of the combined processes of work’. 26. Sewell, Trabajo y revolución en Francia, 384–85. 27. Marx, El Capital, vol. 6, 427–28. 28. M. Dobb, Estudios sobre el desarrollo del capitalismo, Madrid, 1984 [1946], 155–212. 29. Dobb, Estudios, 305–19. 30. R. Magraw, ‘Socialismo, sindicalismo y movimiento obrero francés antes de 1914’, 75; and D. Geary, ‘El socialismo y el movimiento obrero alemán antes de 1914’, 150 and 157–60, both in D. Geary (ed.). Movimientos obreros y socialistas en Europa, antes de 1914, Madrid, 1992. 31. J. Kocka, ‘Los artesanos, los trabajadores y el Estado: hacia una historia social de los comienzos de del movimiento obrero alemán’, Historia Social, 12 (1992), 107–10. For Kocka, the first German workers’ movement drew inspiration from militant – and angry – master craftsmen who were against the process of modernisation. Though they were formally dependent, many in fact dependent and they held on to the values of craftsmanship, such as the right to an equitable salary and the maintenance of job integrity. In their study on France, E. Shorter and C. Tilly, Las huelgas en Francia (1830–1968), Madrid, 1985 [1974], 259, conclude that the organisations created in the nineteenth century by skilled workers ‘consolidated a feeling of occupational belonging and managed to defend thier accepted common interests: i.e. the protection of the autonomy of a trade in the face of attempts by entrepreneurs to control them; furthermore, they sought to limit the entry of apprentices and to maintain high standards of quality’. 32. Letter from the Spanish Federal Commission to the Federal Council of North America, (Correspondencia, 18 September 1873). 33. Actas, 3 February and 7 March 1873. 34. N. Kirk, ‘En defensa de la clase. Crítica a algunas aportaciones revisionistas sobre la clase obrera inglesa en el siglo XIX’, Historia Social, 12 (1992), 82–90. W.H. Sewell Jr., ‘Los artesanos, los obreros de las fábricas y la formación de la clase obrera francesa, 1789–1848’,

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35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

José A. Piqueras Historia Social, 12 (1992), 119–40, points out that to cater for the growing demand for items of mass consumption, the proprietors reorganised the model of production, increasing the division of labour and resorting to subcontracting and thereby diluting the specialisation of the worker; a segment of the production was transferred to women and children working at home. The intense exploitation of craftwork and of the domestic system will explain the predominance of craftsmen in the first phase of the workers’ movement. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo, 160. Correspondencia, 12 December 1872. The union had 33 sections for spinners, 33 for dayworkers or workers used for preparation processes, 33 for mechanical weavers, 83 for manual weavers, 1 for fabric-printing workers, 3 for machinists, 3 for veil weavers, 10 for ropemakers, 6 for sandal-makers, 11 for dyers, 1 for steamroller workers and one for thick-brush painters. ‘[I]t is quite a sensible thing for manual weavers that are in such need of the social Revolution to be concerned, in the majority of cases, about the old principles, and consequently reactionary ones’, the Federal Commission confessed to the management of Tres Clases de Vapor, the federation of cotton and allied industries (Correspondencia, 11 October 1873). About the time when this observation was made, the manual weavers went out on strike in Manresa; this section was one of the few that belonged to the IWA (Actas, 20 October 1873). For trade unionism in manufacturing industries in this period, M. Izard, Industrialización y obrerismo. Las Tres Clases de Vapor (1869–1913), Barcelona, 1973, 111–32. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo, 21. Between 1870 and 1872, according to the Madrid workers’ press, there were 203 strikes and in 110 cases, the cause of the conflict was known: 54 were to do with wages, 22 were to do with the length of the working day, 21 were to do with wages and the working day, 5 were to do with grievances about being sacked, 2 concerned dignity issues and 6 concerned solidarity issues. R. Flaquer, La clase obrera madrileña y la Primera Internacional (1868–1874), Madrid, 1977, 58–77. Diario Mercantil de Valencia, 28 October to 12 December 1871. Also Kirk, ‘En defensa de la clase’, 74–75, who has emphasised the idyllic vision propagated by the Chartists in relation to the moral economy of small-scale craft production and the domestic system. Lorenzo, El proletariado militante, 36. F. Pi i Margall, ‘Hechos’, La Discusión, 20 May 1864, in Pensamiento social, 215. Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo, 29. During the barrel-makers’ strike in Santander, the workers, ‘numbering 249, had sworn to burn their tools before succumbing to the exploitation of the bourgeoisie’, Actas, 14 March 1871. Correspondencia, 14 December 1873. Correspondencia, 26 November 1873. Upon joining the IWA, the section of wool-weavers of Alcoy had, by mid-1872, agreed to give money to the consumer cooperative for the whole of the local federation. There were 120 members at this time, while there was another section with 268 paper workers. A month later, the number of federated members reached 1.200 (Actas, 27 August and 17 September 1872). Correspondencia, 11 November 1872. Correspondencia, 12 December 1872. J. Álvarez Junco, La ideología politica del anarquismo español (1868–1910), Madrid, 1976, 433. Actas, 4, 8 and 15 October and 22 November 1872; Correspondencia, 11 October 1872. J.A. Piqueras, El taller y la escuela, Madrid, 1988, 184 ff. Actas, 10 December 1872. Actas, 12 July 1872. E. Pérez Pujol, La cuestión social en Valencia, Valencia, 1872, 2; as has been pointed out by Álvarez Junco, La ideología política, 461, the use of strike action proved to be fundamental in the spreading of the International as this action transferred the struggle to the economic

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57.

58.

59. 60.

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terrain. The discourse relating to the advantages of strike action was used in the wording of the constitution of the first local federation of Valencia, Diario Mercantil de Valencia, 13 July 1870. The Cadiz federation complained in 1870 that they were losing ground due to the ‘persecution by authority as a consequence of the bread bakers’ strike that had discouraged many federated members (Actas, 20 December 1870). After the exit of the IWA from the carpenters society of Barcelona, the Federal Council ‘debated the whole question of strikes in that they were all too frequent, were often badly planned, were often ineffective, and which often led to serious reverses for the cause of workers, resulting in damage to the workers’ organisation’ (Actas, 28 March 1871). Soon after a resolution directed at local federations was passed. It commenced by stating: ‘If we are to consider that solidarity among workers is barely a fait accompli but something that is a mere word that is nevertheless readily accepted by workers, we must be wary of a lack of soldarity turning them away from our organisation, leading them to a state of utter indifference’ (Actas, 14 June 1872). After the declaration of a ‘strike for dignity’ by forty master shoemakers in Malaga after the owner of the workshop had insulted them, they organised themselves as a section of the IWA (Actas, 23 July 1872). In Valencia, there was an announcement of victory by steam locomotive drivers and coal stokers employed by the railways after two days of strike action, leading to a strengthening of the local section of steel workers to which they belonged. The report went on to say: ‘Nearly all workers at the railway workshops are now part of the same section as a result of the assembly that took place on the 19th of this month’ (Actas, 20 December 1872). Cited by J. Bruhat. ‘El socialismo francés de 1848 a 1871’, 527; and A. Kriegel. ‘La Associación Internacional de Trabajadores (1864–1876)’, 615; both in Droz, Historia general del socialismo, vol. I. In France, Belgium and Switzerland, the number of strikes increased after 1866 and there was an increase in adhesion to the IWA. J.A. Piqueras, ‘Detrás de la política. República y federación en la revolución española’, in J.A. Piqueras and M. Chust (comps.), Republicanos y repúblicas en España, Madrid, 1996, 1–43. E. Reclus, ‘Impresiones de un viaje por España (notas de un bloc en país de revolución)’, La Revista Blanca, 251, 1 November 1933. In relation to this question, A. Elorza, ‘Ideología obrera en Madrid: republicanos e internacionalistas’, in A. Elorza and M. Rallé, La formación del PSOE, Barcelona, 1989, 17–41; Lida, Anarquismo y revolución, 102–7; Termes. Anarquismo y sindicalismo, 35–43; and Piqueras, La revolución democrática.

CHAPTER 6

‘RESISTANCE, RESISTANCE, RESISTANCE!’ SKILLS AND DISPUTES IN THE CASTELLÓN ESPADRILLE INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Vicent Sanz Rozalén

‘Resistance, resistance, resistance!’ A Socialist newspaper report of the meeting held in the bull ring of Castellón (on the Mediterranean coast) on the morning of 22 December 1901, organised by the Association of Espadrille Workers, echoed the workers’ rejection of initiatives aimed at reaching an agreement with manufacturers to end a ten-day-old strike. Aside from the heroic tone with which the editor wished to express the volatility of the moment and the greater or lesser emphasis than can be found in the reports of the various local newspapers,1 the truth of the matter is that the strike paralysed the production of espadrilles in the city until the end of February 1902. It was a long dispute – lasting two-and-a-half months – the longest of all the strikes that had been held by workers in Castellón until that time, and it had deep social repercussions because it affected the industrial sector which employed the greatest number of workers in the city. The following pages will analyse how this conflict was a means of expressing various different factors which all came together at the same time and resulted in the workers’ ability to put up resistance. And as we shall see, these workers were employed in an urban profession which was in a very precarious state. The chronological framework in which the strikes took place is the ideal setting in which to observe the increase in working-class protests, the decline of craft trades, the effects of proletarianisation among manufacturing workers, the survival of working practices which conditioned the production processes in coexistence with the spread of centralised production processes, the predominance of republicanism in popular urban

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strata and the roots of class association. The 1901–1902 strike involving workers of the espadrille industry took place in this context and at the time when all these factors came together. The most interesting aspects are the extent to which the characteristics of the workforce itself and the extent to which the organised coordination of links of solidarity among workers helped to sustain workers’ resistance in their confrontation with the factory owners. The perception that these workers had of themselves and of their own ability to resist was essential to maintain their belligerent attitude during this period. Equally important, the employers’ attitude towards the demands of their workers and their refusal to give in to their claims were to a certain degree based on the lengths to which workers were willing to go to continue the strike. The fight for control of the industry was characterised by the tension regarding the consolidation or the undermining of the foundations on which the workers’ ability to resist was built. The specific characteristics of the labour force employed in the manufacturing of espadrilles and the ways in which the production process was organised were determining factors in exercising this control, and therefore any change in these had an immediate effect on the relations between capital and labour in the industry.2 The limited use of machines in the espadrille manufacturing process meant that the sector was highly dependent on the labour force, both in quantitative terms – a large number of workers were required to meet the demand – and in qualitative terms – these workers needed to have specific manual skills in order to be able to do the job and guarantee certain levels of quality. Both issues sparked off – and acted as a catalyst for – a great number of disputes which took place during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.3 These conflicts demonstrated the heritage of radical culture which was expressed in political ideas and social practices that came both from the universalisation of rights and from the desire to change the social conditions of a system based on the exploitation of capital.4 In addition to historical republicanism derived from the exclusion/manipulation of political life, sociostructural factors were added which led to claims for social rights and economic demands. The cultural ideas provided by democratic and republican sectors on the configuration of the intellectual universe of popular working-class culture took on meaning from the ‘life experiences’ of these sectors, creating specific needs which influenced both collective and individual behaviour.5 The convergence of both in the same framework of cultural references survived as long as the political circumstances derived from an oligarchic system and the material living conditions maintained the appeal, reason and need for a common ‘popular’ identity.6 This resistance culture and the struggle against oppression continued and were strengthened within a social structure in which the presence of craftsmen was still a determining factor and within the organisation of a production process which required a certain degree of specialisation of the labour force in some specific phases and sectors. It was precisely the skills of the craftsmen and the forging of links of solidarity between members of the same social group which resulted in the ability to apply pressure in the

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negotiations and to hold out in the confrontation. It is hardly surprising that during the strike analysed here the employers demanded ‘total freedom’ to organise the production process.7 At the same time, the gradual strengthening of the internal unity of espadrille workers in the form of the Workers’ Association became an instrument of resistance against the attacks of the company owners. The owners of the espadrille factories of Castellón attempted to counter this by provoking, as we shall see, the outbreak of the conflict in mid-December 1901. The espadrille workers’ strike had a considerable influence on the social dynamics of the city and its repercussions reached worrying levels, naturally for the numerous families affected by the strike but also for the authorities and the well-off classes that saw how the maintenance of law and order was jeopardised. During the 1901–1902 strike, Castellón became a city in turmoil.

The Trade: The Break-Up of the Guild System and Competition from Capital The espadrille industry was present in many different areas around Castellón. Decades before, the city of Castellón had become the Spanish epicentre of esparto grass production – the material from which espadrilles were manufactured – and this resulted in an increase in the trades associated with it: rope making, weaving and espadrille making. Despite the fact that during the second half of the nineteenth century esparto grass was gradually replaced by other more profitable crops, such as orange trees – with the corresponding effects on the urban craftwork and manufacturing structure – and that it faced competition from other fibres such as jute,8 the aforementioned trades still had a considerable presence in the city and represented the main economic means of support for hundreds of families. In the mid-nineteenth century, Pascual Madoz’s entry in his Diccionario with regard to the productive activities and the industrial structure of the city of Castellón listed a whole range of trades whose production was organised around small manufacturing or craft workshops. Special reference was made to those that worked with esparto fibre. Madoz estimated that in the city of Castellón, six hundred people worked in spinning and dressing esparto grass – fundamental activities when working with this fibre – and that three hundred more workers were employed in the city’s textile mills.9 By the 1870s, the importance of the esparto industry had not decreased, but had grown instead. It was estimated that around three thousand people depended on the wages that the industry provided.10 However, during this time fundamental changes had taken place in the trades related to esparto grass. While those who worked in textiles, such as weavers, had fallen into decline, the importance of those involved in what had until then been secondary work, such as espadrille makers, rose considerably and together with that of rope makers – involved in the preparation of raw material for both industries – theirs eventually became the main industry of the city.

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The census of 1895 once again confirmed the specific importance that espadrille production had in the social and industrial structure of the city and counted 220 espadrille makers in Castellón, a figure which should be higher if we consider that the data provided by these types of documents does not take into account subsidiary work carried out by women and children.11 Decades later in 1914, the production of espadrilles – although clearly in decline – still represented more than 20 percent of the industrial sector of the city classified under the heading ‘factories’.12 The vocabulary used – factory – should not distract us from the real situation, in which the production process was organised around small manufacturing workshops of various different sizes with little capital and with an enormous amount of work done in workers’ homes. An example of this is the description given around 1886 by the Provincial Commission for Social Reforms of the neighbouring province of Valencia with regard to the ‘manufacturing of espadrilles’: A trade, more than an industry, which despite the decline in the cultivation of esparto grass is still important because of the wide range of products … In this trade one can find everything from espadrille makers who work alone at home with the family to workshops which have several workers. Unless production is done on a large scale, not a great deal of capital is required to buy the raw material wholesale at the right time. A considerable number of women are employed although this varies from town to town. And this job, which can be done by women in their homes, offers them a salary which in certain towns is comparable with what they might earn in other industries.13

As can be seen, the production of espadrilles maintained a structure of small productive units with flexible and intensive use of the labour force. Such spatial fragmentation of the production process, even though to a certain extent it maintained the appearance of a guild system, did not hinder the establishment of clear dependence relations which distanced working practices from feudalising corporatism. Such dependence relations implied new working relations and resulted in a new perception of work and of workers’ referential values. When the city’s weavers sent a long letter to the City Council in July 1841 in which they described the situation the trade was in and the way in which it was carried out, they expressed the fact that ‘the majority of the products are made by workers in their own homes and with their own tools, yet they work for a dealer who pays their daily wages’.14 The enactment of the freedom of industry by means of the decree of 20 January 1834 determined that ‘guild associations, whatever their name or purpose, do not enjoy special rights’.15 This meant that even though in the final stages the internal disintegration of some guilds was clear to see, with the introduction of the new legislation one of the main pillars of its social importance and one of the determining factors in the process of capital accumulation among master guild members was lost. Having lost the privilege of controlling the whole production process of the respective trades by means of rigid regulations, even when the guilds still existed as collecting institutions, organisms of management control and in some cases providers of

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basic assistance for their members, their role in the framework of social relations had been totally altered and they had completely lost all their ability to regulate productive activity.16 The profound changes brought about by this decree intensified the social differences between guild members, generating dependence relations among them which were no longer based on legal foundations, but instead on competition from capital. With the application of liberal legislation, the only limitation to practising a trade lay in the possession of capital: ‘without the need to be a master craftsman, anyone can practise the trade as they please on their own or by employing journeymen’, since all the obstacles had been removed which prevented ‘the indefinite concurrence of work and capital’.17 Maintaining a guild hierarchy in the organisation of trades was due not so much to corporative links but rather to the interests of master craftsmen who had become capitalist company owners. These interests lay in controlling the labour force and in setting up a mechanism which hindered the establishment of the rising and growing working-class associationism which came as a result of the new working relations. The ownership of previously accumulated capital became the only condition set by the system. The cost of the investment, however small, acted as a means of selection: ‘the person who buys esparto grass makes it into thread and then turns it into fabric: even when all this work is done by day labourers and with the tools of the workers themselves’.18 These capitalist investors were the ones who ‘should consider themselves the only manufacturers, because they run the textile mills, supplying them with raw materials for the manufacture of the fabric, with the weavers being their simple day labourers and employees who, after receiving their meagre wages, leave all the rest of the profits for the capitalists’.19 The progression from the guild system, which had been maintained by a condition of procedural privilege, opened up the way for new social relations of production, namely between the rope makers and esparto-grass weavers of Castellón: ‘one person put up the capital or the cost of the raw material and the other did the manufacturing work’.20 Personal labour was controlled by the regulations imposed by capital in the production process, thus striping workers of the control of production time. The weavers soon discovered that they were losing their ability to assert pressure when it came to setting the conditions for organising their work, an aspect which clearly influenced the amount they were paid for plying their trade. Competition, the appearance of other fibres to replace esparto grass, rapid mechanisation – even when some weavers managed to change to the production of cotton fabrics – aggravated the profound crisis which put an end to the ‘trade’.21 Only those tasks in which the workers’ skills still represented part of the ‘value of work’ maintained a certain ability to exert pressure and put up resistance. Changes in the relations of production in turn changed the workers’ own working conditions and their own system of values and social representations. The threat of a drop in the value of their work forced them to mobilise; it is therefore hardly surprising that it was among these sectors that a specific working-class political culture was developed which

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characterised the mobilisation and organisation of workers during the second half of the nineteenth century. The espadrille-making trade maintained the characteristics of a profession which required certain skills. At different times in the past, certain manufacturers had tried to introduce machinery which would remove the need for a qualified labour force. However, all such initiatives failed. Even in the 1890s, it could still be observed that ‘until now, no machinery whatsoever is used to manufacture espadrilles’. But there was still the latent threat that mechanisation would do away with the need to employ a qualified labour force. If this was to happen, the new conditions of competition introduced by mechanisation would condemn the trade to an unavoidable process of professional and social decline. A worker’s status and his or her ability to apply pressure to improve wage levels depended on the skills acquired and applied to the production process. Any degradation of the trade implied a reduction in the functions and the wages of the worker. Workers’ skills therefore played a fundamental role in forming bonds of internal solidarity which served as a means of resistance against capital with regard to controlling and improving the working conditions in which they carried out their profession. In this respect, espadrille makers played a major role in the strike demanding salary increases which was held in December 1877.22 The workers did not achieve their aims and returned to work after a few days. In October 1881, ‘most of the rope makers’ of the city went on strike, again demanding a wage increase and once again the workers’ demands were not met.23 Beyond the result of both strikes, the fact that they took place at all illustrates the degree of mobilisation of members of the urban professions of Castellón. From early on, the espadrille makers established a close relationship with the incipient socialist movement and became the driving force behind workingclass associationism, assuming an active role in the organisation of class societies and in the founding of the Workers’ Centre in May 1900.24 During this time, the Association of Workers of the Espadrille Industry was one of the most dynamic and combative. Their leading role in making demands and in social protests at a local level was increased even more by the strike held by espadrille makers between December 1901 and February 1902.

Skills and Mechanisation: Key Elements Affecting Control of the Industry On 13 December 1901, the pages of the local newspapers announced the news of the conflict affecting the city’s espadrille industry. Employees of Joaquín Vicent Dolz, one of the main manufacturers, left their workplaces after he decided ‘to refuse to employ underage workers in order to increase the amount of work given to other labourers of the factory’.25 The decision to dismiss workers who were under 20 years old was based on the idea that it would favour workers responsible for families, who as a result would have more work. Since most workers in the sector had been paid on a piecework basis for decades, this meant that in theory their wages would also increase.

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Company owners had long wanted to dispense with these younger workers and the decision also affected rope makers, whose trade was closely linked with espadrille making – they made thread from esparto fibre so that it could be used to make the soles of the espadrilles – and they soon joined the strike. Only a few weeks before the strike took place, the decision to dismiss underage workers was presented before the Municipal Committee for Social Reforms and the city’s liberal-democrat newspaper voiced its doubts over the effectiveness of carrying out such a measure: ‘what will become of the rope makers of Castellón if they are forced to dispense with children and oblige fully-grown men to do the work, who will not be content with earning 20 or 25 centimes a day?’.26 Traditionally, work in these trades was organised within the family unit and therefore child labour was part of the craft workshops’ ability to adapt to changes caused by fluctuations in the supply of raw material and market demand. The greater degree of flexibility that such family labour permitted was due to constant self-exploitation at the expense of excessively long working days on which the family income depended.27 As early as January 1834, the official press of the city made reference, with a hearty dose of idealisation, to the primitive way in which work was divided up in the esparto fabric trade: ‘a spinning wheel, a teasel, a loom; the mother works the first, the child operates the other and the father moves the shuttle’.28 By the end of the century there had been no major changes. The gradual introduction of jute fibre as a replacement for esparto grass in the manufacturing of espadrille soles facilitated the introduction of mechanical procedures. This was due to the material’s greater ability to withstand the pounding of the machines compared to the more fragile esparto. However, despite the crisis which began to affect esparto growing, jute did not manage to become the fibre that replaced it. The existence and disposition of a plentiful, qualified labour force allowed manufacturers to avoid making investments in machinery which would lower their overall profit margins. At the same time, considering the conditions in which espadrille production was carried out – piecework, family labour force, tools owned by the workers themselves –, the use of this labour force allowed them greater flexibility when faced with the ever more frequent fluctuations in demand, without this involving any expense for the business. Even when the wages of Castellón espadrille makers were higher than those earned by workers in other places with a long espadrille-making tradition – which was the case of the city of Elche, down the Mediterranean coast –29 manufacturers considered that the purchase of machinery involved excessively high expenditure which would not counterbalance the advantages of maintaining traditional methods, at least until that time. Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the espadrille-making trade was hardly mechanised at all and its practice was based on manual skills, however basic they may have been. It was precisely in the transfer of these skills that the workers had a fundamental tool with which to impose their norms on the production process. They established the rhythm of work – the perpetuation of piecework aided this aspect – and decided to whom they would pass their skills on. Just as in many other sectors, the survival of this

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type of traditional norm concerning the organisation of the trade bore witness to a complex reality in which this was juxtaposed, as described previously, with economic dependence relations which cancelled out any hint of independence in the ‘simple producer of goods’.30 Control of access to the trade lay, in part, in the maintenance and in the ability to control the transfer of essential skills required to practise the trade. This was an aspect which proved to be a vital tool for workers when applying pressure and resisting in their disputes with employers. It is not surprising that the decision to dismiss workers under 20 years old from Joaquín Vicent’s factory was an attack on such practices and represented the first stage of a strategy which ultimately aimed to remove control of access to the trade from the hands of the workers. Let us remember that in January 1902 employers demanded ‘that the strikers understand that in future, we want total freedom’.31 This meant the freedom to employ workers without any type of interference. Once the workers had been stripped of their ability to limit and condition the labour force’s access to the trade, they lost one of their main tools when it came to negotiating, applying pressure and resisting. The particular skills of the trade faced the serious threat of mechanisation. The introduction of machinery simplified each stage of the espadrillemanufacturing process and meant that it was no longer necessary to employ qualified workers. This was an unmistakable sign of the devaluation of the trade.32 In response to the strike held by espadrille makers in Castellón, employers threatened to mechanise production. This made not only the workers uneasy, but also the authorities, who were worried that if such a measure was put into practice it could provoke a more radical response and disturb the order of the city. The commission appointed by the Town Council – which was under republican control – to act as an intermediary and seek a negotiated settlement between the two sides believed that if the employers’ threat were carried out, the situation would get worse. After successive meetings they managed to persuade employers to allow two weeks to try to reach an agreement before ‘employing workers from outside Castellón and using machines to make the soles’.33 Over the last few decades, the use of machines and the employment of workers from other areas who were not controlled by the trade’s labour networks had become factors which led to the creation of an unskilled labour force. This initiated a labour devaluation process which cancelled out any ability to apply the kind of pressure required to achieve workers’ demands in the future. No agreement was reached and the strike went ahead. On Monday, 27 January the Heraldo stated that ‘it would appear that in some espadrille factories machined soles have been distributed’.34 And on the following day, it was reported that ‘two factory owners from this town’ had acquired ‘a new machine to manufacture espadrille soles’.35 Days later they added that Germán Pavía and his partner Francisco M. Vila had been granted a patent for twenty years ‘for a machine for making trimmed espadrilles with single stitching’.36 The newspaper itself echoed the possible repercussions: ‘if that is true and if, in addition, the machined soles meet the needs of the public, then

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espadrille workers will have received a blow which sooner or later will oblige them to change trades’. In the same respect, El Regional stated that if the introduction of machinery in the espadrille industry was a success ‘the main losers would be the workers who are on strike today’.37 Mechanising the plaiting of the fibre and the stitching of the soles implied removing all the espadrille maker’s ability to apply pressure, which was based on the ‘skills of the trade’, since it stripped them of their control of the labour process. The effects had an impact on the way the labour force was contracted and implied a major transformation of the organisation of the production process, emphasising the proletarianisation of the workers and imposing new models of labour discipline by increasing dependence on the employer.38 At the same time, Vicente Bellido, one of the city’s main manufacturers, brought it to public notice that he had decided to abandon the workshops of the capital and move production to the neighbouring town of Vila-real, which also had a long espadrille-making tradition.39 The Bellido family was one of the families which had traditionally controlled espadrille production in Castellón. During the period between 1868 and 1874, Vicente Bellido was the head of the city’s rope makers’ guild. Thus, when King Amadeo de Saboya (1871–1873) visited Castellón and assigned an area – known as the Rope Makers’ Garden – to the working of esparto fibre, the operation was done in the name of Vicente Bellido Ramos as representative of the guild.40 Ownership of this urban area continued to be shared among the leading members of the corporation over the years. In this way, the guild was clearly seen as an institution controlled by the main espadrille manufacturers, who by means of their control ‘from above’ kept a close watch over the labour force, over labour discipline and over the organisation of production. In November 1916, the rope makers’ guild was reorganised as an employers’ association and presented its updated statutes before the Provincial Civil Governor’s Office. The latent threats of mechanisation, of relocating production to other towns to avoid the dispute and therefore continue to meet demand, and the hiring of workers from outside the city or ‘giving work to non associated workers’41 attempted to undermine the espadrille makers’ resistance and eliminate their ability to exercise control of the trade by converting them into easily replaceable workers. The agreement reached between the two sides at the end of February 1902, even though the espadrille makers managed to achieve the re-employment of all workers, with employers willing to ‘accept all the workers’, left it perfectly clear that both ‘the distribution of work and the classification of operatives will be decided by the employer’.42

Association: The Collective Workshop and Solidarity The statement made by El Socialista in its report on the espadrille makers’ strike was not wholly exaggerated when it said that the decision taken by Joaquín Vicent was a means of provocation aimed at disrupting the ‘La Regeneradora’ Association of Workers of the Espadrille Industry, one of the main associations and the one with the highest number of members at that

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time in the city.43 It was not the first time that employers had resorted to closing their factories as a means of countering the growing strength of working-class associationism.44 The dispute spread from the issue of dismissing child workers to a conflict over the control of the industry and a measure of strength against the incipient working-class associationism of Castellón which was backed by the socialists. Without clearly stating their conclusions, the rope makers expressed their opinions in a letter sent to the local newspapers: ‘it has still not been made clear what the main cause of this strike is […] the decision to introduce a lockout has been taken collectively by the employers, angered by the conduct of Sr Vicent’s workers’. Either it was all the result of a strategy planned by the employers, or when the lockout was imposed they were dragged into the conflict by Joaquín Vicent’s attitude, without realising what the consequences of such action would be.45 El Socialista was inclined to believe the first, stating that the conflict could have been resolved ‘if the industrialists had not each deposited 1,000 pesetas to stand firm. For that reason, the industrialists affected by the strike can live off the credit and play along with the 3 or 4 main manufacturers, amongst whom is Sr Vicent’.46 It was no surprise that employers began their fight against one of the fundamental elements of espadrille workers’ resistance, which at the same time was an example for the other trades of the city. In previous conflicts, workers’ ability to apply pressure had been the key factor when determining whether or not their objectives were reached. Only a few months before, in June 1901, espadrille makers had called a strike to demand a wage increase, which was successful and resulted in them ‘achieving a 25 percent increase in the daily wage’.47 In September, some employers tried to break the agreement and return to the previous situation when they ‘attempted to reduce their workers’ salaries by a few centimes’. The intervention of the Association of Espadrille Makers ensured that they handed over ‘what was due to their workers and reemployed a worker who had complained about this injustice’.48 In another case in which the employer was reluctant to back down, ‘the Association was forced to call a strike’. This measure proved to be effective since the workers’ demands were soon accepted, but when he announced his decision and expected the workers to return to their posts to begin production once again, ‘they were already working in other factories’. The negotiations then went in a different direction and an agreement was reached by means of which ‘unemployed workers will go to work in that factory and the employer will pay 40 pesetas compensation, which was accepted’.49 The association’s ability to apply pressure was clear to see in its resistance strategies: in a sector in which the need for a qualified labour force was essential for manufacturers, with minimal – if not non existent – levels of mechanisation, the strength of the trade and its grouping together around the association was a fundamental part of negotiation in labour disputes. The espadrille workers’ strike, as we have seen, spread beyond the trade and affected different parts of urban life. It had the explicit support of the other workers’ groups which made up the ‘La Unión’ Workers’ Centre, promoting one of the principles extolled by the trade union movement when

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organising a strike: class solidarity as a means of successfully fighting the dispute.50 The meeting called by the espadrille makers in the Workers’ Centre to announce their decision to go on strike to the rest of the groups received full support, with the other groups expressing their ‘moral and material support … to the point of making sacrifices if necessary’. The resistance mechanism began to work just when the espadrille workers requested it. Even though the structures and the organisation of the production process maintained some of the characteristics of traditional craftwork or manufacturing, the horizontal bonds of solidarity which existed beyond one particular trade meant that workers identified common interests as members of the same class. The Association of Espadrille Workers expressed its members’ gratitude for the stance adopted by their colleagues but for the time being considered their support to be sufficient, because ‘at the moment we only need morale’, and the material assistance offered to them was not urgently required since the Association calculated that the workers could ‘hold out for a fortnight’ with their own resources.51 At the same time, the espadrille workers of Castellón received tokens of support and solidarity from workers’ associations from neighbouring towns such as Vila-real, which bore witness to the impact the strike was having on the workers of the province. Eventually, the strike became a milestone in the history of social and labour disputes of the province. The fact that the dispute lasted longer than the period estimated by Cecilio Martí, the socialist leader of the espadrille workers, meant that substantial funds were required to support the families affected by the strike on a day to day basis. At this point, the striking workers accepted the offer made by the associations of the Workers’ Centre a short time before and funds were made available to the striking workers. The President of the Agricultural Workers’ Association stressed that ‘when the money of the association runs out, the furniture and all the other fixtures and fittings will be sold’ and he added that ‘if that were not enough, we will share out our daily wages’. The Association of Woodworkers agreed to contribute 40 pesetas a week for as long as the strike lasted.52 It was also proposed ‘that during the espadrille workers’ strike all working members will be obliged to contribute one real a day until the striking workers are victorious’.53 The campaign to raise funds was promoted nationally when the Committee Secretary of the UGT, Antonio García Quejido, sent a document to the editors of El Socialista on 30 December in which he made a request for donations in the name of the Workers’ Centre of the San Blas street.54 A subscription was also opened in the Republican Centre of Castellón ‘to collect resistance funds’, according to the liberal democrat press.55 From the privileged position of governing the Town Council, the republicans showed their most popular facet, showing that they were in touch with the workers’ aspirations, encouraging them and participating in the commissions which attempted to provide solutions to the conflict, actively attending the meetings and assemblies held by the workers’ associations and even offering material assistance to alleviate the increasingly precarious situation of the families affected by the strike. This was done by providing jobs in public works which

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depended on the consistory, such as levelling the land previously used for pigeon shooting – a job which was done by ‘60 striking workers’ – or cleaning the Paseo de Ribalta.56 Such commitments in no way affected their ability to negotiate with the provincial authorities or with the employers themselves since, and this was their trump card, at the same time they presented themselves as the guarantors of law and order and the only ones capable of preventing events from getting out of hand.57 The provision of funds for the striking workers, as we have seen, came from various different initiatives and was aimed at withstanding the pressure applied by employers. News, during the early days of the dispute, which announced significant investments in the sector by Catalan manufacturers who would secure work for the striking workers proved to be untrue and can be regarded as rumours aimed at weakening the attitude of the employers.58 However, other initiatives were indeed introduced, despite the difficulties involved in carrying them out. The possibility of the espadrille workers’ setting up a collective workshop which would provide them with enough income to cover their basic needs was one of the initiatives which had been considered since the beginning of the strike. Once again, although the leaders of the socialist ‘La Regeneradora’ were the main intellectual promoters, when it came to putting the project into practice, the republicans played the leading role. This proved to be crucial for the progression of the dispute and in order to consolidate the subsequent republican dominance among the working class of Castellón. The local republican leaders – Fernando Gasset, Vicente Bueso, Gaetà Huguet, Emilio Santacruz and José Forcada Peris – met on the night of 20 December in the headquarters of the Republican Centre to discuss the issue of whether between them all they would be able to raise enough capital so that the workers could acquire ‘raw materials and thus get back to work’ for themselves. Others, however, understood that the aim of these contributions was none other than ‘the constitution of an espadrille factory to provide work for these workers’.59 The initiative turned out to be a failure. The contributions amounted to no more than 25,000 pesetas, a quantity which no matter how you looked at it was not enough to palliate all the various shortages caused by the strike, and the initiative was shelved. However, halfway through the dispute the proposal was reintroduced. In view of the precarious conditions that the striking workers found themselves in, their leaders searched for formulas that endeavoured to support the workers, and setting up a collective workshop appeared to be the best option in order to meet their needs and keep up their resistance against the factory owners. There was no shortage of people who branded the company as a chimera, even predicting that its establishment would involve excessively high costs which would lead to the downfall of the Association.60 Despite initial reservations, the proposal to organise a ‘collective workshop set up by working-class associations’ did indeed go ahead, and Cecilio Martí requested the support of all the workers of Castellón.61 By the end of the month the workshop employed ‘more than half the workers’. It was dependent on the funds of ‘sister associations and shares

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worth 2.50 pesetas which were owned by private individuals, mainly prominent figures of the republican movement, headed by Deputy Gasset and Councillor Jimeno’.62 The future of the workshop was guaranteed when it was confirmed that two traders from Barcelona had pledged to purchase all the espadrilles made in the workshop, in addition to offering raw material for their production.63 So once again, in spite of the reservations held by both sides, the communion of working-class and republican interests came to the surface in all its aspects in the intense dispute in which they had become involved. If the republican strategy could be clearly observed in the way we have seen previously, the workers’ relations with the republicans became a vital instrument in their struggle, even more so when the latter could provide the resources necessary to carry on the strike, either by means of providing funds or by means of political pressure which they could apply in order to find a solution that would be beneficial to the workers’ interests.64 For their part, the active support offered by the republicans allowed them to consolidate their political dominance at a local level by reaffirming the support of the popular classes in successive elections.

Conclusion After two months of strike action, the events reached their climax and brought unforeseeable consequences. On the night of 18 February, coinciding with the arrival of news of calls for a general strike in Barcelona, the espadrille factories owned by Joaquín Vicent and José Sebastiá were doused with petrol and the containers left nearby when the perpetrators were taken by surprise by the watchman from the Plaza del Rey – also traditionally known as the Rope Makers’ Garden. Having received notice of the incident, the Association of Espadrille Makers and the Workers’ Centre were quick to meet the next morning to condemn the act and notify the Civil Governor. And for the first time the spectre of a ‘general strike’ appeared, something that – apparently – all the workers’ associations of the capital debated in a meeting organised that very night. On the morning of 21 February, groups of workers went round the city and ‘visited factories, workshops and orange warehouses, inviting them to join a general strike’.65 The Civil Governor called up all the available troops and managed to gather two hundred members of the Civil Guard in the city.66 The leaders of the espadrille workers rejected the call for a general strike in accordance with the strategy enunciated by national leaders of the socialist trade union. A strike affecting all productive sectors would remove the economic base which was fundamental for the success of the protest. The funds which came from other workers’ associations would no longer arrive and the ability to hold out in their struggle with their employers would be drastically reduced since the striking workers’ families were in a very precarious situation.67 It was then that strike leaders accepted that they would consider a negotiated settlement with the factory owners through the commission set up by the Town Council. In the various meetings that were

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held they proved to be open to negotiation as long as they obtained sufficient guarantees that the company owners would not take reprisals against the striking workers when re-employing them, ‘afraid that they may favour those workers who had betrayed the association’.68 The terms of the agreement are now well-known: ‘First – It is agreed that all workers shall be accepted; Secondly – The distribution of labour in addition to the classification of workers shall be done at the discretion of the employer’.69 The guarantees against reprisals were nothing more than a pledge. The agreement reached did not stipulate better conditions for the espadrille workers than those put forward weeks earlier.70 However, in view of the threat of a general strike which could leave the workers with no means of support and gradually cause workers to stop striking and therefore lead to a defeat, the leaders of the Association of Espadrille Workers, with the approval of all the other associations which formed the Workers’ Centre, decided that the time was right to reach an agreement with the factory owners.71 On the morning of 22 February, after two-and-a-half months of strike action, the espadrille workshops opened their doors and the espadrille makers went back to work. The 1901–1902 strike had a great deal more significance than any other previous strikes or disputes. The resolution of the strike gave rise to a whole series of particular conditions which conditioned society and politics in Castellón until the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931. First, the espadrille workers’ strike went down as an example of the fight to defend workers’ rights, and as such it increased the wealth of ‘accumulated experiences’ in the formation of a working-class culture in which the role of class association and class solidarity was gradually strengthened. Moreover, republicanism was obliged to include a working-class element in its discourse and in its political and social practices given the need to keep the support of the popular classes in order to challenge the established oligarchic regime. Socialists and republicans shared the same protest culture which had its roots in the fight for the universalisation of social and political rights started during the bourgeois revolutionary process. They shared a common political culture based on the democratic principles which concurred with workingclass interests. The interclassist nature of republicanism, brought about by the increasing incorporation of people from the popular classes and from working-class circles, forced republicans to pay greater attention to social issues in their discourse and in their actions. This caused a great many problems among republican forces since in order to maintain their links with the working-class movement they had to get rid of everything that hindered this, in addition to avoiding any element which could give rise to social conflicts, ‘creating an ideal identity with unclear boundaries’ which became evident in the adoption of a populist discourse.72 By then, craftwork trades were undergoing major changes which transformed their role and their social significance. The 1901–1902 strike turned out to be fundamentally important for the future of the working-class movement of Castellón. The espadrille makers’ strike led to the conclusion that a trade in which the specialisation of the labour force was based on very rudimentary elements – resistance based on the possession of manual skills –

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had very fragile foundations. The ‘skills of the trade’ still allowed workers to apply pressure on their employers, but the gradual mechanisation of the production process and the changes introduced in the organisation of labour73 reduced ‘skills’ to a secondary role in determining the ability to resist. Class association and class solidarity then became the key factors in labour disputes since they provided the essential resources to support working-class families. Devaluation of the trade represented a new twist in workers’ ability to resist, steering the success or failure of labour disputes towards the formation of workers’ associations. It is therefore no surprise that one of the main causes of confrontations between socialists and republicans during the twentieth century lay in the fight for dominance of the structure of working-class associations.

Notes 1. El Socialista, 23 December 1901: ‘[…] to shouts of resistance, resistance, resistance and demonstrating that they would rather die than give in’; Heraldo de Castellón and El Regional, 23 December 1901. 2. Interesting reflections on craftsmen can be found in C. Illades, ‘Marx y el artesanado: un recuento’, in Estudios sobre el artesanado urbano en el siglo XIX, Mexico, 1997, 15–30. 3. For example, C. Enrech, L’ofensiva patronal contra l’ofici. Estructures laborals i jerarquies obreres en la industria catalana (1881–1923), Barcelona, 2000; and A. Smith, ‘Anarchism, the General Strike and the Barcelona Labour Movement, 1898–1914’, European History Quarterly, V: 27–1 (1997), 5–40, and ‘Trabajadores “dignos” en profesiones “honradas”: los oficios y la formación de la clase obrera barcelonesa, 1899–1914’, Hispania, 193 (1996), 655–87. Also the monograph entitled ‘Oficios’ of Historia Social, 45 (2003). 4. Although presented in fragmented form, the series of studies undertaken by J.A. Piqueras on the origins and the evolution of radical culture in nineteenth century Spain provide the widest view when it comes to understanding the historical significance of both components: ‘Detrás de la política. República y federación en el proceso revolucionario español’, in J.A. Piqueras and M. Chust (comps.), Republicanos y repúblicas en España, Madrid, 1996, 1–43; ‘Trabajo artesano, industria y cultura radical en la época de la Primera Internacional’, in J. Paniagua, J.A. Piqueras and V. Sanz (eds), Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, Valencia, 1999, 165–210; and ‘Cultura radical y socialismo en España (1868–1914)’, Signos Históricos, 9 (2003), 43–71 (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa). 5. With regard to the notion of ‘life experiences’ and their influence on mobilising the popular sectors, E.P. Thompson, La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra, Barcelona, 1989; and G.Rudé, El rostro de la multitud. Estudios sobre revolución, ideología y protesta popular, Valencia, 2001 (H.J. Kaye ed.). 6. With regard to the notion of popular classes, C.E. Lida, ‘¿Qué son las clases populares? Los modelos europeos frente al caso español en el siglo XIX’, Historia Social, 27 (1997), 3–21. 7. Heraldo de Castellón, 7 January 1902. 8. S. Garrido, ‘Explotació indirecta i progrés agrari: el conreu del cànem a Castelló (s. XVIII–XX)’, Recerques, 38 (1999), 125–47. 9. P. Madoz, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de Alicante, Castellón y Valencia, Valencia, 1982 [1845–1850], facsímile, 229. 10. B. Mundina, Historia, geografía y estadística de la provincia de Castellón, Castellón, 1873, 203: ‘the production of espadrilles is the most profitable industry for manufacturers and the most important industry because of its extraordinary origins and because of the fact that it is the industry which employs the greatest number of people’. 11. Archivo Histórico de la Diputación de Castellón, Censo electoral de Castellón de la Plana, 1895.

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12. Directorio valenciano. Guía especial de las provincias de Alicante, Castellón de la Plana y Valencia, Barcelona, 1914. The outbreak of the First World War initially had a negative impact when sales of the product were brought to a standstill. It was even suggested that unless a solution could be found ‘thousands of workers would be left without work’ (El Clamor, 11 August 1914), although the restoration of commercial circuits a few months later meant that shoe manufacturing in the province generated ‘huge profits with splendidly high levels of production to meet the demand from abroad’ (Artes y Letras, 30 September 1914). 13. ‘Memoria de la Comisión Provincial de Valencia a la Comisión de Reformas Sociales’, in S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, vol. III, 16. 14. Archivo Histórico Municipal de Castellón [henceforth cited as AHMC], Administración Municipal I.1.3.4, Proyecto para aumentar el precio y asegurar la salida del cáñamo de Castellón de la Plana. 15. The freedom of industry was enacted by means of a decree by the first liberal Courts of Cadiz on 8 June 1813 observing ‘the free practice and establishment of factories or artefacts of any kind’. Just like all liberal legislation, this was suspended on 20 June 1815 by decision of the restored absolute King Fernando VII when guild corporations were re-established with all their previous powers. In May 1820 the measures introduced in 1813 were re-established by the new liberal Courts and once again suspended three years later until the final definitive decree in 1834. 16. S. Castillo (ed.), Solidaridad desde abajo. Trabajadores y socorros mutuos en la España contemporánea, Madrid, 1994. 17. AHMC, Administración Municipal I.1.1.2, 5 May 1840; and the Royal Decree of 20 January 1834. 18. AHMC, Administración Municipal I.1.1.2, 10 July 1840. 19. AHMC, Administración Municipal I.1.1.2, 10 July 1840. 20. AHMC, Administración Municipal I.1.1.2, 10 July 1840. 21. V. Sanz, D’artesans a proletaris. La manufactura del cànem a Castelló (1766–1843), Castellón, 1995. In 1905, there were only six textile mills in operation. F.A. Martínez Gallego, Desarrollo y crecimiento. La industrialización valenciana (1834–1914), Valencia, 1995, 75–80. 22. Diario de Castellón, 21 December 1877; and La Alborada, 28 December 1877. 23. El Clamor, 30 October 1881; and La Provincia, 27 and 30 October 1881. 24. After a few months the Workers’ Centre, which was set up by the socialists, was under republican control and the workers’ associations linked to socialism were even expelled due to accusations of ‘politicisation’ (August 1900). The decision was taken to set up a new Workers’ Centre (December 1900) which was officially inaugurated by Pablo Iglesias (El Socialista, 28 December 1900). With regard to relations between the working-class movement and republicanism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the city of Castellón, F. Archilés, Parlar en nom del poble. Cultura política, discurs i mobilització social al republicanisme castellónenc (1891–1909), Castellón, 2002, 213–71. 25. Heraldo de Castellón, 13 December 1901. Also in Diario Liberal de Castellón, 14 December 1901. Joaquín Vicent Dolz (1844–1917) was Antonio Vicent Dolz’s brother, who was known as Pare Vicent (Father Vicent), the force behind the Catholic Circles in Spain. Joaquín had four children from his marriage to Joaquina Fabregat. His daughter Joaquina married Salvador Guinot Vilar, a conservative political leader with links to fundamentalist circles, and his son Joaquín married Carmen Fabra, the daughter of the provincial leader of the Conservative Party, Victorino Fabra Adelantado. S. Garrido, Los trabajadores de las derechas, Castellón 1986; and J. Paniagua and J.A. Piqueras (dirs), Diccionario biográfico de políticos valencianos (1810–2003), Valencia, 2003. 26. Heraldo de Castellón, 14 November 1901. 27. On the development of trades related to esparto grass and the organisation of their productive structures during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Sanz, D’artesans a proletaris. By consulting industrial registers it can be confirmed that at the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, most master craftsmen did not have any journeymen in their workshops. Archivo Histórico Municipal de Castellón [AHMC], Industria y comercio IX, 1821–1829.

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28. Boletín Oficial de la Provincia de Valencia, 10 January 1834. 29. ‘Here [in Elche] the workers earn very little, just enough to eat badly, whereas in other towns, such as Castellón, they earn twice as much’, cit. in F. Moreno, ‘La situación de la clase obrera ilicitana al principio del siglo XX y la huelga de 1903’, in Huelga de alpargateros 1903, Elche, 2005, 37–60. 30. See the opportune reflections on this concept in Illades, ‘Marx y el artesanado’, 15–30. 31. Heraldo de Castellón, 7 January 1902. 32. On the value of the skills of the labour force, J. Rule, ‘The Property of Skill in the Period of Manufacture’, in P. Joyce (ed.), The Historical Meanings of Work, Cambridge, 1987, 99–118. 33. Heraldo de Castellón, 7 January 1902. 34. Heraldo de Castellón, 27 January 1902. 35. Heraldo de Castellón, 28 January 1902. 36. Heraldo de Castellón, 4 February 1902. The article also added that if the machine was a success ‘the revolution that it would introduce in the trade at hand would be greater than is generally imagined’. 37. Heraldo de Castellón, 27 January 1902; and El Regional, 29 January 1902. However, a question mark hung over the whole issue as nobody dared to verify the authenticity of the news. El Socialista even declared that it was nothing more than a ruse intended to weaken the spirits of the striking workers (El Socialista, 7 February 1902). The socialist paper’s criticism of the local press of Castellón was continuous, condemning their attitude either for propagating news which threatened the future of espadrille makers – such as El Heraldo – or for hushing up the dispute – such as El Clamor – and aligning itself against the strikers; El Socialista, 14 February 1902. Not in vain, some of the employers affected by the strike sympathised with the political ideas represented by the respective newspapers: liberal democrats – in the case of the manufacturer Tomás Prades – and republicans. 38. On the introduction of new labour discipline and its effects on the work process, E.P. Thompson, ‘Tiempo, disciplina de trabajo y capitalismo industrial’, in Tradición, revuelta y conciencia de clase. Estudios sobre la crisis de la sociedad preindustrial, Barcelona, 1979, 239–93; J. Sierra, El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990; and J. Uría, ‘Cultura popular tradicional y disciplinas de trabajo industrial (Asturias, 1880 – 1914)’, Historia Social, 23 (1995), 41–62. 39. Heraldo de Castellón, 31 January 1902. 40. The area that was transferred belonged to the guild corporation and was therefore subject to the land seizure laws applicable at that time. The claim of the rope makers’ guild requested that this space be exempt from those laws and remain under control of the master craftsmen of the corporation. Finally, the solution reached consisted of the monarch providing a cash donation to purchase it. Sanz. D’artesans a proletaris, 73–90. The socialist press also reported on the relocation of Bellido’s factory, El Socialista, 7 February 1902. 41. Heraldo de Castellón, 14 December 1901. 42. Heraldo de Castellón, 21 February 1902. 43. El Socialista, 20 December 1901. 44. In February 1902, a dispute broke out in the espadrille industry of Elche in which employers resorted to lockouts and closed the doors of almost one hundred factories and warehouses. Moreno, ‘La situación de la clase obrera ilicitana’. 45. Heraldo de Castellón, 20 December 1901; and El Regional, 20 December 1901. 46. El Socialista, 23 December 1901. Some weeks later the paper once again insisted on this line of argument: ‘It is said that the employers drew lots to provoke the strike’. 47. El Socialista, 21 June 1901. 48. El Socialista, 20 September 1901. 49. El Socialista, 20 September 1901. 50. The strike held by the espadrille workers of Elche in 1903 was the first to be considered an official strike by the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). F. Moreno, El movimiento obrero en Elche (1890–1931), Alicante, 1987; and Las luchas sociales en la provincia de Alicante (1890–1931), Alicante, 1988. 51. El Regional, 18 December 1901. Apart from the possible economic contributions there was also the possibility of earning money by working in jobs other than espadrille production:

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52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67.

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female workers, who represented an essential part of the production process, found employment in orange warehouses, providing money for the family unit which helped to strengthen the workers’ ability to stay on strike longer. Heraldo de Castellón, 4 January 1902. The Association of Agricultural Workers stated that until then, they had made a contribution of 200 pesetas to support the striking workers. El Regional, 9 January 1902. El Socialista, 3 January 1902. The Heraldo de Castellón reported the receiving of funds: ‘the striking workers receive help from their colleagues here and in other areas’ (28 December 1901), ‘the workers continue to receive funds from the provincial associations’ (30 December 1901). El Regional, 27 December 1901. Heraldo de Castellón, 8 and 9 January 1902. For the republican leaders the disputes between employers and workers were a fundamental part of the social system based on capital and labour. Therefore negotiating, a palpable demonstration of human rationality, was the best way to solve them. A. Duarte, El republicanismo català a la fi del segle XIX, Vic, 1987; R. Reig, Obrers i ciutadans. Blasquisme i moviment obrer (València, 1898–1906), Valencia, 1982; and Archilés. Parlar en nom del poble. The authorities might recall the conflictive context in which the espadrille workers’ strike took place and the fact that this was constantly reflected in the pages of the local press in Cádiz, Madrid and especially Barcelona. A. Duarte, ‘Entre el mito y la realidad. Barcelona, 1902’, Ayer, 4 (1991), 147–68. ‘Everything is still the same; the factories are closed and the striking workers are prepared to work for themselves or for that Catalan industrialist who people talk so much of these days’, Heraldo de Castellón, 19 December 1901; also Heraldo de Castellón, 14 December 1901. Heraldo de Castellón, 20 December 1901; El Regional, 20 December 1901; and Diario Liberal de Castellón, 21 December 1901. Heraldo de Castellón, 13 January 1902. The proposal was carried out but little documentation is available. No mention of it was made in the Heraldo de Castellón. However, through references made in that paper (22 January 1902), we know that on 21 January the republican newspaper El Clamor published the conditions for the creation of the collective company planned by the striking workers. Unfortunately, no copies of El Clamor are available for those dates. Only El Socialista reported that in the proposal, each Association would have a representative on the Administrative Committee of the collective workshop; El Socialista, 31 January 1902. El Socialista, 7 February 1902. El Socialista, 7 February 1902. Days later, El Socialista stated that ‘the cooperative operates on a small scale because of the limited capital available’ and that it continued to employ half the workers affected by the dispute; El Socialista, 14 February 1902. The following week, the paper succinctly announced that ‘the cooperative workshop is functioning well’, El Socialista, 21 February 1902. The liberal democrat press echoed these relations when declaring that: ‘the workers certainly do not restrict themselves to praying to God, but instead approach Mr Gasset with the sole intention, it should be understood, of seeking a means of bringing together capital and find firm guarantees in order to carry out the business’ of the factory put forward days before; Heraldo de Castellón, 24 December 1901. Around that time, the leadership of the Liberal Democrat Party, headed by the figure of José Canalejas, transmitted a reconciliatory tone towards the popular classes and working-class disputes. It was an initiative which, at the same time, had to counteract the overwhelming influence that republicanism had over these same sectors and convert this new support into electoral gains. S. Forner, Canalejas y el Partido Liberal Democrático (1900–1910), Madrid, 1993, 62–74 and 144–71. Heraldo de Castellón, 22 February 1902. In addition, the Castellón garrison was placed on alert. On 21 February, Federico Alonso Gascó, the general of the division, received the order to inspect the troops of the Otumba infantry regiment, whose headquarters were in the capital, pending further orders; A. Gil Novales, ‘La conflictividad social bajo la Restauración’, Trienio, 7 (1986), 161. Heraldo de Castellón, 22 and 24 February 1902. El Socialista accused the republicans of

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71.

72.

73.

Vicent Sanz Rozalén promoting rumours of a general strike in order to condition the workers’ decision: ‘the republicans, whose promises made the workers believe that they would almost certainly achieve all their just demands, backed by a few well-mannered anarchists in the Centre of the Calle de Ensendra, Valencia, spread the idea of a general strike among the striking workers last Wednesday night, as a means by which the authorities, in part, made the industrialists change their attitude’; El Socialista, 28 February 1902. Heraldo de Castellón, 21 February 1902. Heraldo de Castellón, 21 February 1902. In mid-January an agreement was drafted which was not accepted by the espadrille makers because they considered that it was insufficient and that there were few guarantees that it would be upheld: ‘First – Factories shall be opened to all workers, who are requested to go back to work; Secondly – Work shall be given to all the striking workers. The factory owners cited here […] shall make the sacrifice of providing work, for as long as they are able, to the employees of workshops which are not in a position to accept all the workers that they had prior to the outbreak of the dispute; Thirdly – The employers give their word of honour as gentlemen that no one shall be dismissed without good cause and that no injustices shall be committed against the workers because of ill will or as revenge for the strike action’; Heraldo de Castellón, 16 January 1902. On 12 February seven espadrille workers went to the headquarters of the Association in order to take out their work tools because they wanted to go back to work. The guardians of the Association’s warehouse were reluctant to hand them over, an act which the factory owners reported to the Civil Governor, who took the decision to send in the Civil Guard. The Association of Espadrille Workers then called a meeting to condemn the attitude of the seven members who had left the association and gone back to work, at the same time as it was decided that in the future, workers who requested their tools would not be refused; Heraldo de Castellón, 13 February 1902. Piqueras. ‘Detrás de la política’; Reig. Obrers i ciutadans; Duarte. El republicanisme català; and P. Gabriel, ‘Republicanismo popular, socialismo, anarquismo y cultura política obrera en España (1860–1914)’, in Paniagua, Piqueras and Sanz, Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, 211–22. On the manufacturing of espadrilles and the shoemaking industry in Castellón during the twentieth century, F. Peña, Història de l’empresa Segarra. Paternalisme industrial i franquisme a La Vall d’Uixó (1939–1952), Castellón, 1998.

CHAPTER 7

TRADITIONAL POPULAR CULTURE AND INDUSTRIAL WORK DISCIPLINE: ASTURIAS, 1880–1914 Jorge Uría

It is a well known fact that among the causes put forward to account for the lack of profitability of industries in Asturias (on the Northern Spanish coast) – and in particular the mining industry – one reason often quoted is the particular characteristics of a small workforce which performed badly and was, all things considered, an economic burden to this companies.1 From the 1880s onwards, there began to be stronger evidence of this and steps were taken towards a meticulous set of measures designed to counteract the more negative aspects which affected the productivity of the labour force. Reports written during this time by mining engineers such as Francisco Gascue or José Suárez are an excellent example of this.2 In any case, the development of this programme represented a considerable change in the way the labour force was viewed. Until that time, this element had not been taken into account among the factors affecting ‘working costs’. When indeed it was taken into consideration, it was to highlight, as Pérez Moreno did in a report in 1856, the many qualities of such ‘honest, thrifty, calm’ people and to praise their ‘frugality and naturally peaceful and submissive character, which are the reasons for such cheap labour in addition to our faith in public order’.3 However, the reports of distinguished mining engineers in Asturias who were very attentive to the working conditions required in a rapidly developing industry, began to paint a slightly different picture in this respect. As early as 1861, Restituto Álvarez Buylla considered it necessary that mine owners attracted a labour force which was ‘well-behaved and sufficiently subordinate’. Such qualities became a frequently repeated demand from the 1880s onwards. Thus, in a very short time, a new image of mine workers was created which was totally different from the image put forward until then. The virtues of sobriety

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and frugality, which had previously been praised, were now seen as the reason for poor performance at work. From previously being considered hard workers, the miners were now seen as exasperatingly lazy. In fact, there was no real reason to support the idea that the labour force had changed so radically in such a short period of time. On the contrary, the fundamental reason for this difference lay, no less, in the fact that the region’s bourgeoisie changed their view of the situation. In other words, the same labour force that had been considered sufficiently large and hard-working during the first stages of industrialisation was seen to be increasingly unsuitable in light of the demands of capitalist development. This underwent a period of substantial consolidation during the second half of the century and of course meant that a bigger labour force was required which was more disciplined and better suited to the rhythm and demands of the rapidly expanding industrialisation process. It is also known that, just like in other countries – although it is debateable whether this occurred at precisely the same time – there were plans for a whole, distinctly paternalistic project for labour relations which aimed to set up a ‘social programme’ which, by granting certain advantages to the working population, would be capable of attracting and maintaining a rural labour force that was in no way willing to endure the rhythm and demands of capitalism. Considering the fact that from the 1880s onwards Asturias experienced a period of rapid industrial expansion, it became vitally important both that the companies had such a ‘social programme’ and that the labour force understood the problems involved in adapting to the rhythm of industrial work. In fact, probably the most complete and perceptive mining engineers’ reports written on this particular subject date back to that time. Francisco Gascue’s first articles on this subject appeared in the periodical Revista Minera from 1883 onwards and were later summarised in a volume which was published in 1888. José Suárez’s report, among others, was published in 1896.4 The crux of the issue in terms of the labour force, in any case, lay in optimising performance. This was in turn related to the demands of a job which was characterised by its discipline, continuity and intensity. Anyhow, it would appear that in order to achieve these objectives there had to be one particular condition that certainly did not exist in Asturias. This was the labour force’s complete dependence on the company. In fact, there were various circumstances which manifestly hampered this subjection, or, to put it differently, complete proletarianisation of the labour force. In this respect, there were various alternative options open to workers. One was emigrating overseas. Another quite different option was to do agricultural work on a very small scale, an enterprise with minimal expenses since the work was carried out on the surface and required very little technical investment. All these things made working in the mining companies less attractive. However, we are now going to concentrate solely on the difficulties that the persistence of a rural substratum, which still retained part of its old dynamism, represented to the formation of a fully proletarianised labour force. In fact, while that substratum still existed and while the mixed worker was still a reality, any programme designed to attract and discipline the labour force was doomed to

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relative failure, considering the fact that the customs of traditional peasant culture and their socioeconomic organisation tended to be opposed to the introduction of the regularity and discipline of industrial work. In fact, this factor was clearly perceived by contemporaries who singled out rural industrial workers as workers ‘who are still characterised by their interest in farm work. They give less importance to their jobs in industry, above all to jobs in the mining industry, and this is closely linked to the limited efficiency of Asturian workers’.5

The Widespread View of Mixed Workers as Lazy Workers Considering that the persistence of the phenomenon of mixed workers and their important role in the structure of regional employment were very important factors, there was no doubt that this issue was a major concern to the mining companies, and consequently to the mining engineers. In fact, as early as 1888, Gascue had, to a large extent, attributed the miners’ unsuitability for industrial work to the fact that ‘there is not a true, workingclass population of the type which makes a living solely from its paid work’. This was because most of the workers had ‘a small, rural property and a house in better or worse condition. Thus, when it is time to work the land, sowing time or harvest time etc., there is a noticeable lack of hands in the mines’. In 1893, a report by the government-created Commission for Social Reforms confirmed the fact that ‘the majority’ of mine workers lived ‘in small villages and alternated periods of industrial work with farm work’. Three years later, José Suárez was of practically the same opinion when he highlighted ‘their agricultural customs’. In addition, a report by the Department of Agriculture, Mines and Forests in 1911 emphasised this problem in no uncertain terms: Between 60 and 70 percent of all mine workers in Asturias also work as farmers. They have their houses and farm their land, alternating farm work with work in the coal and metallic mineral mines. Among this group, it is also very common for women and their daughters to work their small plots of land while the men earn their daily wage by working underground. The same day, many of these men also do some farm work in the afternoon, mainly during the long summer days.6

The reasons why mixed workers did not conform to the disciplinary demands of the labour force are clear from the above statements. Some of these reasons concerned the conditions imposed by the particular organisation of agricultural work. What we know about the organisation of farm work in Asturias during this period of history appears to verify that it was relatively hard work, characterised, however, by the fact that it was done intermittently throughout the year. In other words, although at certain times of the year, such as in winter, the work could be light and allow enough time for other communal or ceremonial activities, at other times of the year, namely during the sowing season and above all at harvest time, the workers had to concentrate exclusively on their farm labours, making it impossible to

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combine such work with industrial work. In this respect, there was no doubt that agricultural work, through the figure of the mixed worker, represented a considerable hindrance to any ‘rational’ project aimed at disciplining the labour force. In 1874, Albert Grand had even stated that the majority of mine workers only worked there ‘when there was no farm work to be done’; and it would appear that over time the situation did not change very much. In this respect, the report of 1911 from the Department of Agriculture, Mines and Forests came as a great shock to those who thought that bringing in workers from other regions could help to sort out the disciplinary problems of the labour force. It would appear that the majority of immigrant workers, who preferred to do subsidiary work above ground, were not particularly loyal to a specific company and, above all, only turned up for work ‘periodically in the mines during the months of winter and spring, when there was little farm work to be done in their regions’. The influence of this peasant substratum must have been relatively powerful considering the fact that its impact on the organisation of the labour force could be felt for quite a long time afterwards. As late as 1923, in a report to the Government Minister, the Civil Governor made reference to the fact that ‘almost all the strikes which take place during the summer come about because the workers want to do their agricultural work. They come back to work once they have collected their harvests’.7 In any case, there were less direct and less obvious ways by means of which the peasant substratum managed to influence the organisation and discipline of the labour force and which were related to the peculiar deep-rooted world of traditional culture in rural areas.8 The special characteristics of peasants’ social behaviour with regard to work, and their no less strange understanding of profit are, in this respect, the first factors which should be examined in order to try to explain certain behavioural traits of mixed mine workers which are not always fully understood. In this sense, during that period the idea that miners were not particularly interested in working gained enough support to give credit to it and led to attempts to somehow analyse the extent of this situation. The workers’ ‘lack of economic understanding’ was, in fact, a widely shared accusation made by the mining engineers in light of situations such as the one recounted by Luis Adaro in 1902, when he reported the irregularity of workers who ‘when they earn a good day’s wage, usually prefer to stop working for a few days and enjoy themselves’. In addition to this, at the end of the 1880s, Gascue told of a situation that occurred ‘all the time’, in which workers refused to accept very good money they were offered to do extra work after their normal day’s work had finished. Offers were made of up to ‘0.20 pesetas to the cart driver, who finished his work at 3.30 in the afternoon, to take out another cart, but he refused and preferred to sit for two hours in the little square with his arms and legs crossed’. Of course, it was absolutely impossible to get the labour force to do a ‘reasonable’ day’s work of eight hours or more of continuous work. At the beginning of the century, the miners left the mine face to have their meals in the open air and records show that towards the end of the 1880s it was impossible for employers to get workers to do more than five or five-and-a-half hours of ‘useful’ work, ‘whatever the price’. Naturally, the

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situation could have arisen, among other things, because the workers were able to express their views as they did not depend exclusively on the salaries provided by jobs in industry, whereas the employers had little choice but to accept the situation, given the shortage of workers in the labour market. However, considering the fact that any voluntary increase in the working day would have allowed the workers to increase their level of income, it is still not clear why workers did not greedily accept this opportunity to increase the salaries they received.9 Thus, employers’ astonishment was in some respects understandable, as were their accusations that the workers ‘lacked economic understanding’. It was obvious, however, that all the employers’ reasoning with regard to this point was based on a certain understanding of work or economic values which were closely related to the development of industrial capitalism and which should not, however, be regarded as objective values. In practice, the peasantry had a totally different definition of wealth, profit and, of course, the amount of work required. For a time, it appeared that the Revista Minera, a publication which was especially sensitive to the opinions of the bourgeois mine owners, had started to understand this situation. In fact, it was from that very platform that in 1885, Nicanor Muñiz Prada, a doctor of the Town Council of Mieres who had close links with the local School of Mine Foremen, acknowledged that the mixed worker was: very attached to the land, believing that only rural property is a safeguard against poverty, the only thing that satisfies the vanity of possessing, totally unaware of the advantages of association, wasting his small daily savings and only thinking about acquiring property assets, whose high prices bear no relation to the interest on the capital invested.10

Apart from certain points in his line of argument which do not concern us here (such as the issue of the advantages of association or his self-interested condemnation of property investments, which were still used by the region’s bourgeoisie, who had only very recently started to invest heavily in the coal mining sector), the text highlights issues which were extremely important at that time. Such issues were the belief that the ownership of land was the only true possession, and ‘disdain’ for saving money. The issue concerns the tendencies observed in the social behaviour of the peasantry with regard to family labour. This is something which, incidentally, has formed part of sociological tradition since Alexander V. Chayanov carried out studies of the Russian peasantry in the 1920s and especially since his work was first translated into English in the 1960s and concepts of his such as the ‘peasant economy’ began to circulate in circles such as the Annales.11 What concerns us about their work now, however, is the question of the means by which peasants’ needs were determined and satisfied by resorting to the self-exploitation of the work of the family unit. Indeed, peasants could increase or decrease their level of selfexploitation according to the extent to which their needs were being fulfilled so that, even if their farms were too small or lacked the necessary resources, they tended to increasingly resort to their farm work, which was below the margins

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of ‘market profitability’, in order to continue providing the family unit with the same level of goods and services that they considered necessary In other words, farm work continued guaranteeing the provision of a culturally defined survival fund. According to free-market logic, however, it would perhaps have been more logical for peasants to abandon that ‘uneconomical’ working unit and invest their efforts in other, more profitable activities. Inversely, peasants stopped working when their self-exploitation started to satisfy their needs, which were culturally perceived as being marginal. Free-market logic, however, would have clearly indicated that peasants could have accumulated considerable profit in monetary terms. The fact that peasants’ work was aimed at fulfilling these culturally defined needs may explain certain practices which were decidedly illogical to market-economy thinking;12 and above all, and given that we are concerned with considering the hypothetical attitude of Asturian peasants with regard to the phenomenon of the industrial salary, this may explain the mixed workers’ refusal to earn more money. Considering that these same workers were still basically peasants, the fact that they worked in industry only made sense insofar as they could complete or supplement the provision of goods and services that they considered to be essential. Working in the mines became unnecessary, however, once they had reached this culturally defined level and this had nothing to do with the profit this could represent in monetary terms. And of course, their work in the coal mine was abandoned when it clashed with their work on the farm, such as during harvest time, even when they could have earned more from working in industry all year round than they could from their farm work. Naturally, this does not mean that the labour force could not be attracted by high salaries. Instead, it means that the formation of a fully proletarianised labour force required the attraction of sufficiently high salaries, the removal of cultural standards which rejected industrial work or placed it in second place behind agricultural work or behind the objectives of only providing for the family’s requirements which were culturally defined in that social context. These circumstances began to appear after the First World War. In an atmosphere characterised by high industrial profits arising from the exceptional situation of the War, salaries rose markedly. At the same time, the traditional farming sector had clearly begun to break down, given that capitalist relations of production had become firmly established in the agricultural world and given that peasant isolation in terms of production and communications had come to an end. The universe of traditional peasant culture, which was closely linked to an obsolete social and economic fabric that was disappearing, no longer had any meaning. In short, after the War there were fewer and fewer mixed workers, although they did not totally disappear. Employers therefore had fewer difficulties in imposing their criteria with regard to disciplining the labour force or, at least, these difficulties came about for other reasons.13 In any case, for a certain time salaries could not have risen to sufficiently high levels to make them attractive enough to force peasants to abandon or put their farming activities in second place in favour of working in industry, even taking into account the fact that the latter paid better than farm work. Thanks to the mining engineers, we know that the employers were clearly

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aware of the problem which resulted from the fact that wages in the mining industry held little attraction for mixed workers. Engineers like Gascue justified not increasing wages through payment of higher hourly rates by highlighting the limited useful work of Asturian miners and their poor performance and, as a result, their already high wages in real terms. This made it impossible to increase their salaries without this having an unfavourable effect on the final selling price of the coal, which constantly had problems of competitiveness. The only option, therefore, was, as Gascue proposed in 1882, to try to increase the total amount of the daily wage in absolute terms by simply resorting to an increase in the number of working hours instead of a higher hourly rate. The labour force’s response to the programme, which was put into practice the following year, was a series of strikes in 1883 and 1884. In any case, the intention of increasing working hours was abandoned in the late 1880s due to the sector’s inability to sustain employment levels, thus making it impossible to keep the labour force working the number of hours that were considered necessary to maintain attractive salary levels. In fact in 1887, in order to avoid dismissing surplus workers in the context of a drop in coal production, the owners of the Mieres coalfield were forced to stop production for one or two working days per week. Despite everything, and even when these short-term problems forced the mine owners to put their plans on hold, there was no doubt that their intention had always been to increase the working day. The hostile reaction of the Revista Minera in 1899 to news of debates in England and France regarding the introduction of an eight-hour day clearly demonstrated this. And there must have been similar reasons behind the publication’s querulous attitude towards the effects of ‘the law of 27 December 1910 regulating mining shifts, establishing a reduction in working hours which, in some bosses’ opinion has decreased production by 8 percent, increasing total wage expenses and company expenses by the same amount’. In any case, there can be little doubt that in the long term more efficient use was made of the labour force. In fact, over a period of approximately sixty years, the productivity of the mining labour force – either due to a longer working day, investment in technology or other reasons – had increased from 69.5 tonnes per worker in 1826 to an average of 121.16 tonnes per worker in 1888. However, it was clear that this was still not sufficient for the managers of the mining industry.14

Conflicts between Traditional Popular Culture and the Methods Used by Employers to Manage the Labour Force However, leaving aside for a moment the different ways that salaries were regarded by workers and employers, there were other aspects which brought traditional peasant culture into direct conflict with management’s attempts to discipline the labour force. In this case, it concerned the abundance of festivals which, in the opinion of the mine owners, slowed down the regular work of the industry beyond any reasonable limits.

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There does not seem to be any doubt that the custom of sanctifying Sundays must have continued in a considerable number of companies. As late as 1893, the report by the Commission for Social Reforms acknowledged that in Gijón, Sunday was not generally a working day, whereas in Oviedo the Commission only stressed the fact that salespeople and certain non metallic industries worked half a day. It is therefore understandable that when news of the enactment of the law of Sunday rest came out in 1904, mine owners could not comprehend the widespread alarm in certain social circles which believed that the law would lead to a ‘major disruption’ or ‘a radical change in work and life’. In fact, the journal goes on to say that the law simply acknowledged a situation which was already ‘widespread in people’s customs’ due, in part, to tradition. In fact, it should be pointed out that some time before this, certain sectors related to the mining industry, which probably considered the habit of Sunday rest as normal, had supported this custom and discovered that it helped to promote the smooth organisation of the production process. Nicanor Muñiz Prada was a good such example and as the local doctor, hygienist and tutor of the School of Mine Foremen of Mieres, he in fact defended both the judiciousness of rest and its unquestionable virtues in order to guarantee that on Monday the workers ‘returned to their daily work with greater intelligence, with keener intentions and with more energetic vigour’. However, along with the force of tradition, the text from the Revista Minera also suggested other reasons to explain the roots of Sunday rest and, in particular, the effects of the ‘modern influence of working-class association’, an extremely unambiguous sentence and one which acknowledged the pressure exerted by the labour force on employers who were reluctant to accept this measure. In any case, there is other evidence to suggest that the mine owners were against sanctifying Sundays. It is known that between 1893 and 1901, negotiations took place between the Bishop of Oviedo and certain Asturian businessmen to try to allow workers to attend religious services but no agreement was reached. The right to Sunday rest was gained in certain sectors after a hard trade union struggle marked by strikes and demonstrations involving certain violent incidents. This was the case of shop assistants, who organised a strong associative and strike movement in favour of Sunday rest in cities such as Oviedo and Gijón. All in all, despite the fact that the 1911 report from the Department of Mines and Forests made no mention of violating the right to Sunday rest, the 1909 report by the Comission for Social Reforms about work in the mines acknowledged five years after the enactment of the regulation that this law was not being ‘strictly’ obeyed in certain mines in Langreo, and that none of the pits abided by the law if by chance coal had to be loaded on a Sunday.15 However, the negative effects on the labour force of a Sunday of leisure did not only refer to the hours lost. It would appear that in a relatively high number of cases, excesses committed during a day of leisure required a day of rest the following day to recover. This practice, often referred to as hacer lunes (taking a long weekend), must have been fairly common if a hygienist like Muñiz Prada, whose opinion of phenomena such as Sunday rest has been discussed earlier, strongly condemned this habit, even proposing that workers should be dismissed from their jobs if found to be doing it. García Arenal’s survey in 1884

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of the proletariat of Gijón estimated that this was done by 4 percent of the total number of workers, although it would appear that the proportion decreased among workshop and factory workers, who were much more subject to company discipline. On the other hand, the proportion increased in certain specific professions such as postmen or port workers. In any case, when an introduction was added in 1893 to García Arenal’s survey and to the one undertaken in Oviedo at the same time to produce the Comission for Social Reforms afrementioned report, it was acknowledged that in general, the practice was ‘very widespread’ throughout the whole of Asturias. In addition, the data referred to here did not include any estimation as to what happened in mining areas where, as we know from other sources, alcohol consumption and therefore the effects of getting drunk, were no doubt greater. Certain signs appear to point to the fact that in mining areas, particularly in the more rural mining areas, ‘taking a long weekend’ must have been a more widespread custom. In fact, in the remote coalfields of Quirós, even in 1920 it was estimated that 75 percent of the labour force did not go to work down the mine on Mondays or on the days after public holidays.16 Concerns about ‘the following day’ were not, in any case, limited to the negative effects of Sunday rest. Given the importance of the particular ideological substratum of traditional peasant society, rites of passage, i.e. community ceremonies which marked important landmarks in the life of its members such as birth, marriage or death, still played an important role in society. As such, they represented another cause of absenteeism for employers to worry about. Thanks to folkloric research, we are aware of the basic elements of the rituals involved in these practices, and especially those aspects which concern us most here such as their communal nature and the involvement of fairly large groups, or their festive elements and the break from the usual framework of the working routine.17 In this respect, wakes had a very important place in the social life of traditional peasantry. The vigil began once there was news of the death and after suspending the evening work shift. Neighbours and relatives then accompanied the priest to the house of the deceased and, once prayers had been said and the priest had gone back to church, people stayed to offer their condolences to the family and to extol the virtues of the deceased. To help pass the night, it was then time to bring out bottles of eau-de-vie and bread and it would appear that as of the end of the nineteenth century, coffee was also increasingly offered. Warmed by the eau-de-vie and coffee, the people told horror stories about ghosts or souls or humorous stories of other wakes. The following morning, once they had been to mass and buried the body, custom had it that one of the deceased’s relatives had to address the people and say something like: ‘may God repay you all and exalt your charity; and whoever wishes to have a bite to eat, do not leave’. After receiving this invitation, those present passed in front of the cortege and went into a room of the house in which there was a table with bread, wine and cheese. This was either a light snack before some people left or an aperitif for the others. There is no doubt that this meal, which was a necessary mark of respect towards those who had travelled a long way, in many cases led to another

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gathering similar to the one of the previous night. In fact, a survey carried out at the beginning of the century illustrated the fact that these meals used to ‘be days of revelry for those who attended, because they did not go back home until nightfall, and they went as if they were returning from a festival procession’.18 Compared to wakes, christenings and weddings appear to have had much less importance in terms of the subject at hand here. As far as weddings were concerned, which were without doubt the more important of the two events, it would appear that they had a much more limited effect on the working schedule than wakes did. Unlike the latter, weddings could be planned in advance and it would appear that they were usually celebrated on a Saturday. Therefore, the workers could rest on Sunday and recover from the excesses of the previous day, or otherwise continue the revelry of the wedding celebrations. At the wedding reception after the religious ceremony, there was usually music and dancing and a custom referred to as ‘letting the gunpowder flow’, which involved firing shotguns or letting off fireworks. In mining communities, however, this custom, which was often used on returning from religious festival processions, had changed to throwing sticks of dynamite into the air. Moreover, when it was time for the bride to go to the groom’s house, the wedding guests usually escorted her while they sang, played the bagpipes and once again fired their guns. Although all these celebrations may have had a fairly disruptive effect, as one can easily imagine, upon employers’ ideals of capitalising on the labour force, the effect on work was much greater when the wedding involved a widower or a widow and a single man or woman. The feelings of joy and freedom found their expression in cacophonous cencerradas (the custom of making as much noise as possible with cowbells, horns, tins and saucepans), known in the region as ‘pandorgades’. This was the community’s way of making the bride and groom pay for ‘betraying’ the previous family. The celebrations, which could last for several days, always involved practical jokes and vulgar, humiliating songs regarding the carnal warmth that the ‘old man’ or the ‘old woman’ or both of them still felt. Although the bride and groom, well aware of what the custom had in store for them, would try to celebrate the wedding as quickly and quietly as possible, there would always be some indiscreet remark, or when they thought they were safe after a cautious journey home, they would be woken up in the middle of their wedding night with a cacophonous pandemonium of tins, saucepans, shouting and singing. It would appear that an incredible number of community members took part in these acts and they were by no means limited to rural areas. Palacio Valdés, in his novel written in 1893 entitled El Maestrante, recounts the story of one which really took place in Oviedo.19 The marriage was between Luisa Thiry, who was around 80 years old, a glamorous widow of the upper bourgeoisie of the city and the ex-wife of a French engineer who was the founder of the Manjoya factory, and a young man who was under thirty. When the priest tried to get to the chapel where the ceremony was to be held, a crowd of six hundred people blocked his way and when the ceremony finally took place, the ‘cencerrada’ that they

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organised afterwards was certainly one to remember. The custom appears to have remained fully in place until after the turn of the century. As late as 1898, in the city of Oviedo the press reported one of these ‘wedding parties’. with the participation of a terrible sounding orchestra of tins and saucepans and singers who improvised all kinds of songs. The performance, which has been going on for several nights now, is in honour of a new marriage which has put an end to the widowhood of one of the couple. Police officers are unable to stop the music because the musicians and singers take refuge on private roofs and in orchards, where they cannot enter.

In any case, it would appear that the custom was conserved even more vigorously in the countryside, either because it was more deeply rooted in peasant circles or because it was more difficult for the police to put a stop to such celebrations. In this respect, there is evidence that during the Great War and in the early 1920s, ‘pandorgades’ were celebrated in the area around Gijón. Almost as if the event were part of a religious festival, women selling hazelnuts set up their stalls opposite the newlyweds’ house, while improvised ‘preachers’ climbed onto their carts and recited their ballads and songs. There were even people who sold poems specially written for the occasion, printed on folded sheets of brightly-coloured paper.20 Apart from these cases, however, and whatever importance the occasions described so far had in terms of mobilising the community, it should be acknowledged that the majority of traditional festivals kept to a predetermined schedule. They tended to be organised according to the seasons, and the centuries-old rhythm of these festivals had not changed significantly throughout the ages. On some of these occasions markets and fairs were held. The sale of surplus production and the purchase of essential household provisions was combined with many other functions. People ‘went down to town’, as they said in those days, to sort out any urgent administrative affairs in the Town Hall or simply to go to the fair where they could see actors perform, buy balls of string, dance, eat and drink or, apparently, visit prostitutes. It would seem that in some cases prostitution had become fairly widespread. However, religious festivals were probably the best known and most common celebrations to interrupt the monotony of everyday life. The patron saint’s day of the village was the pretext to hold these religious festivals and the grace, indulgence and blessings of the Virgin or the saint still played an important role in attracting the participants. However, if the truth be known, several different signs – such as the decline in the sale of bullae (religious dispensation), the significant decrease in the degree to which people respected the customs of Easter in urban and in working-class areas, and even the fact that fewer and fewer people went to what had previously been the most famous sanctuaries – appeared to coincide with the fact that in many cases the main part of the festival took place in the afternoon, once the

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religious acts had come to an end. In short, religious festivals were gatherings which had multiple, complex functions in the local community. They were an obligatory occasion for young men who were looking for a partner and according to anthropologists like Caro Baroja, they represented the festive counterpoint to a whole year of restrictions and inhibitions. There were therefore sufficient reasons for people to feel that there was a pretext to ‘take a long weekend’, or to simply not go to work if the festival was not celebrated on a Sunday. There is even more reason to think this if, in accordance with various testimonies of the period, we consider that those present drank considerable amounts of alcohol and that it was not unusual for the festivals to end in violence. In fact, fights between different parishes, which were actually confrontations between two nearby rural communities which strengthened the internal cohesion of each community, had not only failed to drop in number over time, but due to the spread of guns and knives, had become one of the major concerns of the police. In the end, religious festivals, despite being traditional celebrations closely linked to the individualities of each region, still conserved to a large extent the vitality of yesteryear. What is more, even though they were rapidly losing some of their most traditional characteristics – bagpipes, regional songs and the like – everything seems to point to the fact that their importance was on the increase thanks to easily available means of communication, the low cost of train tickets and an ever more obvious ‘industrialisation of leisure’. In this context, the tourist towns on the coast were promoting a fervent programme of celebrations to attract the greatest possible number of summer visitors. One of these festivals, the Ecce-Homo of Noreña – a tiny, rundown village which had a population of only two thousand in 1900 but which was well connected by rail – had attracted no fewer than ten thousand participants in 1897.21 The opportunities that all these festivals gave people not to go to work did not go unnoticed by Asturian employers, who were clearly alarmed by the situation; and due to the persistence of the rural substratum present in the mixed worker, this affected, above all, the mining bourgeoisie. Ever since 1892, one of their spokesmen, José Suárez, had been drawing attention to workers’ ‘deeply-rooted love’ of ‘religious festivals, fairs, markets and fiestas, which are so common in this province’, in addition to the effects of such customs, which ‘not only steal precious time, but also make them lazy during the next day or the following days’. At the same time, and with obvious indignation, the same engineer had realised that in order to avoid competition between the various festivities, the point had been reached whereby ‘they did not establish the festivals with the same name on the same day in the parish churches of a region or valley, but instead they spread them out so that on one day there was only one festival and the others were held on the following Sundays or on weekdays’. In 1888, Francisco Gascue also showed his concern at ‘the considerable number of days that miners do not go to work’: It is good and fair that people should not have to work on holidays and on Sundays, but afterwards there are a great many unacceptable and unfounded

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pretexts so as not to go to work. The parish saint’s day, the procession to the upper chapel, the patron saint of the lower chapel, the patron saint of the house, the neighbourhood and innumerable others which are excuses for laziness. If it were true devotion which leads these people to so many religious acts, it would be an excusable and even a respectable custom, but the worst thing is that they feel no such devotion, only a desire to do nothing. The same thing happens during the farming season. If they only need a day to do their work, they take six and the remaining five are for wasting time and getting drunk.22

In short, as a result of this inconsistency which so exasperated the mining engineers, a considerable number of potentially ‘useful’ days were lost every year. Surveys carried out in the more urbanised areas of the region in the mid1880s produced results of an average of 280 or 290 days worked per year. In addition, Arenal estimated that of the days lost, 52 corresponded to Sundays, 16 to other kinds of holidays and there were still 17 other days when people did not work because of ‘voluntary strike action, illness or interruptions in the work or factory’. In the case of the mining industry, however, the peculiarities of the mixed worker meant that the number of ‘useful days’ was, to the detriment of the employers, slightly lower. In fact, around about the same time, both Francisco Gascue and José Suárez gave exactly the same figure: 250 days worked during the year at most, so if we subtract 52 Sundays from 365 days a year, there are 63 days left over, which are spent on religious festivals, fairs and markets. Some days are spent sowing and harvesting farm produce, but the majority of the days are not spent doing what they should be doing, namely trying to earn more money so as to improve their conditions and the conditions of their families.23

Hostility towards these popular festivals, which emanated from the comments made by the mining engineers who based their opinions on their calculations of the number of working hours lost, was widespread. The truth was that among the ruling classes of Asturias, there was widespread criticism of the alleged excesses of the popular classes. The criticism became notably more caustic with reference to certain popular festivals, however, and especially during those in which the enjoyment and leisure of the labour force was accompanied by aspects of licentious, critical or alternative behaviour. Basically, this referred to two types of winter festivals which used to involve grotesque masquerades and sketches which often insulted and made fun of all types of social ranks, political authorities and institutions.

Traditional Popular Culture, Subversion and Defence of the Capitalist Social Order The first type of masquerades were those celebrated around the winter solstice, at Christmas time, and depending on the place, they were called guirrios, zamarrones, bardancos, zaparrastros, aguilanderos or sidros. At this time of year, apart from celebrating Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and

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Epiphany, in many places in Asturias at the turn of the twentieth century the festival had a community feel to it, with the young people getting together in groups to ask for their Christmas gift and, in some regions, dressing up in grotesque costumes and performing rudimentary plays. The types of popular theatre performance which most concern us here are those linked to the sidros of Siero. Relatively little is known about them, however, since folklorists regarded them as unauthentic because they were ‘contaminated’ with references to society and to the politics of the moment. Nevertheless, information which was of limited interest to folklorists such as Fausto Vigil or Constantino Cabal is clearly of interest to the historian. For Cabal, the ‘freedom that the fancy dress, the party atmosphere, superstition and time added to the guirriu, gave rise to levels of dishonesty and audacity which are not easy to understand nowadays’. Yet although some of these characteristics still remained in the masquerades, it would seem that at the beginning of the twentieth century, despite having ‘completely lost all their folkloric elements’, they were of unquestionable interest considering that they were popular theatre which included social and political criticism.24 In fact, this must have been their main characteristic at that time, to the extent that in 1905 the newspaper El Carbayón defined the guirrios as a ‘group or a gang of comedians who travelled around acting out comedies, criticising a certain event in the news in a festive manner’.25 The extent information about these sketches and plays would appear to confirm that they were undoubtedly popular events. Just like old ballads, they were spoken in octosyllabic verses. They were written in bable, the local dialect of Asturias, mixed with plenty of Spanish. However, the more popular characters typically used the local dialect whereas the more refined characters – heroes and ladies – tended to speak more Spanish. In addition, the plays were short – lasting around half an hour – and thus able to hold the attention of the people in the audience, who saw the performances in places which were not particularly suitable for watching plays. In fact, these plays were performed at the exit of Sunday mass or at the entrance to the local taverns. Although it is known that these plays were written by several authors, most of the information about them comes from fifteen pieces written between 1876 and 1932. They were all written by a local man called José Noval, whose manuscripts, which, as may be expected were of poor literary quality, have only partially and recently become known despite the fact that they were performed several times in Siero, the region where he was from.26 There were two types of characters which appeared in the plays, each type always dressed in the same way and easily identifiable by the public. There were the regular characters which appeared in all the pieces (old men, ladies and heroes) and others which varied from play to play (the fool, the blind man and his servant, Lucifer and various other characters). With regard to what takes places in the comedies, Cabal referred to the ‘vulgar, tasteless phrases which they contained’,27 but we also know that they made references to matters concerning the political and social life of the time. Several pieces were based on the colonial wars in Cuba (such as those performed in 1876 and 1896), the Carlist wars (in 1876 and 1906) and the war with Morocco

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(1913). Others centred on the problems regarding consumption (in the 1880s) or emigration to America (in 1892 and 1907). Others focused on subjects such as socialism (in 1900), anarchism and religion (in 1902) or the establishment of the republic (at the beginning of the twentieth century). The content of the others was either purely comical (in 1881) or politically varied (in 1932 a comedy was performed about the Second Republic, Sanjurjo’s attempted coup and the introduction of divorce).28 Naturally, in addition to other elements of the comedies which are not of interest to us here, it is important to highlight the fact that the vast majority of them dealt with issues in the news at the time and, even more so, the fact that in many cases the characterisations were decidedly critical. In fact, it was not unusual for them to make direct references to personalities from the political and social scene of the moment and to openly and explicitly criticise their worst defects. The Moroccan War was a good example of this and in fact the content of the piece which made reference to this war portrayed ‘people’s pessimism and their dislike of this campaign, complaining about the obligatory military service or the fact that the war was a bloodbath’. There were even explicit calls for desertion from the military service, which was even more remarkable considering the fact that the writer of the piece turned out to be the cousin of the famous Corporal Noval, the Asturian hero of the Moroccan War who had died four years earlier in a suicide mission. These verses are a good example: Desert, Spaniards, because of the bad leaders! Tomb of living men from Tetuan to Larrache.29

Such criticisms and references to current affairs must have featured in a good number of other plays, illustrating the revival of a custom which was increasingly breaking away from its old folkloric origins. In any case, it is important to know that José Noval’s comedies were written in an area of Siero close to some mine works where various socialist centres had been in place since the beginning of the century. It is equally important to know that in these centres there was a demand for popular theatre which fuelled the local production of various pieces, the subjects of which were in some ways similar to those in Noval’s work.30 The critical and alternative nature of the pieces, together with their licentious and ‘vulgar’ tone, was in any case part of the best-known tradition of carnival festivities. Opposition to and transgression against the established order, in addition to elements involving violence or revenge which symbolised the social frustrations or the limitations felt during the past year, were elements which often stood out in the pieces. At that time of year there were also performances of light comedy sketches and folk songs which once again contained elements of social, political and personal satire, in addition to explicit and licentious erotic elements which could not be performed during the rest of the year. In any case, the spirit of carnival was felt in the urban areas

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where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the popular classes of Asturias had still managed to conserve most of this carnival spirit which was clearly different from the ‘cultured’ enjoyment characteristic of the upper bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy of the region. The repertoire of jokes, some of which rhymed, covered a wide variety of topics and was particularly exasperating for the ‘good’ society in terms of the erotic licentiousness. Thus, at the beginning of the century, the ‘good taste’ of the bourgeoisie was still mocked with a good deal of ‘evil’, according to the usual categorisation of the time in municipal edicts, ecclesiastical reprimands or warnings in the press. Towards 1907, ‘disgusting’ costumes abounded in regions such as Langreo, and in 1904 newspapers like El Carbayón condemned the ‘hours of frenzied orgies and foolishness’, when it was not unusual to see the arrest of jocular transvestites for raucous scenes which took place in the middle of the street. The details thus illustrate the healthy state of a carnival which had endured a great deal of criticism during the nineteenth century, with attempts to eliminate the most licentious features, opening up a rift between popular carnivals and those organised by the ruling classes which were not so deeply rooted in the past. In fact, even at the end of the nineteenth century the local press still recalled the routine humiliation and the false camaraderie suffered by nobles such as the Marquis of Gastañaga or the Count of Peñalva, who were given ‘a mock-religious vignette bearing the image of a white donkey’ and it would seem that they were even sprayed with urine or their faces blackened with coal. In urban areas, jokes about national politics were especially popular. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, masks with images of famous politicians – Cánovas and Sagasta, above all – sold very well and humorous, rowdy impersonations of sessions of congress involving the best known politicians ended with some of those involved being taken away from the café where they were performing and put in a prison cell. The folk songs sung by some of the groups put together for the occasion also included a certain degree of social criticism, including among other things the hardships of the ‘middle classes’ of cities such as Oviedo. The most popular aspect of the carnivals, however, much to the despair of the more ‘cultured’ press, was still the figure of the ‘preacher’ who stood on a cart and was at times dressed up for the part, reciting one or more of his compositions in extremely long quatrains with lines of eight syllables. Afterwards the printed verses would be sold to the spectators. The subject matter and the literary style of these minstrels, which also involved criticising political institutions and which was without a shadow of a doubt the result of fewer inhibitions and much more licentiousness and self-confidence, inforiated the press. Even as late as 1910, a progressive newspaper like El Noroeste from Gijón cried out against orators ‘dressed in grotesque clothes and wearing long, false noses’, who ‘attracted the attention of the simple folk with their endless speeches made from carts which they converted into a public gallery’; ‘What speeches, my God, what speeches!’ exclaimed the paper, ‘and what costumes!’. And had it been an openly clerical paper like El Carbayón instead of a progressive newspaper, there is no doubt that there would be even greater reasons for displeasure, with the anticlerical jokes

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institutionalised in the ‘burial of the sardine’. This was traditionally associated with caricaturing judges and ecclesiastical acts by means of performances which included all the clothes of the clergy, the liturgy and even Latin expressions. And they managed to exasperate the conservative press of the time.31 The existence of these expressions of traditional popular culture is a crucial point when it comes to illustrating the spirit of an ideological movement which, in global terms, could hardly be considered compatible with the assertion of the inherent values of capitalist society. The vitality of this popular culture is very clearly exemplified in a set of cultural values which, because of their ideological content or their use of time, went directly against the capitalist social structure. Whether it was because they took up hours of potential ‘useful work’ or because they undermined the tranquillity and social consensus constantly required by the regional ruling classes for the smooth running of the existing order, the truth is that the survival of cultural traditions like these was always regarded with caution or hostility by the State authorities and by the most important members of the regional bourgeoisie. At least at the beginning of the century, however, these cultural traditions were alive and well. In fact, they bore witness to the existence of a means of popular resistance against the imposition of the values of capitalism and, although they have different origins which were much less ‘aware’ than those of political or trade union organisations, they nevertheless deserve to be taken into consideration. It was true that, by means of a variety of repressive measures, the history of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century was marked by numerous examples of the strong disapproval of these types of entertainment and by attempts to prevent them or at least replace them with less harmful pastimes. In this respect, the examples of condemnation are crystal clear and can be discerned from the quotes cited in this chapter regarding the views held by employers and their neighbours on people’s use of leisure time. And it was leisure time which still owed a lot to the cultural practices of a traditional farming society which still existed to a certain extent in urban areas and, without a doubt, among the ‘mixed’ workers of the coalmining areas. As engineers such as Suárez and Gascue said, these means of entertainment were examples of reprehensible ‘idleness’, ‘neglect’ or ‘indolence’, or, as García Arenal said, clear examples of a ‘total lack of rational entertainment’.32 The rhythm of work, good or bad taste and the right to criticise the system were issues, however, which could be defined in very different ways and from markedly different perspectives. In any case, it is worth remembering that the regional bourgeoisie, which was seeking to impose its own point of view regarding this particular confrontation, wanted to turn to more expeditious methods than simply preaching the virtues of ‘rational’ entertainment. In this respect, we are sufficiently aware of the difficulties over the introduction of Sunday rest. To tell the truth, even the more liberal circles of the regional Church – an institution which, it should be remembered, defended Sunday rest – showed concerns for suddenly giving the proletariat a full day off: ‘What a huge

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change to our customs!’, exclaimed El Carbayón. If it were true that at last there was a ‘true day of Sunday rest’ and ‘the shops are closed, the workshops are silent and the mines allow those who live in the shadow of the galleries to rest’, the question had to be asked, as indeed the clerical paper asked: ‘But where do all our workers go?’.33 In any case, the remark was used by the newspaper to call for action in light of the spectacle of workers frequenting the ‘propaganda meetings’ too often, attracting ‘the uninitiated in order to swell their ranks’ by taking advantage, according to the publication, of the new law. It must also be remembered that engineers such as José Suárez, apart from becoming meticulous analysts of this problem, had also proposed practical measures to put a stop to so much idleness. More specifically, this referred to moving all the religious processions, festivals and markets to Sundays, while it was up to the mining companies to provide the workers with incentives for good work. In short, this was nothing new bearing in mind that in 1866, the employers Siero and Langre had asked the religious authorities to abolish ‘those festivities and religious processions which were only characteristic of the patriarchal life and customs of farming villages’, in addition to exempting workers from the obligation of not working on Sundays after attending mass; a wide-ranging plan which clearly shows employers’ true intentions with regard to workers’ leisure time.34 With regard to the carnivals, the repressive regulations were multiplied, thus continuing a long tradition of condemnation and prohibition. From 1897 onwards, the Municipal By-laws of the Council of Somiedo banned people from wearing masks at night, in addition to banning the use of cowbells, tins, bells and other instruments and, of course, prohibiting the parodying of people ‘whatever class they may be from’.35 The Municipal Bylaws of Oviedo,36 from 1908, were even more explicit and prohibited the use of costumes imitating magistrates, priests or soldiers. However, despite the laws being so explicit, they had to be periodically brought to notice by means of edicts issued by the mayor. In a slightly less obvious way, some prizes introduced by the town councils, such as the one in Oviedo, had attempted to encourage a means of replacing ‘bad taste’ with ‘good taste’; Italian-style masks began to replace the crude, obscene, traditional masks; music groups and artistically decorated floats began to replace the ‘preacher’ on his cart. And flower battles replaced the custom of throwing eggs at buildings or at the people who leant out of the windows. The ‘pandorgades’, banned by the Municipal By-laws of the Council of Somiedo for being considered ‘unworthy of a civilised community’, had to be held at the risk of hostility from the police.37 There are therefore enough ingredients to suggest that certain circles of employers or the political elite close to the municipal or State authorities had a clearly defined programme of social control by means of modifying social conduct. However, as has already been seen, that does not mean that the popular classes adopted a resigned and passive attitude towards the destruction of their everyday social habits. In fact the ‘attack’ on their customs – if it can be referred to as such – achieved only a relative degree of

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success. In the end, wakes continued to be a cause of absenteeism in Asturian mining companies until the 1950s; there were references to ‘pandorgades’ until the 1960s in and near the urban region of Gijón. And as for the carnivals, although it may be true that after the First World War there was an unstoppable decline in urban areas – not so in rural areas – it is doubtful that their decline was due to bans which dated back to at least the sixteenth century in Spain and which can be traced back to the eighteenth century in Asturias.38 In reality, if the carnivals and this particular cultural framework of traditional society in general were in decline, it was because traditional rural society itself had entered a marked crisis. In terms of making more intensive use of the labour force, just as we have seen earlier, the decline of the figure of the mixed worker was undoubtedly due as much to increases in salaries as to a context in which clinging on to cultural customs of the past made less and less sense within the framework of an agricultural society whose economic and social framework was rapidly breaking up. The ability of employers or the State to influence social conduct should not be underestimated, however. Around 1909, before the pressure of salary increases was particularly noticeable, changes in the exploitation of the labour force could already be clearly noticed. The progress made until then had been, all in all, quite considerable. Even though there is still no reliable calendar of festivities for the different phases of the Old Regime in Asturias, there is no reason, however, to doubt estimates which limit the number of working days in Catholic countries during this period of history to around 200. In the 1880s, however, in the mining industry that figure rose to 250, with considerably greater increases in the more urbanised areas, with figures between 280 and 290. The report of 1909 on work in the mines estimated that mine-workers worked between 275 and as many as 310 days per year. Considering that these companies would have allowed Sunday rest and that as a result the 52 Sundays must have been deducted from the 365 days per year, the holiday time available to the working class had been reduced to barely three days. The employers’ programme, therefore, had reached its conclusion in some companies; in other, it was not long before it would be finished.39

Notes 1. With regard to the performance of the workforce in industry and mining in Asturias, in addition to the role that employers attributed to it at that time, G. Ojeda, Asturias en la industrialización española (1833–1907), Madrid, 1985, 125–30, 235 and 240–41; and J.A. Vázquez, La cuestión hullera en Asturias (1918–1935), Oviedo, 1985, 125–30. 2. F. Gascue, Colección de artículos industriales acerca de las minas de carbón en Asturias, Gijón, 1888; and J. Suárez, El problema social minero, Oviedo, 1896. 3. A. Pérez Moreno, ‘Estado de la industria minera en Asturias durante el año 1856, con algunas consideraciones acerca de las circunstancias que afectan a su fomento y en general al porvenir industrial de la provincia’, Revista Minera [henceforth cited as RM] (1858), 663 and 667.

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4. Gascue, Colección; Suárez, El problema social minero; on the development of this paternalistic programme, A. Shubert, Hacia la revolución, Barcelona, 1984, 27–31; and J. Sierra, El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990, 167–82. With regard to whether the paternalistic approach of Asturian employers coincided with developments observed in other European states or in the U.S., Sierra accurately highlighted the fact that in Asturias, there does not appear to have been as much development as in other European countries; and certainly, the presence and extent of paternalistic practices in Asturias was modest compared to what was taking place in other geographical areas. In any case, in Asturias these practices adopted the form of a more or less finished, detailed, systematic programme at a certain time in history – the 1880s and 1890s – which coincided with a particularly dynamic phase in other European countries. However, it should be highlighted that labour-force disciplinary mechanisms were more advanced and better perfected in the U.S. In any case, there is no doubt that Asturian mining engineers, British ‘production’ engineers and U.S. ‘mechanics’ were different variations of the same, all trying to bring control and discipline to the labour force. With regard to these issues, E.J. Hobsbawm, Trabajadores, Barcelona, 1979, 376–83; and D. Montgomery, El control obrero en los Estados Unidos, Madrid, 1985. 5. Estadística Minera y Metalúrgica de España, Madrid, 1889–1890, 492–93, quoted in Shubert, Hacia la revolución, 34. 6. Gascue, Colección, 113–14; S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, vol. V, 369 [henceforth cited as RS]; Suárez, El problema social minero, 10–11; Dirección General de Agricultura, Minas y Montes [henceforth cited as DGA], Informe relativo al estado económico y situación de los obreros de las Minas y Fábricas Metalúrgicas de España y organismos de protección instituidos en beneficio de los mismos, Madrid, 1902, 36. 7. A detailed account of the various agricultural tasks carried out throughout the year in Asturias can be found in almanacs such as the Almanac Asturiano de El Carbayón para 1897. The yearly cycle of farm work is discussed in J. Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura en Asturias (1898–1914), Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Oviedo, 1991, vol. I, 297–303. The text by Albert Grand is quoted in Sierra, El obrero soñado, 187–88. References to immigrant workers can be found in DGA, Informe, 19; the communication to the Government Minister in Shubert. Hacia la revolución, 42. Naturally, more evidence can be provided of the persistence of the rural substratum in the socioeconomic and working structures of the mines. For example, in some cases the region’s mutual insurance companies included very clear references to farming activities. For instance, these companies suspended sickness payments if workers were caught driving cows or carts. Such a specific explanation would not have made any sense if this were not a problem that happened repeatedly, day after day. Evidence can be found, for example, in article 36–5 of the Regulations of La Humanitaria of Mieres, one of the most prestigious mutual insurance companies of the area with a long tradition. The Regulation appears in the Archivo Histórico Provincial, Section: Gobierno Civil, Subsection: Sociedades-I.R.S., file: 8–2. 8. The use of the terms ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’ does not imply acceptance of the idea that the concept of traditional must necessarily be associated with tendencially static and selfregulating models of society, as criticised by E.P. Thompson, Costumbres en común, Barcelona, 1995, 32. At the same time, it is worth clarifying that neither is it believed that traditional culture remained immobile and unchanged throughout the Ancien Régime, even when it appeared to at times when, with rural societies having entered into crisis, the speed of the changes taking place in urban areas offered a sharp contrast between one area and another. 9. Gascue, Colección, 111–12 and 119; Sierra, El obrero soñado, 190; RM (1887), 12. The text from Luis Adaro belongs to a report from 1902 from the Unión Hullera y Metalúrgica de Asturias and is quoted in Ojeda, Asturias en la industrialización española, 241. Useful work, as understood by the employers of the period, was considered to be the number of working hours spent at the mine face, after subtracting the time taken for meals or for transporting the workers from the pithead to the mine face. Of course, this understanding of usefulness was not necessarily an objective value, and neither was it necessarily shared by the labour

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11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

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force, whose free time ended as soon as they left their houses to go to work or from the moment they entered the company premises when they crossed the entrance gates of the mine. N. Muñiz, ‘Estudio médico de los obrero de minas en el concejo de Mieres (Asturias)’, RM (1885), 319; the text was an extract from his interesting Apuntes para la topografía médica del concejo de Mieres y de su comarca minera, Oviedo, 1885; the author also wrote some no less interesting Nociones de Higiene con aplicación a los mineros de Hulla. Lecciones dadas en la escuela de capataces de minas, hornos y máquinas de Mieres por el profesor de dicha asignatura, Oviedo, 1886. With regard to the employers’ debatable understanding of the amount of work required, one example of a different point of view on the working day and on the work itself, a point of view which the workers themselves could identify with, can be found in the survey carried out in 1910 on the living conditions of workers in Mieres by José M. Muñiz Prada, a student of Social Economics. This survey highlighted the fact that the workers considered the working day to be ‘out of their homes and at work’ for 12 hours per day, plus the fact that some had to walk ‘four, five or more kilometres to get to work’. The survey was published in El Carbayón, Oviedo, 12 April 1910. See A.V. Chayanov, La organización de la unidad económica campesina, Buenos Aires, 1987. The fact that during the first decade of the century ‘escanda’ – a type of low–performance winter wheat – was still being planted a short distance from harbours which were already receiving strong Russian wheat at low prices, and the fact that the same plot of land could have been used for other more profitable crops, could be viewed in these terms instead of putting them down to ‘ignorance’ or peasant ‘customs’. They were probably simply an attempt to continue providing cereals resorting, as culturally they always had done, to eating what they produced, something which in the past had guaranteed minimum recourse to the market and thus, the least possible expenditure which would otherwise have been required to purchase those goods and services that the family farm could not provide. Although the situation had been getting increasingly corrupt since the final decades of the nineteenth century, to a large extent, the ideal was still simply that the peasant family farm provided as many goods and services as possible without having to resort to the market, even when this was economically absurd in objective terms. With regard to this issue, see the work of C. Alvar-González, La escanda. Su origen, su cultivo, Gijón, 1908. On the other hand, coming back to Chayanov, the subject of his thesis allowed for the theoretical interpretation of an event that had occurred repeatedly in Russian history, and one which had until then been left unexplained; the reason why, every time prices dropped, peasants increased production despite the fact that they were increasing their self-exploitation or despite being increasingly trapped in that law of the market economy concerning the decreasing marginal utility of work. With regard to the destruction of the traditional peasant world during this period and with regards to ideological, economic and social aspects, see Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura, vol. II, 501–809. The decline of the figure of the mixed worker was sufficiently documented in Shubert, Hacia la revolución. F. Gascue, ‘Observaciones sobre el trabajo y salario del minero en Langreo (Asturias)’, RM (1882), 65–66; Colección, 46, 110 and 124; and ‘La crisis carbonera en Asturias’, RM (1887), 66; Ojeda, Asturias en la industrialización española, 126; RM (1899), 127; RM (1913), 112; and G. Sala, ‘Notas para la historia gráfica de la industria carbonera en Asturias’, RM (1890), 46. RS, vol. V, 375, 401 and 444; ‘El reglamento del descanso dominical y del descanso semanal’, RM (1904); Muñiz, Nociones de higiene, 152–54; references to communications between the Bishop of Oviedo, Ramón Martínez Vigil and Asturian businessmen who were probably from the metallurgical sector, are in the original latin texts of the Visitas ad limina, a copy of which was given to me by J.A. García de Cortázar from the Vatican’s secret files; an extract of these visits is contained in J.L. González, Las visitas ‘ad limina’ de los Obispos de Oviedo (1585–1901), Oviedo, 1986; details of the protest movement organised by shop assistants in Uría. Sociedad, ocio y cultura, vol. III, 1226–31; ‘Información sobre el trabajo en las minas a propósito de las peticiones que las Sociedades obreras elevaron al Gobierno el año de 1909’, Revista de Trabajo, 21 (1968), 156; and DGA, Informe, 11–12.

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16. Muñiz, Nociones, 127; F. García Arenal, Datos para el estudio de la cuestión social, Gijón, 1885, 44; RS, vol. V, 373; data regarding alcohol consumption by members of the working class in Asturias in J. Uría, ‘La taberna en Asturias a principios del siglo XX. Notas para su estudio’, Historia Contemporánea, 5 (1991), 53–72; the reference to what occurred in Quirós comes from a dissertation written in 1920 in the Escuela Superior de Ingenieros de Minas entitled ‘Memorias de las Minas de Teverga’, by L. Torón y Villegas, quoted by Shubert, Hacia la revolución, 36. 17. With regard to these subjects, the following work is obligatory reading: A. van Gennep, Los ritos de paso, Madrid, 1986 [1909]. 18. F. Canella, ‘De Vita et móribus’, in O. Bellmunt and F. Canella (eds), Asturias, Oviedo, 1900 [1895], vol. III, 25–251. In this work we can found a somewhat idealised archetypal vigil. More reliable details are in works by A. De Llano, El libro de Caravia, Oviedo, 1919, 223–26; Del folklore asturiano. Mitos, supersticiones, costumbres, Oviedo, 1922, 186–91; Bellezas de Asturias de Oriente a Occidente, Oviedo, 1928, 479; and especially in the survey by V. Velarde, ‘Usos y costumbres de los pueblos limítrofes a la villa de Salas’, Anales de la Universidad de Oviedo, 1 (1902). 19. A. Palacio Valdés, Obras Completas, Madrid, 1959 [1935], vol. II, 420–24. 20. Palacio Valdés, Obras Completas, vol. II, 420–24; C. Cabal, Contribución al Diccionario Folklórico de Asturias. Antolín–Antroxu, Oviedo, 1955, 297–98; El Carbayón, 22 December 1898; personal interview with G. González, 85 years old at the time of the interview in 1990 and a native of Cueto–Cenero, in the region of Gijón. With regard to the different types of cencerradas in general, see Thompson, Costumbres en común, 520 ff. 21. With regard to the calendar of these festivals, see E. Gómez and G. Coma, Fiestas de Asturias, Oviedo, 1985; Rituales y fiestas populares de Asturias. Período estival, Oviedo, 1986; and Las mascaradas de invierno en Asturias. Una perspectiva antropológica, Oviedo, 1993; with regard to the fairs and markets and the decline of Christianity during the period, see Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura, 314–32 and 638 ff; a version of a archetypal religious festival in Canella, ‘De Vita et moribus’; the data regarding Ecce-Home in J. González Aguirre, Diccionario geográfico de Asturias, La Habana, 1897; the population of Noreña in J. Uría Ríu, ‘Noreña’, in Gran Enciclopedia Asturiana, Gijón, 1970, vol. 10, 146; in addition, see the work of J. Caro Baroja, ‘Formas populares del espíritu dionisíaco’, in Escritos Combativos, Madrid, 1985, 123–227; changes in the typology of religious festivals during the first fifteen years of the century are in J. Uría, ‘Ocio y tiempo libre en la sociedad rural asturiana. Apuntes para un diálogo entre historiadores y antropólogos’, in Perspectivas del mundo rural asturiano, Oviedo, 1994, 229–50. The religious festivals must have been by far the main reason for absenteeism from work; in fact, the mining engineers made clear references to them, together with the fairs and markets, when explaining the indefinite number of festivals or the ‘multitude of intolerable and unfounded pretexts’ which were responsible for their ‘predisposition’ to laziness; no explicit references were made to other causes of absenteeism in their reports, however, such as weddings or funerals. With regard to these types of festivities in other parts, see the work of J.K. Walton and R. Poole, ‘The Lancashire Wakes in the Nineteenth Century’, in R.D. Storch (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-Century England, London, 1982, 100–24. 22. Gascue, Colección, 217–18; J. Suárez, ‘Memoria’ [a report on Asturias], in Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio. Comisión Ejecutiva de Estadística Minera. Datos estadísticos correspondientes al año económico de 1890–91, Madrid, 1894, 242 and 246. An account of the fighting can be found in C. Lisón, Antropología Social de España, Madrid, 1971, 28. 23. García Arenal, Datos para el estudio, 84; RS, vol. V, 396; Gascue, Colección, 218; and Suárez, El problema social, 23. 24. Cabal, Diccionario, 321–26. 25. The reference to the secular definition of the ‘guirrios’ in El Carbayón, 9 January 1905. 26. The most important elements of the information about the sidros comes from the edition of various comedies of José Noval by L.M. Iglesias and V.R. Hevia (J. Noval, Comedies de Sidros, Gijón, 1990). In addition, in the introduction reference is made to some of the unpublished manuscripts of this popular author.

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27. Cabal, Diccionario, 321–26. 28. The transcription of the storyline of various popular comedies in Asturian socialist workers’ centres in the first quarter of the century is in Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura, vol. IV, 2014–188. 29. See in Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura. 30. With regard to these types of winter masquerades, and especially the sidros from the region of Siero, see Cabal, Diccionario, 321–26, who took his data from the local scholar Fausto Vigil. Throughout the 1920s there was an interesting controversy surrounding the origin of these customs; they were Christian according to F. Vigil, ‘Los sidros de Siero’, Boletín del Centro de Estudios Asturianos [henceforth cited as Boletín], 3 (1924); and ‘Sobre el orígen de los sidros y guirrios’, Boletín, 6 (1925), and the result of a totemic reflection according to J. Uría Ríu, ‘Sobre el origen de los sidros, zamarrones, etc.’, Boletín, 5 (1925); and ‘Sobre la costumbre de los zamarrones, guirrios, etc.’, Boletín, 8 (1926). There are summaries of the end result of this controversy in: J. Uría, Cultura e ideología en la Asturias franquista: El IOEA, Oviedo, 1984, 15–16; and Gómez, Las mascaradas, 45–47. The latter provides an anthropological view of the topic (pages 40–60) which should be consulted in order to get a fuller and more exact idea of the subject, although it deals with aspects which are at times of little interest from a historical point of view. In any case, for information on sidros and zamarrones, it is still worth consulting J. Caro Baroja. El Carnaval, Madrid, 1983, 216–34. 31. With regard to the general features of carnival, Gómez, Las mascaradas, 63; also Caro Baroja, El carnaval, 26–29. Attempts to restrain and limit carnivals were no different in Asturias than in other regions, such as Galicia. See G. Brey and S. Salaün, ‘Los avatares de una fiesta popular: el Carnaval de La Coruña en el siglo XIX’, Historia Social, 5 (1989), 25–35. The cited examples of press attacks on the bad taste displayed during carnivals are in El Carbayón, 15 February 1907 and 15 February 1904. La Unión Republicana, 7 March 1897, reproduces passages from the article in which reference is made to the paternalistic presence of the old nobility mixing with the masses; the relationship between this custom and the mechanisms of paternalistic control of popular culture, described by E.P. Thompson, ‘Patrician society, Plebeian Culture’, Journal of Social History, 7 (1974), 382–405, is, in all other respects, obvious. Political references made in the speeches or during the carnivals, in Cabal, Diccionario, 280 and 293–94. The text from the Gijón newspaper El Noroeste on the ‘preachers’, is from the edition of 7 February 1910. In general, all these elements are dealt with in Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura, vol. I, 353 ff. 32. Suárez, El problema, 16; Suárez, ‘Memoria’, 250–51; Gascue, Colección, 217; and García Arenal, Datos para el estudio, 65. 33. ‘Los domingos en Asturias’ [editorial], El Carbayón, 7 October 904. 34. The employers’ request is quoted in Ojeda, Asturias en la industrialización, 125. 35. Ordenanzas municipales de Concejo de Somiedo, Oviedo, 1897, 13–14. 36. Ordenanzas municipales de la Ciudad de Oviedo y su término, Oviedo, 1908, 112. 37. Cabal, Diccionario. Further details on the prohibitions affecting carnivals are in Uría, Sociedad, ocio y cultura, vol. I, 368–83. 38. Data about absenteeism due to wakes – or due to partying after burying the body, which at that time usually took place in the afternoon – comes from Ángel González Álvarez, from La Rebollada (Gijón), an industrial engineer working for Duro Felguera at that time, who was interviewed in 1990 when he was 59 years old. The existence of pandorgades, which were extremely loud but had none of the prominence of the ‘preachers’ which Gabino Ganzález told me about, comes from my own memories as a resident of the rural area of Pinzales (Gijón) until the 1980s. The prohibitions affecting carnivals are in Caro Baroja, El carnaval, 154–55, and in Gómez, Las mascaradas, 103. 39. With regard to the changes in the rural areas of Asturias during these years, see Uría, ‘Ocio y tiempo libre’; calculations of yearly working days during the Ancien Régime are in S. De Grazia, Tiempo, trabajo y ocio, Madrid, 1966, 72, which considers the figure of 198 working days per year to be a credible estimate, and in J. Dumazedier, ‘Ocio’, in D.L. Sils (ed.), Enciclopedia internacional de las ciencias sociales, Madrid, 1975, vol. VII, 403. The latter estimates that by the end of the seventeenth century in France, the figure had risen to 201. Data from ‘Información sobre el trabajo en las minas’, 153.

CHAPTER 8

‘ROUGH CHARACTERS’ MINERS, ALCOHOL AND VIOLENCE IN LINARES AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY José Sierra Álvarez In memory of Edward P. Thompson

The Tavern as a Meeting-Point for Workers The image of miners as naturally intemperate, violent, drunken and belligerent characters is practically a standard feature of any literature about mining during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century. Whatever the literary, ethical and political tendencies of the authors – from conservative romanticism to Darwinist naturalism and from social Catholicism to working-class militancy – a look at such literature from Spain and from other countries is enough to confirm how relentlessly that idea was repeated and to recall how deeply rooted this myth was in the social imaginary of the time.1 It was originally an aesthetic myth which, however, seems to have pervaded the very social image – and not only the literary image – of the miner, as Enrique Tierno Galván was eventually able to perceive in a text relating to miners’ circumstances.2 It is not within the scope of this text to interpret the social and cultural conditions which made it possible to form this image or the twists and turns by means of which the old, ahistorical myths of plutonic origin became so deeply entrenched, almost as if they were grafted onto the turn-of-the-century social imaginary. Neither is it appropriate here to clarify the profound anthropological structure of the ghost. However, this is perhaps the opportunity to abridge the distance between legend and history, between image and society, between

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the chimera and social practices. It is fitting, therefore, to accurately reconstruct the conduct and habits with regard to alcohol and violence, while at the same time outlining the local social and cultural context in which certain conduct becomes common practice – of drinking, working, socialising. We shall see this by examining Linares during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. ‘The taverns are packed full, you can hear the sound of jack-knives clashing in the streets and the doctors in the hospital cannot keep up’. That is how Reverend Hugh James Rose summarised the night-time atmosphere in Linares in 1873. Reverend Rose was at that time the chaplain of various foreign mining companies working in the coalfields of Jaén (centre-south of Spain) and a meticulous observer, although not without a certain almost Pickwickian benevolence, of the customs and ways of mine workers.3 Thirty years later at the beginning of 1903, Joaquín Dicenta, who was at the height of his literary career, observed on visiting the city that in taverns and cafés ‘the mineworkers get together and shout, sing, get drunk, eat, argue and dice with death with their knives’.4 At the beginning and the end of the period set aside for this study, several observers, each in their own way, agreed that the tavern and physical violence were central features of the everyday lives of miners in Linares. However tinged the accounts of these observers were with a certain moralising tone, they contained too much information and too many accurate references to the omnipresence of the tavern as to not be credible. We will start with those whose tone is not so moralising and which, for that very reason, do not always concur. As if talking about three types of behaviour which inevitably went together, the mining engineer Enrique Naranjo de la Garza had no hesitation in writing in 1886 that ‘the most common vices of miners are drunkenness, gambling and prostitution’.5 This was not, however, the opinion of the benevolent Reverend Rose a few years earlier, who considered that alcoholic miners ‘drinking men’ made up no more than 3 percent of the total, and did not hesitate to state that ‘although they [the miners] may be uneducated, they are not drunkards’ – or at least not so much, in his opinion, as the Welsh Methodist miners, who were apparently as methodical in their drinking as they were in their praying.6 Beyond such interpretations, references to the abundance of sales outlets and alcohol consumption are particularly revealing. Reverend Rose estimated that in 1873, inside the city there was one tavern for every ten houses. Around the same time, the local press declared that ‘on the roads to the mines there are one hundred and fifty taverns’. In addition, there were four cafés cantantes (bars with live music) in 1873, and between three and six the following decade, a decade which underwent many changes as a result of changes in the mining industry which so affected, just like in La Unión, the existence of this kind of establishment.7 To complete the wider picture of drinking in Linares, reference should also be made to the dances, hostelries, inns, cheap eating houses and cafés de camareras (lit. cafés with waitresses) observed by Dicenta, and the brothels to which both he and Rose refer.8 Of them all, three appear to have been the main, most frequented drinking places, the miners’ most

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common ‘hideouts’: the tavern, the café cantante and the brothel-café de camareras.9 Each of them represented different and alternative ways of socialising, as well as illustrating the high points of the miners’ social circuit, particularly during the long winter nights (in summer, the street was the place where workers usually spent their leisure time), and, of course, on payday. As opposed to cafés, taverns were above all a space for stand-up socialising.10 It was a hurried, almost functional kind of socialising done at the stalls along the road to the mines, just as Dicenta portrayed at five or six o’clock in the morning: ‘the stream of human beings swells, heading towards the road with a deaf murmur, marching along the road with rebellious slowness, stopping off at the street stalls to drink down glasses of eau-de-vie or beer’. That was when they had not already started drinking at home before they left for work, as did Pacorro, one of the characters in Dicenta’s Daniel, who hit the bottle as soon as he got up from his camp bed.11 Normally, the taverns were small huts or even just tables painted in bright, gaudy colours and they were usually run by women. They were the places where the miners had what the local newspaper called a tropiezo (a hitch), that is to say their first meal of the day (the miners had their real breakfast as such in the mine, without any alcohol). This meal consisted of eau-de-vie, a few fritters and a coffee with another shot of eau-de-vie.12 Urban taverns, for their part, were undoubtedly very different, as were the habits of their customers. They were only open during the day and usually consisted of one room with a stone floor, connected to the rear patio by a door which was half-covered with a curtain, and connected to the outside by another door, lined with barrels of wine from Valdepeñas, one white and the other red, and crowned with a bunch of olive branches. Inside, they were dark and on a few small shelves there were bottles with mint, celery liquor, low-quality brandy and, above all, white eau-de-vie, in addition to glasses and ironware. Some of them may have sold meals, but there is no doubt that, in contrast to the stalls along the road towards the mines, these were the places favoured by the miners to socialise on a day-to-day basis, above all during the winter afternoons. Once they had returned from the mines and had dinner in the canteen or in their own home, the workers would roll a cigarette and go out to the packed taverns to chat and have a few glasses of wine and, in some cases, a glass of eau-de-vie.13 At around half past eight, and ‘with amazing regularity’, as Rose observed, the miners left the taverns to go to the cafés, places where people could socialise while seated.14 Describing these cafés’ bar counters and marble pedestal tables and stools, their stages and their boxes, the cigarette smoke around the gas lamps, the reverend could not help but be reminded of gin palaces in Britain. As a rule, each of these cafés could accommodate up to two hundred or three hundred people. All of them were men and, with the exception of the odd gentleman or student, they all belonged to the workingclass and especially to the mining fraternity.15 According to Naranjo de la Garza they were ‘always full’ and the influx of people must have been particularly great on Sundays, holidays and paydays, despite the fact that on those days – in contrast to normal working days – admission cost 1 real in

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1873.16 This latter difference may well reveal two different consecutive types of uses of the café. First, the café was used on a daily basis as a place for gambling, either for an innocent game of dominos in the main building or for betting in the private rooms. The other was when the café was transformed every week into a concert hall a café cantante. Theatrical performances, whether they were musicals (zarzuela, operettas) or other types (comedies), must have taken place quite often, but what the public really loved was flamenco guitar, flamenco singing and dancing. At least that is the picture painted by Naranjo de la Garza. Above all, he wrote, the miners preferred ‘the so-called flamenco singing of the gypsies, with the dancing and then the gypsy girls going from table to table speaking and drinking and telling jokes’.17 The engineer must have been right when he spoke of gypsy flamenco, the presence of which is well documented elsewhere.18 Unlike the flamenco-like singing and dancing of non gypsies – such as was performed in certain middle-class venues (and not only to parody the gypsies),19 miners in Linares favoured the jondo (deep flamenco) performed by vagrant gypsies. This was the type of music which Rose described as ‘savage, strange and monotonous’ and which Dicenta described as ‘guitaresque music’. This was exactly the kind of music which, among all the shouting, clapping, stamping and, of course, silence, must have given back to the miners, who appeared to grow in stature, their own experiences or at least their own musical culture.20 While drinking milk, coffee, lemonade, sarsaparilla, eau-de-vie, manzanilla, rum, aniseed liquor and brandy, in the cafés cantantes the mine workers could well have heard a taranta like the one that said: ‘Drink wine, my friend, / I’ll pay for it; / I want to spend the money / earned thanks to my sweat / working down the mine’. They may also have heard some gypsy girl singing another one which was attributed to the mythical Conchilla la Peñaranda, which said: ‘It’s three in the morning, / where’s that boy going, / he’s drinking wine / and he’ll get drunk’. This reflection was surprisingly true to what Rose heard the young women of Linares say when, on seeing the cold winter night sky, they closed the shutters of their houses: ‘Oh! My God, what terrible weather; he’s not going to come home!’.21 Especially if it was payday, once the men had left the cafés they would probably finish the night in a café de camareras or a brothel. Almost nothing is known of the latter except that there were many of them, they were relatively loosely defined (which clearly illustrates the fact that prostitution was widespread in Linares at that time) and the fact that the premises were attractively decorated with bright lights and that entertainment was provided by blind accordion players, in stark contrast to the sordid darkness of the tiny basements in which the sexual act itself took place.22 With regard to the café de camareras (probably a later import, insofar as neither Rose nor Naranjo de la Garza referred to them as a different type of venue), Dicenta has left us a description which is as colourful as it is brief: in a bar with tables and divans, ‘the women laughed, sang and uttered audacious amorous compliments, gathering around the men, leaning on them, putting their rouge-smeared faces against the men’s faces and filling the men’s ears with their alcohol soaked breath’.23 The male socialising of the taverns and the cafés was

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tempered here, albeit venally, by sexual relations. If we are to believe Dicenta, such bars were the kingdom of thugs, the ‘bohemians of the mines’, a synopsis of a certain type of person found in the mining areas. On payday, they could be seen surrounded by waitresses and bottles – and also, if the truth be told, by a certain aura of literary derogation: The man was not young. He was going on 40. His beard, which was tangled and dirty, allowed a glimpse of his black, bragging eyes framed by two lopsided eyebrows, a crooked, cocky nose, two reddened cheeks and a narrow forehead over which his extremely thick hair fell in curls. He wore a jacket with worn-out elbows and the silver tip of a sheath knife protruded from the lapel. He wore a filthy, blackened shirt which, above the unbuttoned collar, revealed the ends of a green neckerchief. He wore a wide, worsted sash which was in shreds, held tightly around his waist so that it doubled as a holster for an enormous number fifteen pistol. His corduroy trousers had worn-out hems and he wore espadrilles as well as a wide-brimmed hat, thrown down on the left-hand side of the divan and a blanket, left in a heap to the right. Such was the subject’s attire. Looking more like a beggar than a worker, he kept on ordering […] bottles of sherry, which he paid for one by one, taking out his neckerchief-turned-money-bag from under his shirt and taking out coin after coin. He did not bother to pick up the change, instead sharing out the money among the waitresses with Don Juan-like chivalry and continuing to drink his fino, just as the world’s wealthiest revellers might do.24

Knives and pistols: these are the common factors which join and separate the circuit of alcohol from the cycle of violence. During that time, all the miners of Linares wore them, not only the criminals. According to Rose, in 1873 all the miners wore a wide crimson belt in which, as well as their moneybags, they kept their jackknives, ‘to eat or to stab someone with’. Some years later, in 1886, the miners’ arsenal seems to have increased. ‘For quite a time now’, said Naranjo de la Garza, ‘they have used firearms, which they prefer to knives, which they previously used so much. It is odd if a miner does not always carry a double-barrel gun, revolver or a jackknife’. Already at the beginning of the century, one of the characters in Dicenta’s Daniel made references to ‘all those miners with their pistols and their knives’.25 To judge by how plentiful, frequent and detailed the reports were, they must have used these weapons relatively often, either to rob or steal, to intimidate or above all to fight with. In any case, between 1883 and 1887, the official statistics, despite limitations due to the limited breakdown of the information, did not reveal a particularly high crime rate among the population of Linares – at least in comparison with other nonmining regions of the province.26 They do show, however, a certain general deviation towards the practice of certain illegal acts which were particularly widespread among the popular classes. These were regarded, moreover, as particularly serious offences: crimes involving reckless negligence and crimes against property, against people’s liberty and safety (kidnapping and intimidation), against honour (slanderous allegations and insults) and against honesty. With all this, and if we are to believe the

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information provided by Naranjo de la Garza, the most significant deviation was that which differentiated miners from the rest of the population and differentiated brawling from other types of crimes. ‘In Linares, delinquency is high among the working class’, he said. ‘But there is a big difference between miners and other workers […]. The most common offence is that of wounding other people, generally mineworkers, with the exception of certain rare cases among other members of the working class’.27 Irrespective of whether hospital physicians were involved, or whether someone died, these brawls must indeed have been a relatively common occurrence among miners. This is how they generally went, or, if you prefer, the ritual that they followed. ‘Fights are almost never organised beforehand. Usually, the aggressor takes his victim by surprise, or at the most, only tells him or other colleagues of his intention to kill him. In the majority of cases, he manages to do just that, carrying out his threat at any time and in any place, either in the café or on the road to the mines and often in the squares and streets’.28 There are exact references to all the places where fights took place. To start with, there were the mines themselves and the roads to the mines. Take, for example, the cases recounted by Reverend Rose in 1873. The first was the tale in which a miner, believing he had been insulted by a British mine manager, attacked the man with a knife. Then there was the account of two pistol fights in a street stall along the road to the mine. Or, in 1889, there was a dispute involving a guard who was shot dead in the Virgen de Chaves mine. There was also the robbery and murder of another man ‘along the road to the mine’, or the fight and the death of two brothers ‘in one of the taverns along the road to the PozoAncho mine’.29 There are many other references: the reports of the local press were full of similar news.30 Yet it was the city, with its taverns and its streets, which was the favoured place of physical working-class violence. In 1903, Dicenta emphatically stated that: ‘miners, wherever they come from, whoever they are, neither provoke fights nor commit crimes inside the mine; […] when miners kill each other, they do so in the middle of the street’.31 The tavern and the street – the tavern being an extension of the street – appear to have been, in effect, the scene of many of the brawls and fights recounted by Rose. There was, for instance, the one in which a miner, apparently under the influence of drink, stabbed two men in the street, or another in which, at around one o’clock in the morning, the reverend was suddenly woken by ‘the ominous click of a revolver or a knife’ – two men fighting over ‘a contemptible woman’. He also recounted others which, because of their particular seriousness, made the local newspapers: one man dead, another man beaten and a child’s head split open on Good Friday, 1889; ‘many disputes’ and one man with a gunshot wound – only one wound, to the surprise of the anonymous editor – during Christmas of that same year, and many others.32 There were so many that, during 1885 alone, for example, in the criminal court of Linares there were five trials for murder, nine for shooting firearms at people and sixty-four for inflicting other types of wounds.33 And how many more fights were there which managed to escape justice and the undoubtedly hardened eyes of the local press?

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If fights and brawls seem to have been the miners’ main legacy, the same cannot be said of theft and robbery, the other element – of peasant stock – which contributed to determining the panorama of popular delinquency and illegality in Linares. Naranjo de la Garza was extremely explicit in this regard: ‘robberies are few and far between and are virtually nonexistent among miners, except for the occasional theft of minerals from the storehouses of certain mines. The other robberies committed are also insignificant and involve the poorest workers searching for fruit during the olive harvest or for spikes of wheat and also firewood’.34 Despite all this, eighteen trials for robbery and seventy for theft in 1885 clearly show that such practices were widespread – especially the theft of minerals among miners.35 Measures introduced by the government in 1879 aimed at ‘preventing the theft of minerals, which was becoming very frequent’, do not appear to have been very successful. Indeed, it would seem that such thefts continued to be a frequent occurrence, judging by the fact that, in a single week in the following year, for example, one of the mines was robbed three times and ‘the thieves took more than 200 arrobas of sulphur’, apparently from under the noses of Civil Guards from a nearby post. Moreover, the guards were not prepared to go into the miners’ neighbourhoods, whose shacks and caves were apparently used as ‘warehouses for the stolen goods and especially minerals, coal and olives of dubious origin’.36 Taverns, cafés, brothels, theft, fights, murders, knives, pistols, drinking sessions and brawls: these are the brushstrokes of an image which, without going so far as being a literary caricature, comes close to being one insofar as it evokes the mining world and mining culture, which is so often branded by varied, generalised phenomena of deviation and delinquency, of social pathology. The latter is a category which in its functional complacency is unable – not even in terms of medical thinking – to go deeper into the hermeneutics of the languages capable of recounting the transformation of behaviour into habits and the transformation of habits into social practices. Now that we have a descriptive image of them, it is time to resize that image and, above all, to resituate miners’ use of alcohol and violence not only in the context of everyday living and socialising, but also in the context of conflict and confrontation in which they acquire a normal value and not a merely semantic value.37

Miners and Alcohol It is important not to forget that, in addition to drinking and fighting, mineworkers in Linares at that time appear to have had no option but to work underground in the mines, in the washery and workshops outside the mines and in the foundries. Throughout the time in question here, the normal length of an average shift was around eight hours working inside, nine or ten hours working outside and six hours in the highly toxic foundries. Moreover, these were actual working times and did not include travelling to or from the city (around two hours in a lot of cases), nor the time it took to get dressed

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or changed nor, in the case of underground workers, the time it took to move around the wooden beams, ladders and winches of the mineshafts. Neither did they include – and this is particularly significant – the common practice of working alternate shifts of twelve hours on and twelve hours off (in the case of machine operators and, at times, foundry workers) or the frequent cases of doubling-up (two consecutive shifts and one day off) or, in the case of pieceworkers and their gangs – i.e. the great majority of workers – working days of unspecified length, which inevitably meant working longer hours.38 According to the information provided by Naranjo de la Garza, miners in Linares rarely drank while they were working, not even at meal times. Neither did they tend to drink in their homes during the few hours that were not spent sleeping or doing their exhausting jobs. Instead, as we have seen, they drank ‘in public establishments’. It is true that this must certainly have had something to do with a very exact cultural understanding of the place where alcohol was consumed within the framework of the relationships between public and private space. This understanding clearly had its roots in rural areas insofar as it would appear that agricultural day labourers were not in the habit of drinking at home, either.39 However, it is also true that, in the case of miners – and above all miners from other areas – such behaviour was also influenced by the fact that they rarely had their own space which could in the strictest sense be called, i.e. that they could call, – their own home. Just as in so many other aspects, the Reverend Rose appears to have been fully aware of this. In some of the streets where miners and agricultural day labourers lived, he reported that: ‘at night time, each room of the house contains between seven and ten of these poor devils […], who sleep fully dressed and covered with a blanket’.40 The situation did not appear to have changed over time, except that living conditions got even worse due to the expansion of the mining industry. In 1886, the chief engineer of the district reported that both in the houses of the city and in the huts on the outskirts of town or on the adjoining roads, ‘various workers’ shared the same room (sleeping on their clothes or on a small, straw mattress) and, at best, a communal kitchen. In 1903, Dicenta also made reference to the dwellings where immigrant miners lived, with their tiny windows which were almost always shut, in which two groups with six men in each fought, with their mattresses of corn, their mats, their threadbare blankets and their bundles, over an area of three square metres. Meanwhile, in the case of the miners who had settled in the city, the situation was ‘even worse’, given the fact that there were also women and children to accommodate.41 In all other respects, things would not have been much better, bearing in mind the lack of interest of the municipal and government authorities (with the exception, as from the mid-1870s, of issues concerning public order) and the unscrupulous strategies of the private promoters in the city, who constructed huts and shacks of approximately twenty square metres for the miners. In such conditions, it is hardly surprising that most of the working-class accommodation in Linares at that time involved the workers making their own shacks and slums on common land in the poor areas of town, in rural areas nearby or even simple rooms in caves in the surrounding areas or in abandoned sections of the mines themselves.42

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Certainly, it cannot have been easy or pleasant to drink – or even stay – in such surroundings, without doubt as different again from the areas of contemporary bourgeois privacy. There was therefore a good reason, and not just cultural reasons, why time spent not working, working-class life and thus socialising revolving around alcohol, should take place in the street and in public places and establishments. However difficult it may be to provide documentary evidence, we should perhaps also mention the possible effect of the peculiar and disjointed family structure of the mining population, which sought bonds of mutual support outside the home and within the community which were difficult to find inside their homes. For it is true to say that a considerable part of the mining workforce, just like the agricultural workforce, was made up of seasonal workers, mainly from the southern provinces of Almeria and Granada (and to a lesser extent from Galicia, in the north-west; and La Mancha, in the south). These workers moved to Linares once or twice each year for periods of two to six months ‘during the time’, Dicenta remarked in 1903, ‘when farm work came to a standstill [in their home regions] and hunger took possession of the farm workers, just like ice takes possession of the land’. They were the single men, that is to say, ‘those who had no family’, those same men referred to earlier who were crammed together in the slums of Linares.43 Whether they were married or single men in the strictest sense of the word, they all lived, both at work and outside work, in a family-less micro-community, characterised by its sexual and, to a large extent, generational homogeneity.44 The domestic structure and family life do not appear to have been much stronger among miners settled in the city – normally those who were miners by trade. Rose could not help but notice the high number of lovers among the mining population, and Naranjo de la Garza stated that people living together was a ‘natural and normal occurrence’ in Linares, particularly among miners.45 We should also mention the effect on family life of women and children working outside the home, either in the mine (filling containers in the galleries) in the case of children between nine and fourteen years old, or as water carriers and workers in the washeries of the mines or, even more commonly, as maids and nursemaids in the case of the girls and adult women.46 In such conditions, it is understandable that neither single nor married people were particularly fond of staying at home during the little free time that they had. However, this does not explain – at least not directly – the unquestionably high level of alcohol consumption. Much more revealing is the poor diet of the miners and, in general, of day labourers in Linares. This consisted of cod with bread or potatoes at lunchtime; vegetable stew made of beans or potatoes, or paprika soup with sardines at dinnertime; and above all in summer, fried pumpkin with pork fat, fruit, salads and gazpacho. They therefore hardly ever ate meat and hardly ever ate hot meals, remarked Naranjo de la Garza, who also pointed out that such a diet, at least in the case of the miners, who had to do very hard work, was ‘insufficient’ whichever way you looked at it. Considering the difficulties they had in feeding themselves – according to the chief engineer of the district, a suitable diet cost at least 3 pesetas in 1886, that is to say the same or more than a day’s wages – drinking

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alcohol must have meant, among other things, eating less while still obtaining – or believing they obtained – the necessary liquid and calories required to withstand the dehydration and fatigue of the work. Or as Reverend Rose so eloquently put it, to ‘strengthen the stomach’.47 Thus, alcohol helped miners to save on food, just like in other coal-mining areas.48 However, it was also something else. For although it is true that the high cost of survival and the economic conditions of the mine workers – always on a knife-edge but, despite everything, less wretched than the conditions of agricultural day labourers, who were more frugal – can explain why alcohol was used as a means of feeding themselves, it would also appear to be true that, despite his moralising tone, Naranjo de la Garza could not help being surprised by the fact that ‘the mine workers […] did not save anything. Instead, when they received large wage payments they frittered the money away, most of it immediately, in the cafés and theatres on gambling and on alcohol’.49 There must have been good reasons, however, for them to spend their money in such an apparently irrational way. Here is where other factors of a cultural nature, which were quite possibly just as important, must be added to the reasons for alcohol consumption related to housing, family and nutrition. And above all, all those which originated in the complex and varied functions of the tavern and the café in the everyday life of miners in Linares. For a start, they were places to eat, as illustrated by the canteens next to the workplace or, as mentioned above, the street stalls along the roads leading to the mines. There were also some establishments in the city, such as the patisseries, which also served eau-de-vie.50 At the same time, they were also places where workers were contracted, places where work could be found and, possibly, where daily wages were paid. Dicenta remarked that the miners ‘arrive at any tavern [and] ask a pieceworker, a group leader or a mine foreman, for a job’.51 However, above all, as has also been described above, they were places for socialising. It should be added that, to an even greater extent than the street, they were perhaps the only place available to the hordes of disorientated, newly-arrived workers for whom the taverns and cafés must have represented the only fixed reference points in a city which had suddenly been shaken and disrupted by the frenzied expansion of the mining industry and by the ups and downs of the world lead market. In one brilliant page, once again Joaquín Dicenta left us a short summary of the numerous functions of those multipurpose microcosms which public places used for alcohol consumption must have represented for the miners. Taverns, inns, eating places, cafés de camareras and cafés cantantes; in general, these are the places in which the slaves of the mines choose to cheat their starving stomachs with unnutritious delicacies; to daze their tiny brains with glasses of eau-de-vie; to strengthen their muscles, relaxed by the hereditary labour, with indirect injections of alcohol; to satisfy their aesthetic yearnings with […] songs full of stupidities, and fulfil their simple fantasies of love with the funny remarks and caresses of women who are a cross between servants and prostitutes and who, with an apron around their waists and a serviette over their shoulders, serve aniseed liqueur and conversation, manzanilla and kisses, all in exchange for a small tip.52

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Not a great deal? Enough, however, for the mineworkers of Linares to show an apparently unbreakable attachment – that is to say, they were culturally anchored – to such places and such uses. It was such that, in around 1910, the engineer Lucas Mallada could not help but feel surprised by the fact that the miners from Jaén preferred to work double shifts or walk several hours to get to the mines instead of moving away from the large centres of population. Away from the city centres they would ‘miss having the cafés and the taverns nearby’.53 They did, however, earn comparatively higher wages than other workers and day labourers, but they earned money too infrequently and too irregularly. This irregularity had its roots, initially, in the unstable price of lead on the worldwide market, which subjected the salaries, the work market and the population of Linares to ups and downs and to a rhythm which could at best be regarded as traumatic. Yet it also had its roots in the specific way the work was organised. This was based on the widespread use of piecework in semi-self-employed work gangs, led by a foreman and his workmates. If the situation suddenly changed, if there was no longer enough work or if the hardness of the ground had not been carefully assessed when the contract was negotiated, the leader could find himself heading down the slippery slope which Naranjo de la Garza described so well. ‘Yesterday we could see how a foreman lived quite comfortably, with his own horse, home comforts, a clock, jewellery etc. Then he was a contractor, after that a labourer, afterwards he had no job and no income, eventually resorting to asking for work in exchange for sacks of produce in the abandoned mines’.54 If this happened all too often to high-ranking workers, what must have happened to workers of a lower category and, above all, to labourers? This was their own miserable situation: dismissal and unemployment, pawning their possessions, resorting to usurious loans, emigration – if the paltry value of their belongings allowed them to – and finally, begging in the street, which so annoyed the dignitaries of the city.55 The work situation was therefore very unstable. Yet there was also instability while doing the work itself, which must have cast a shadow over the perception that the workers had of their own jobs. In fact, if everything was going well, and if their bodies were not too badly weakened by ancylostomiasis (hookworm disease or ‘miners’ anaemia’), malaria or intermittent fever, every day the miners still had to risk being left blind by the arsenic and sulphurous vapours (especially if they worked inside in the mineshafts and galleries). They also had to face the dangers of sunstroke, pneumonia and rheumatic complaints (particularly if they worked outside in the sun-drenched humidity of the washeries) and all workers were at risk of saturnine colic (the terrible lead poisoning), especially those who worked in the foundries.56 If occupational illnesses were a serious limitation to their future in terms of work, salary (as decreased strength, just as in other mining areas, seems to have been an important parameter in the composition of work schedules) or their very survival, accidents were more irregular, if not less frequent threats. If we are to believe the unreliable official statistics, between 1875 and 1900, on average major accidents in the mines of Linares claimed

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the lives of at least fifteen miners and caused twenty-four miners to be seriously injured, which meant overall an average of 6.5 per thousand throughout the whole period.57 This extreme lack of safety, which in spite of being widespread was no less serious for that, thus seems to have determined the length of the miners’ lives, in addition to their daily existence. Reverend Rose was able to hear from the mouths of the girls in the city the subjective extent of such a situation. ‘Marrying a miner’, they told him, ‘is hard because they leave us too soon’. Generally, they died before they turned forty, Rose himself added, who also heard how the men themselves described the sad, hard lives that they led as: ‘short and happy lives’. However much, in his balanced opinion, life was ‘much more often shorter than happier’, it is difficult not to link that escapist view with the uses made of money and alcohol, and not to react to the sharp brilliance of the taranta that went: ‘God damn the money / that we earn in the mine; / I prefer to spend it / even though I live a life of misery / in case I die tomorrow’.58 Angry and self-controlled, this summarised all the objective violence which impregnated the living conditions of miners in Linares, both inside and outside the workplace. At the same time, this violence was not contained by either the singing or the drinking. Both promiscuous and polymorphous, it manifested itself in illegality and delinquency, in theft and fighting and in brawls. It is also appropriate here to mention the specific contexts of such uses and such behaviour, because the miners’ image of generalised violence, with its magmatic appearance, conceals and suppresses socially diverse practices. First, there was robbery and theft, which were crimes of poverty. There was indeed poverty if we take into account certain information regarding the family budgets of miners in Linares. If we take for example a family made up of four people (father, mother and two children, one of working age), three of whom worked at least three hundred days per year, annual income was rarely more than 1,680 pesetas. Supposing that we also only take into account expenditure on food (including a litre of wine per day), housing and clothing, yearly expenditure at normal city prices would be at least 1,640 pesetas.59 In theory, therefore, there would have been a surplus of 40 pesetas. In reality, however, this would have been nonexistent or the opposite would have been true if we consider how low this estimate of expenditure is (it does not include communal expenses or those called for by accepted social behaviour) and, above all, the extent to which income may have been overstated (it includes an unusually high level of activity in the family and, on the other hand, there is no provision in the estimate for the frequent interruptions in work, whether they be due to dismissal, illness or accident, or quite simply because of death). And what about the brawls, the knife fights and the gun fights – which, as we have already seen, represented the other main form of delinquency among the miners of Linares? Here, too, it is worth moving away from the image of its links with alcohol abuse and, as if it were a functional taxonomy, distinguish different practices which did not necessarily involve alcohol but which did, at times, involve the more structural and social dimensions of the

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daily life of the miners. The brawls were, above all, related to the organisation of work, which, as we saw earlier, was based on piecework – or, in other words, they were related to the fact that the mining companies had abandoned one of their self-proclaimed functions. Naranjo de la Garza was aware of this. Labour instability, changes in the fortunes of contractors and, perhaps above all, the need to earn respect within the framework of production relationships, which took the form of individual relationships between people, ‘produce violent situations in both the worker’s and his family’s behaviour and way of life; [… when things get nasty], the contractors exploit the labourers and at times flee without paying them. These causes, as well as the fact that they are unable to fulfil their obligations with their workmates, give rise to arguments, fights and murders on an incredibly regular basis’.60 Take, for example, this taranta de Linares: ‘Washery foreman / go out to the dump, / because Venancio Porra is coming, / and I want to fight with him’; or another one in which a character called El Lavador (the washer) was stabbed by someone called Picha.61 On other occasions, the fights seemed to be linked to the company interfering in the workers’ private lives. Quite often, in fact, it appears that cash-flow problems and the ensuing irregularity in paying the workers their daily wages led some companies to set up their own canteens (or to arrange for them to be organised by shopkeepers from the city) and attempt to temper the workers’ anger by practices such as the truck system. Far from achieving their objectives, they seem to have provoked even more violence due to the poor quality and the price of the goods and the miners’ debts – which in the case of temporary workers sometimes prevented them from going back to their places of origin in case they lost what they were owed. ‘Because of these reasons or causes,’ wrote Naranjo de la Garza, ‘there are daily arguments among workers, contractors and colleagues, and these are the causes of the frequent crimes and murders committed in Linares.’62 On other occasions, the fights could somehow be related to antidisciplinarian and generally antiauthoritarian rebelliousness. There is not so much documentary evidence to illustrate this, except for the aforementioned fights recounted by Rose. They must have happened fairly frequently, however: the criminal records of 1885 show that in that year alone, five people were tried for offences varying from ‘attacks against authority, resistance and disobedience’ or, somewhere between rebelliousness and mountain banditry, to certain other mentions of kidnapping, with reference to the neighbouring area of La Carolina (for instance, the kidnapping of a representative of the Real Compañía Asturiana de Minas in 1890 or, two years later, of the British manager of the mines in El Centenillo).63 There was also the general, widespread violence which was undoubtedly the most common form and which was related not only to this or that specific area of the miners’ everyday lives, but rather to all areas of their lives as a whole (and this therefore included alcohol). It was this brutal violence that pervaded the very denseness of the social environment in Linares, by means of which the pathology of society was inevitably apparent as a social pathology, a set of practices which, although indifferent and caricatured,

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provide information about the miners themselves and their angry behaviour, as well as about society in general, about the sociocultural relationships which were the basis of society and about the conflicts which ran through it and tore it apart. They did indeed rip it apart, because such turbid practices became entrenched and led to terrible divisions. This split, this gash, appeared, above all, as a cultural conflict, as an unfinished process of acculturation, as a paradoxical uprooting culture, as a no man’s land between the peasant culture of Andalusian day labourers, mule drivers and coach drivers on the one hand, and the industrial mining culture on the other hand: between the spent countryside and the unnaturally-born city. From that point of view, Linares at that time – its mines, its streets, its cafés – should not by any means be regarded simply as a stage, but rather as a battleground, or even as a border town. Despite its small dimensions, the crime statistics between 1883 and 1887 leave few doubts as to the profile of the ‘criminals’: of 1,386 people tried in the city during that period, 1,253 were men, almost 600 aged between twenty-five and forty years old (closely followed by those aged between eighteen and twenty-five years), 728 were single, almost 900 were day labourers and more than half were originally from areas outside the jurisdiction of the court of Linares (Table 8.1).64 Table 8.1 Criminal Proceedings, Grouped by Offences from the Criminal Courts of Linares and Jaén, 1883–1887 Offences

Linares cases 0/00*

Against public order 74 Misrepresentation 20 By public employees in the course of their duties 7 Against the person 912 Sexual offences 8 Against a person’s honour 6 Against people’s freedom and safety 29 Against property 1,123 Reckless negligence 43 Against the general interests and the government of the people 26 Against the Constitution 6 Against the laws governing the press – Gambling 8 Against the laws regarding illegal burial, desecration of graves and public health 4 Failure to comply with a sentence 2 TOTAL

2,268

Jaén cases 0/00*

0.66 0.18

274 13

1.97 0.09

0.06 8.09 0.07 0.05 0.28 9.97 0.38

7 1,750 7 1 20 2,205 34

0.05 12.57 0.05 0.01 0.14 14.54 0.24

0.23 0.05 – 0.07

113 4 10 4

0.81 0.03 0.07 0.03

0.03 0.02 20.14

1 n.a. 4,443

0.01 n.a. 30.61

* In relation to the total population within the jurisdiction of each court. n.a.: not available. Source: MGJ, Estadística de la administración de justicia en lo criminal, Madrid, 1883–1887.

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In short, they were seasonal workers far away from the spatial and community frameworks and from the social control of their place of origin. From this point of view, Dicenta was right when he identified single men as ‘workers on the loose’,65 free from the norms of social (self-)control which they would have been used to. So particularly demonising in its own way, it was the same conclusion as the one Guillermo Sánchez Martín, a doctor in the neighbouring El Centenillo mines, came to in the early 1920s: The archetypal miner is originally a farm labourer who, unable to come to terms with the poverty in his village, migrates to the mining areas in search of a day’s work with which to satisfy his ruffian cravings; a great brute with little culture, he breaks the bonds that kept him shackled to the servitude of the arid land, and emancipated like a free man, lacking any kind of mechanical training, his muscular strength and ambition to earn money find a particular application in the mine.66

The miners were uprooted, then, from their cultures of origin. Yet they were also uprooted at their point of arrival, in a city which was shaken to its roots by the expansion of the mining industry, by the never-ending flood of thousands of workers, by the new working rules, by the shifting of power at local level and, perhaps above all, because it was incapable of determining new forms of adaptation, integration and control. It is worth clarifying two points here. One refers to the working environment and, very specifically, to the mining companies’ inability to control the recruitment of their own workers. Reverend Rosee mentioned this in the early 1970s: Criminals fleeing from the arms of the law, people ‘under suspicion’ – i.e. suspected of having political inclinations which go against the government –, people in debt, adventurers, peasants who can not find enough work to earn a living and support their families, they all flocked to the mines in search of shelter, a means of support or a hideout; and, when so many strange, different elements come together in a large mass of men, it can be no surprise that […] passions are unleashed and the men succumb to a wild life of drink and the lowest forms of promiscuity’.67

The mines were, therefore, a recruiting post and fertile ground for thugs, criminals or, more simply – and without doubt more generally – for what Rose himself, in his innocence, called ‘rough characters’.68 This was also noticed by Dicenta, who at the same time very shrewdly discerned their close connection with piecework as the predominant strategy in terms of the organisation of labour. Of such thugs, in fact, he wrote: Nobody in Linares knows where these men come from. They arrive, or rather suddenly appear in a tavern […] Do they come from the hills after running away from the Civil Guard? Do they come from prison after escaping from the jailers keeping watch over them? From a brothel where their knife allowed them to kill and their craftiness enabled them to escape? Nobody knows and nobody asks. In Linares, nobody ever asks such things. […] In the offices of the mines themselves they do not know the names of hardly any of the workers; it is enough for them to know the name of the leader of each workgroup.69

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If there was indeed such a lack of control in the mines, things do not appear to have been much better in the city. We saw earlier how the bourgeoisie and the local authorities were not interested in the subject of working-class accommodation and the subsequent need for workers to build their own dwellings. This was a clear sign of the authorities’ incompetence in controlling the urban growth of the city, which was just as plain to see in the ‘urban expansion plan’ of 1876.70 Outside the old centre, prior to the expansion of the mines, most of the streets and buildings appear not to have had names or even numbers – which must have been a major factor in converting certain neighbourhoods on the outskirts of town and overcrowded parts of town into areas which were out of control. At least this is what can be seen from the concerns of the local press: It is a well-known fact the problem in the countryside, in the whole Linares area, comes as a result of the overcrowded living conditions of people who come from many countries, many provinces and many villages in search of work. Since these people do not mind starting a fight for any reason whatsoever, it would appear that on issuing an indictment and describing the place where the crime took place, they simply say ‘in a house in the country’, without saying either the number or the name of the house. This lack of information leads to a distortion of the events and it is impossible to determine the facts for certain.71

Such concerns are significant, although not at all exceptional, because of their vigilant overtones. The fact of the matter was that the local bourgeoisie was able to do little more to face up to the classes dangereuses of Linares, that is to say troublemakers, drunkards and miners who, according to Rose, were regarded by the Civil Guard (and most probably by the security guards and rural guards too) as ‘beasts or rabid dogs and, as a result, treated as such’.72 This was deviant behaviour, in a society which some regarded as anomic and which Constancio Bernaldo de Quirós, for example, regarded as an ‘inorganic’ or ‘incoherent’ society’.73 However, the cultural conflict was at the same time a social conflict. The interclass horizontality of the former is transversally covered and mobilised by the verticality of class conflicts.74 It is true that only at the very end of the period under discussion here (and especially as of the first 1 May celebration in Linares in 1890) did the first trade union groups emerge.75 It is also true that previously, there must only have been sporadic uprisings and outbreaks of collective action.76 However, it would also appear to be true that the abundance and repeated occurrence of deviant behaviour and of workingclass practices involving alcohol and violence, above all in those aspects most closely related to the organisation of work, to labour relations and to the uses of the city, expressed in their own vague, cultural and perhaps amorphous way a permanent state of reluctance, of rejection and, in the final analysis, of social conflict. How, for example, can a fight with a foreman, a manager or a guard not be regarded as a latent, individual expression of labour conflict – with a high risk, moreover, of turning into a collective movement?77 Similarly, how is it possible not to interpret the sudden flash of a knife brandished against a canteen worker as an expression of the conflict in which part of the working

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conditions of the miners was at stake? How could it go unnoticed that absenteeism and the miners’ reluctance to leave their taverns and their cafés, their chats and their singing were nothing but the cultural expression of an attempt to refuse to work and to maintain at all costs a kind of illusory semiindependence? In short, how could it go unnoticed that, at the very bottom of the swell and the ebb and flow of the split between two worlds, a new way of life and, perhaps above all, a new experience were struggling to break through? Naranjo de la Garza, for his part, was aware of this: ‘in Linares – he wrote – the mining industry exerts an enormous influence on the mineworkers judging by the uniformity of their likes, practices, way of life, customs and all kinds of other signs’.78 And that new condition, that new genre de vie should be defined above all to establish at its very centre new forms of segregation (which included places of leisure that had been shared in days gone by)79 and a new type of conflict: collective industrial conflicts, which were widespread in Linares from the time of the First World War. We are probably not in a position to trace – or even consider – the mediations and methods of transformation and interconnected growth between the cultural practices of individual resistance and the social practices of collective demands. However, that should not lead us to underestimate the first or, what would be the same, transfer them towards a ‘history of culture’ or towards a ‘history of leisure’ deprived of conflict and, therefore, of sociality.

Notes 1. Considering the fact that this text is an abridged version of another wider-ranging text, there is not enough space here to undertake such a task. However, from a slightly different perspective, see Groupe Iconologie de la Culture Technique, ‘Les images de la mine’, Milieux, 6 (1971), 79–81; E. García Domínguez, ‘La mina en la literatura’, in Asturias: libro de la mina, Gijón, 1985, 171–84; and J. Álvarez Junco, ‘El minero como creación literaria’, in Mineros, sindicalismo y política, Oviedo, 1987, 429–39. From a more general point of view, A.W. Metcalfe, ‘The Demonology of Class: The Iconography of the Coalminer and the Symbolic Construction of Political Boundaries’, Critique Of Anthropology, 10: 1 (1990), 39–63. 2. E. Tierno Galván, ‘Prólogo’ to F. Martín Angulo, Los mineros … ¡acusan!: ¡las huelgas!, Madrid, 1977, 7–9. A great many technical and engineering texts could be quoted in which the perception of the miner is markedly similar to the prevailing aesthetic image. 3. H.J. Rose, Untrodden Spain and Her Black Country: Being Sketches of the Life and Character of the Spaniard of the Interior, London, 1875, vol. II, 155 (from now on, only pages from the second volume shall be quoted). Rose’s outstanding work was one of the main documentary bases of all that followed, both because of the quality of its observations – the result, according to the preface, of living with and observing the miners of Linares at first hand – as well as the fact that it comes from someone who, to judge by his previous job among Welsh miners or his subsequent post as chaplain of the Dover garrison, cannot exactly have been an easily affected man. 4. J. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, El Liberal, 19 January 1903. The quotation comes from one of the six parts which make up the series, published between 2 and 22 January. The collection, which is of outstanding documentary and literary value, is barely known. Furthermore, the observations made then by Dicenta formed the documentary and atmospheric basis of his subsequent work Daniel (Madrid 1907) – otherwise, the work followed his usual practice of being based on visits and previous journalistic works for the creation of his larger works. J.

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5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

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Morby, ‘Notes on Dicenta’s Material and Method’, Hispanic Review, 9:3 (1941), 383–93; and J. Mas, ‘Introducción’ to J. Dicenta, Juan José, Madrid, 1986, 22. Daniel is the last and, according to some, Dicenta’s ‘most perfect’ incursion into social drama. J. Mas, Vida, teatro y mito de Joaquín Dicenta, Alicante, 1978, 163. At this point, I must thank Loreto Picatoste Ruggeroni for her kindness and knowledge when she provided me with some very valuable references to Dicenta. E. Naranjo, ‘Informe del Ingeniero Jefe de las minas de Linares’, in S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, vol. V, 165 [henceforth cited as RS]. It would appear that Antonio Moreno Rivilla intends to separately re-edit this magnificent report. Rose, Untrodden, 178 and 223. Rose, Untrodden, 124 and 191; El Eco Minero (Linares), 1877, reproduced in Revista Minera (1877), 31 [henceforth cited as RM]; El Eco Minero, 11 September 1887; J.L. Navarro and A. Iino, Cantes de las minas, Córdoba, 1991, 22; and M. Urbano, Taranta: cante y artistas de Linares, Linares, 1991, 21–22 and 28 (I owe this last reference to the repeated kindness of Antonio Moreno Rivilla). Rose, Untrodden, 189; and Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. Rose, Untrodden, 189. With regard to social activities during winter nights, Rose, Untrodden, 190–98; with regard to what happened on payday, Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’. For the differences between standup and seated socialising, S. Salaün, El cuplé (1900–1936), Madrid, 1990, 72. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 6 January 1903; and Dicenta, Daniel, 8. El Eco Minero, 18 November 1883; and Rose, Untrodden. Rose, Untrodden, 123–24 and 190. Rose, Untrodden, 190. Rose, Untrodden, 191–92; and in narrative form, A. Mascaró, ‘Escenas del café cantante: la promesa’, El Eco Minero, 26 February 1890. Also Salaün, El cuplé, 165. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 165; and Rose, Untrodden, 191. With regard to the theatrical performances, many of which, it would seem, satirised priests, Rose, Untrodden, 189 and 194–96; for the quotation, Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 165. Rose, Untrodden, 192, which refers to the presence of gypsy women wearing brightly coloured dresses in the cafés; J. Sánchez, ‘La vida cotidiana’, in J. Artillo et al., La minería en Linares (1860–1923), Jaén, 1987, 195; and, for the profusion of gypsies in certain neighbourhoods, Urbano, Taranta, 11. Such was the soirée organised by the Centro Artístico on 28 December 1885, in which, in addition to other performances, there was a live group which ‘sang and danced flamenco and which was so funny […] that it deserved the honour of an encore among the guffaws and applause of the audience’ – an audience which was, it would appear, gorging on manzanilla and slices of spicy sausage. There was also the Sunday dance of 1887 at the home of the provincial representative, himself in favour of fusionism, in which sevillanas were danced and malagueñas and peteneras (all different types of flamenco songs) were heard which were sung by ‘the adorable Amparo Fernández’, ending the soirée with some flamenco tangos which, at least according to the evening’s chronicler, ‘only that lady can sing’. See El Eco Minero, 1 January 1885 and 6 March 1887 respectively. Rose, Untrodden, 194 and 120; Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903; and Mascaró, ‘Escenas’. With regard to the great controversy over the origins (in musical but also in geographical terms between Almería, Murcia and Jaén) of the taranta, the basis of all the flamenco mining songs (which we cannot go into here), F. Grande, Memoria del flamenco, Madrid, 1979, vol. II, 371–400; A. Álvarez, Historia del cante flamenco, Madrid, 1981, 131–33; A. Hortal, Cien años de cante jondo en Jaén, Granada, 1981, 39 and 63; A. Salom, Los cantes libres y de Levante, Murcia, 1982, 40–44; and Navarro and Iino, Cantes, 11. With regard to the drinks in the café, Rose, Untrodden, 192; Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 161; Mascaró, ‘Escenas’; and Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903; for the lyrics of the two songs, Navarro and Iino, Cantes, 117; and Grande, Memoria, 732; for the final reference, written in pseudo-Spanish in the original, once again Rose, Untrodden, 188.

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22. J. de Martos, ‘Clases obreras’, El Eco Minero, 9 October 1884 (this is a personal reply – from the director of the main newspaper of Linares – to the questioning carried out by the Commission for Social Reforms, not included in the official edition); Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 166; Rose, Untrodden, 196–98; and Urbano, Taranta, 21 and 25. 23. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. 24. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. 25. Rose, Untrodden, 137; Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 166; and Dicenta, Daniel, 10 and 67. 26. The district of Linares, with 112,664 inhabitants, included the administrative areas of Linares, Andújar and La Carolina; the district of Jaén, with 139,250 inhabitants, included the administrative areas of Jaén, Alcalá la Real, Mancha Real and Martos. It is not possible to go into a detailed debate about the reliability of the data or the viability of the comparisons here. 27. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 116. 28. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 166. 29. Rose, Untrodden, 97, 311–12; and El Eco Minero, 27 June 1889 and 31 August 1889. 30. Throughout 1887, for example, El Eco Minero published news of eleven violent disputes, some of which ended in death and all of which, without a doubt, involved bloodshed. 31. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. 32. Rose, Untrodden, 96–97 and 155; El Eco Minero, 23 April 1889 and 6 January 1889. Also 4 January 1890 and, with regard to violence involving women, see 26 June 1887. 33. Ministerio de Gracia y Justicia [henceforth cited as MGJ], Estadística de administración de justicia en lo criminal, Madrid, 1885. 34. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 166. 35. MGJ, Estadística de administración de justicia en lo criminal, 1885. 36. RM (1879), 350; and RM (1880), 150; and a document quoted in J.M. Ramírez, ‘La vivienda obrera en Linares’, in Artillo et al., La minería en Linares, 226. 37. Gareth Stedman Jones has highlighted, with regard to leisure among the working classes, the risks of fragmenting the study of working-class experience and, in particular, of separating the non labour dimensions of this experience from the specific labour dimensions. G.S. Jones, ‘Expresión de clase o control social?: crítica de las últimas tendencias de la historia social del “ocio”’, in Jones, Lenguajes de clase; estudios sobre la historia de la clase obrera inglesa, Madrid, 1989, 83–84. 38. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 175–76; J. Marvá, El trabajo en las minas: a propósito de las peticiones que las sociedades obreras elevaron al Gobierno el año 1909, Algorta, 1970, 64–65; and Dirección General de Agricultura, Minas y Montes [henceforth cited as DGA], Informe relativo al estado económico y situación de los obreros de las Minas y Fábricas metalúrgicas de España y organismos de protección instituidos en beneficio de los mismos, Madrid, 1911, ‘Provincia de Jaén’, 246 (the Jaén report is the work of Lucas Mallada). Also L. Garrido, ‘La minería y los problemas laborales: nacimiento del movimiento obrero’, in Artillo et al., La minería en Linares, 167–68. 39. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 161. 40. Rose, Untrodden, 121 and, on the use of shacks, 185. 41. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 162; and Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 6 January 1903. 42. Ramírez, ‘La vivienda’, 225–26 and 245. For the general context of the problem and some of the typologies mentioned, F. Quirós, ‘Patios, corrales y ciudadelas: notas sobre viviendas obreras en España’, Ería, 3 (1982), 3–34. 43. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 6 January 1903. Also De Martos, ‘Clases obreras’, 9 October 1884; and A. Moreno, ‘Las repercusiones de la actividad minera en la demografía linarense’, in Artillo et al., La minería en Linares, 147–51. 44. Moreno, ‘Las repercusiones’, 152–53. 45. Rose, Untrodden, 198; and Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 165–68. 46. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 177–79. 47. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 160; Sánchez, ‘La vida cotidiana’, 197; and Rose, Untrodden, 178. With regard to the relationship between workers’ alcohol consumption and dehydration, E.L. Menéndez and R.B. di Pardo, ‘Alcoholismo. I. Características y funciones del proceso de alcoholización: alienación, enfermedad o cuestionamiento’, Los Cuadernos de la Casa Chata, 56 (1982), 64. With regard to the relationship between regular alcohol consumption and the working-class diet, see pages 27 ff and 61 ff of the same work; and M. Figurelli, ‘L’alcool e la classe; cenni per una storia dell’alcoolismo in Italia’, Classe, 15 (1978).

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48. For Asturias, J. Sierra, ‘¿El minero borracho?: alcoholismo y disciplinas industriales en Asturias’, Los Cuadernos del Norte, (1985), 58–63; and El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990, 244–48. For Granada, A. Cohen, El Marquesado del Zenete: tierra de minas: transición al capitalismo y dinámica demográfica, Granada, 1987, 393–94. 49. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 159. 50. El Eco Minero, 24 October 1887. 51. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. 52. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903. With regard to the tavern as a place for socialising and integration in conditions of social destructurisation, J.L. Guereña, ‘Una aproximación a la sociabilidad popular: el caso de Asturias bajo la Restauración (1875–1900)’, and M. Ralle, ‘La sociabilidad obrera en la sociedad de la Restauración (1875–1910)’, both in Estudios de Historia Social, III–IV (1989), 215 and 183–84, respectively; M. Vulic, ‘Le débit de boissons, le cabaret, le bistrot dans le bassin houillier de Nord-Pas de Calais’, Revue du Nord, 279 (1988), 777; and P. Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and Contest for Control, 1830–1885, London, 1988, 23. 53. DGA, Informe, 246. For Asturias, see also Sierra, El obrero soñado, 224–25. 54. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 158. Sudden changes in fortune, which were so characteristic of the lead mining industry in south-eastern Spain, appear to have been at the heart of one of the most deep-rooted features of certain mining cultures. With regard to the Mexican case, see J.L. Sariego, ‘Cultura minera y tradición oral’, a paper presented to the Encuentro Regional sobre Tradición Oral y Cultura Popular (Culiacán – Sinaloa, Mexico, 1–3 July 1991), kindly provided by the author. 55. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 158–59. 56. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 146–48 and 155; and ‘Higiene minera’, in Industria minera metalúrgica y mercantil, Linares, 1988 [1897]. 57. The calculations have been carried out using the figures from Estadística minera de España from the respective years. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the reliability of these figures and the extent to which information was covered up (something which happened on another occasion on the subject of accidents in Spanish mines between the mid–1800s and the Civil War); it is enough to say that the number of unregistered accidents could double the declared, and therefore official, figure. 58. Rose, Untrodden, 136–37; and Grande, Memoria, 731. 59. The calculations, which were based on credible and diverse documentary data, were carried out by Garrido, ‘La minería y los problemas laborales’, 170. 60. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 157–58. A similar assessment has been made of the work structure of Sicilian sulphur miners, who were also characterised, it would seem, by particularly high levels of crime and personal violence. See R. Pezzino, ‘Violenzia e competizione per le rissorse nell’area degli zolfi a fine Ottocento: “La Fratellanza” di Favara’; and R. Spampinato, ‘Gli zolfatari: lavoro, scioperi, organizzazzione operaia, 1890–1911’, both in G. Barone and C. Torrisi (eds), Economia e società nell’area dello zolfo, secoli XIX–XX, Caltanissetta – Roma, 1989, 166, 180 and 259. 61. Magna antología del cante flamenco, Madrid, 1982 (Gabriel Moreno was the singer, Serranito was the guitarist); and El Eco Minero, 28 August 1887. 62. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 173–74. 63. MGJ, Estadística de administración de justicia en lo criminal, 1885; El Eco Minero, 23 October 1890; and A. de Urquijo, ‘Los mineros protestantes’, in Los serreños: retazos cinegéticos y camperos de Sierra Morena, Madrid, 1988, 80. 64. See MGJ, Estadística de administración de justicia en lo criminal, 1883–1887. 65. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 6 January 1903. 66. G. Sánchez, ‘De higiene minera’, RM (1924), 605. 67. Rose, Untrodden, 152–53. 68. Rose, Untrodden, 153. A few years later, the Civil Governor announced measures aimed at preventing ‘certain individuals with bad records from being able to hide in the mines of that province’, RM (1879), 350.

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69. Dicenta, ‘Entre mineros’, 19 January 1903; and Daniel, 13. 70. A. Moreno and J.M. Ramírez, ‘Transformación espacial de Linares: los planos de la ciudad’, in Artillo et al., La minería de Linares, 205–20. 71. El Eco Minero, 2 August 1883. See also Ramírez, ‘La vivienda’, 236 and 245. 72. Rose, Untrodden, 96. For the now classic concept of classes dangereuses, L. Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1978. 73. C. Bernaldo de Quirós, Criminología de los delitos de sangre en España, Madrid, 1906, 75. 74. The risks of dissolving the social process and its conflicts in the less implicated space of cultural systems (and, as a result, of dissolving social history in a kind of ‘cultural history’) were highlighted a long time ago by historians of the stature of Herbert Gutman and Edward Thompson. 75. For a detailed account of the vicissitudes of the working-class movement in Linares, Garrido. ‘La minería y los problemas laborales’, 173–87; and J. Artillo, ‘En los cien años de la Agrupación Socialista de Linares, 1887–1894’, Taller de Historia, 3 (1988). 76. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 145. 77. Naranjo de la Garza considered that the abuses of the piecework system should be banned ‘because they are the cause of the miners’ problems and certainly a reason why they complained en masse, which may lead to disastrous, large-scale strikes’. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 174. 78. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 167. 79. Naranjo, ‘Informe’, 157 and 169.

CHAPTER 9

DISPUTES, PROTEST AND FORMS OF RESISTANCE IN RURAL AREAS HUESCA, 1880–1914 Carmen Frías Corredor

The doorways and huts of the control station and the tax office began to burn at exactly the same time, just as if they had set off all the fires with an electric battery. At the same time, in the place where this occurred and in the centre of the city, angry mobs appeared which with stentorian shouts swept away any obstacles in their way. The first moments were a time of great distress; the shouts, the curses, the confusion, the smoke and the stench of the fires made the city appear a very sinister place. First of all, some consumption tax officers and other representatives of the Authority […] were beaten; In a word, it was a fullblown riot, against which the usual means were totally powerless: the civil authorities gave up their command. (P. Queral y Formigales, La ley del embudo, 1897)

This chapter aims to trace the disputes and the forms of protest and resistance that occurred in rural areas of Huesca (South Pyrenees), a province which was a paradigm of inland Spain, during the difficult years around the turn of the twentieth century. It aims to speculate both on the causes of the conflicts and on the circumstances and factors which surrounded and affected the protests. There is no need to mention the fact that the subject of protests and peasant conflicts and peasant movements in general has for a long time now increasingly been a subject of study,1 and that historiographical works on local, rural, agrarian and peasant frameworks and areas have brought with them the recognition that peasant protests and tensions were not limited to regions of the south. These works have shown that behind the supposed economic equality of many areas of inland Spain in which the figure of the

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small peasant was dominant, there was a hidden world of inequalities which, logically, was not free of tensions and conflicts. Research for this chapter, into the tensions, conflicts, protests and resistance has not been limited to the study of formally organised actions for the simple reason that the search would be in vain considering the fact that in some cases these organisations simply did not exist and in others they were the creation of the rural elites.2 At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Huesca was a predominantly rural province. In addition to the capital, with around twelve thousand inhabitants, only three administrative centres – Barbastro, Jaca and Fraga – had more than five thousand inhabitants in 1897. More than 65 percent of the population lived in municipalities with fewer than five hundred inhabitants; small villages in which farming was the main, and in many cases the only, activity. There was very limited professional diversification and a structure of land ownership which, above all in the southern half, was a combination of a majority of extremely poor small peasants and a relatively small group of large landowners who controlled most of the income and the wealth: in 1899, only 2.43 percent of taxpayers were large landowners; almost 85 percent of taxpayers in the Upper Aragón region were small landowners and of these, almost three-quarters did not even pay as much as 20 pesetas in tax.3 What this chapter will attempt to show is how the claimed economic equality did not lead to the removal or relief of social tensions and how, on the contrary, these tended to worsen as a result of the difficult situation during the great turn-of-the-century depression, the effects of which were felt in Huesca more than in any other province of Aragón. This worsening of the situation led to various forms of protest which must be analysed in the context of increased hardship in the living and working conditions of peasants and day labourers. Such protests were therefore closely related to problems, due in some cases to subsistence or tax issues and in other cases to the consequences of the turn-of-the-century crises, not only in economic but also in social terms. In particular, this applied to the long process of introducing capitalism to rural areas and to the imbalances which that caused in the social structure of peasant communities. Faced with the spread of the mercantile system and increased privatisation of natural resources, these communities regarded this as a threat to their traditional way of life. However, there were few large-scale demonstrations or organised, collective protests – there are certain examples but they are exceptions – but rather protests which were often individual responses and actions. James Scott defined these as ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’.4 The forms of protest and resistance were thus organised around a few central themes which were often interlinked and interwoven. There were demonstrations which came about as a result of the worsening of an already precarious situation at times when there was a subsistence crisis: those that were related to tax increases or the unpopular consumption tax which most affected the underprivileged sectors of society; those that arose from the process of impoverishment and proletarianisation linked to the great depression which affected a considerable proportion of the peasantry of

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Huesca; and others aimed at preserving traditional rights in response to the development of modern capitalism, in which peasant communities found themselves unwittingly involved. They were forms of social action that were not, as pointed out earlier, necessarily collective or coordinated actions – which were hindered by the difficulties involved in organising actions in such remote areas. Instead, they were disorganised, spontaneous, predominantly individual actions with one common denominator: the fact that, in the final analysis, the main driving force behind them was the fight for survival. They were forms of action that were not intended to bring down or even change the system, but rather to simply guarantee individuals’ survival. For that very reason, and despite their unspectacular nature, they were extremely important to small peasants and day labourers. However, in the forms of subsistence-related peasant resistance, there was something that went beyond the bounds of simple instinctive reactions undertaken to guarantee survival: when there were regular thefts of grain and firewood and when poaching regularly occurred, even though such practices had been outlawed by the state, the ‘offenders’ claimed that the new laws and regulations imposed from above were not more important then their survival requirements and those of their families, and that these requirements should take priority. Thus, they were questioning the means of appropriation of work, property and production. The issue is therefore not about isolated individuals challenging a new order imposed from outside, but rather, as Josep Fontana pointed out, ‘the response to a different social project’.5 Let us therefore take a look at the central themes around which conflicts revolved at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In a province that was dominated by the primary sector and by small peasants, the situation automatically tended to reach critical levels at times when there was a bad harvest, with the resulting price increases affecting agricultural products required to provide food. It is thus not surprising that subsistence crises were directly related to some of the most memorable protests because they had a serious and immediate impact both on small peasants and on day labourers. Price increases thus became a key phenomenon in the conflicts, protests and riots which took place during this period. In 1880, most crops were lost as a result of floods in late 1879 and early 1880. The recovery of production levels in 1881 provided only minimal relief to a critical situation which was repeated again in 1882, this time as the result of a prolonged drought which mainly affected the entire southern half of the province from the Somontanos mountains to the Monegros. In August, the Monegros region, which sold most of its cereal production in Catalonia, had only managed to harvest fifty cahíces (equivalent to approximately 34,500 kg) of wheat compared to the usual fifteen thousand cahíces normally harvested.6 The drop in production led to a considerable rise in the price of wheat. Thus, for instance, in the administrative area of Sariñena, one of the worst affected areas, the average price of wheat rose to 26 pesetas per hectoliter, reaching its highest levels during the last third of the century. In these regions, in which

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cereal farming was the main activity, the situation became quite dramatic, not only because of the considerable economic losses, but especially because of the impact on small landowners, sharecroppers and day labourers in regions with major social inequalities, given that most of the property was in the hands of a few landowners.7 The effects of the shortage of subsistence goods, increased prices and lack of work were made worse by the arrival of winter and the resulting break in farm work, which led to a spread in the feeling of social unease. Demonstrations to demand work and aid from the state were held in the most depressed areas, in precisely those areas in which hunger and emigration started to become the main and most important sign of the spread of poverty. Among the sectors that were most disadvantaged and hardest hit by this situation, demanding the right to a job could not hide the pessimism brought about by high prices and low salaries. In Binaced, a village in the administrative area of Fraga with around 1,600 inhabitants and in which approximately 76.5 percent of taxpayers were very poor small landowners forced to guarantee their survival by resorting to paid work, people questioned the extent to which temporary work, paid at 8 reals per day, would enable them to help their families, considering the high price of basic goods.8 In any case, the most important factor was that most of the demands were not centred on wage disputes, but rather on the problem of getting a job and as a result on how to fight for survival. This can be confirmed both by the repeated requests for public works as well as by the movement of workers to the places where these were taking place, despite the low salaries, as occurred with work on the railway in Canfranc, where the workers earned less than 9 reals per day, or work on the Aragón and Catalonia Canal. The numerous demonstrations which took place between 1880 and 1914 demanding employment and public works had their origins in the social unease that existed during those decades. An example of such demonstrations was the one that took place in the capital in March 1894 to request that the town council build a new abattoir and a school building, and enlarge the Catholic cemetery;9 or the one that took place in Robres, where sixty seasonal farm labourers requested work ‘so as to be able to make an honest living to support their families or to buy bread for their dear children’;10 or the one in Fraga in 1887, when the workers demanded ‘work and wages’ in order to ensure their subsistence at a time of obvious social tension: ‘Until now nothing unpleasant has happened, but there is undoubtedly a profound feeling of unease as a result of the considerable poverty affecting the villages of that region’.11 Ten years later, however, some of these actions did involve violence. The increases in wheat prices and the rise of the price of bread were at the origin of the conflicts repeated in some villages in 1897 and 1898, yet this time the demonstrators did not merely ask for help from the town council, but instead went on to ‘attack and destroy carriages carrying wheat which were ready to leave’.12 At the same time and ‘faced with the seriousness of the issue of subsistence and the conflicts to which it has given rise’, the Town Council of Huesca was forced to reach an agreement with the bakers of the city to bring the price of bread in line with the needs of consumption,

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agreeing that the price would not exceed 45 centimes per kilo. This measure was in addition to the offers of certain private individuals, such as the two councillors Maza and Pérez Solano, who offered ‘their mill, their carts and their horses to make and transport flour’, or the councillors from Baratech and Cacho, who offered their bakeries and other buildings to anyone who needed them to make bread. In any case, the inadequacy of the measures adopted by the local authorities in addition to the continuing crisis affecting the labour market resulted in many having to resort to begging, as the local press reported on a daily basis: ‘It is saddening to see so many poor families on the streets of our city, families that lead a nomadic life wandering from village to village in search of work’.13 For El Diario de Huesca, a newspaper from the capital, this was the result of the failure of crops over a long period of time: It has been six years since the cereal crop has been harvested, which is the main source of wealth; […] repeated frosts for two or three consecutive winters have totally destroyed the olive trees and thus the total crop of olive oil has also been lost; […] the prolonged droughts have not only resulted in the loss of cereal crops, but since water is also in short supply in our rivers, which are very low at the hottest time of the year, we have not been able to grow vegetables because of the lack of irrigation water; the frosts and droughts have put an end to all types of livestock, almost all of which died due to the lack of grass to feed on.14

A new crisis arose in the spring of 1904 when, in the light of high costs and price increases caused by three long years of drought, around 1,500 labourers working on the Aragón and Catalonia Canal – most of whom were day labourers and peasants from Tamarite, Fraga, Estadilla and Benabarre – requested an eight-hour working day but also that their salary be maintained. One year later it was not only the labourers of Tamarite who once again demanded work from the town council, but also the labourers from Zaidín and Fonz who, given that building work had been halted, demonstrated against the dismissal of around one thousand workers. In June, six hundred labourers from Albelda began another strike demanding fortnightly pay and in August, as a result of redundancies, they once again organised demonstrations in which women and children also took part. Increases in the number of disputes at a time when there was an agricultural crisis which was also aggravated by the suspension of public works, forced the local authorities of these villages and of others in the region (San Esteban de Litera, Gabasa, Calasanz, Peralta de la Sal, Azanuy, Purroy, El Tormillo, Lastanosa, Peralta de Alcofea, Lagunarrota etc.), as well as the authorities in Tardienta and Huesca, to request financial aid from Madrid in addition to requesting an increase in the Civil Guard and the posting of permanent detachments of the army in the most conflictive areas. El Diario de Huesca reminded readers of the urgency of ‘making the government understand the need to strengthen the Civil Guard in light of the scandalous events of the past few years, in order to put an end to countless robberies and crimes’.15

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Thus, in the first half of the twentieth century, the subsistence crisis still brought about an increase in the number of protests, even before the effects of the First World War triggered a serious inflationary spiral. The events of February 1914 are a fine example of this, as is the major role women played in some of these conflicts. In the middle of winter, towards the end of February, around fifty women from Lanaja, together with their youngest children, made their way on foot or in carts to the capital of the province in order to request, along with other women from Berbegal and Almudévar, the start of public works on the Upper-Aragón Irrigation System and ‘to seek a means of finding work and bread in the meantime’. They arrived in Huesca in the afternoon of 25 February and, exhausted from the journey and because of what the journalist Carmelo Pérez Barrón called the ‘pilgrimage of poverty and hunger’, they stayed in inns in San Miguel and Tolosana with the intention of demonstrating the following day. The demonstration never took place. Between six and seven o’clock in the morning, acting on the orders of the Civil Governor Juan Antonio Perea, they were forced to get up and were escorted to the outskirts of the city, to the beginning of the road to Granja, ‘protected’ by the Civil Guard, which had received orders to prevent their entrance into the city.16 Yet in the difficult situation at the turn of the century the subsistence crises were not the only problem. Small landowners – 85 percent of landowners in the province – saw that the narrow margin which guaranteed their subsistence was at risk, due not only to the difficulties from the loss of their crops, but also, when the harvest was good, to the difficulties that arose from competing with cheap cereal from abroad, not to mention the harsh consequences of tax increases.17 If the small peasant wanted to compete in the domestic market, he was obliged to introduce technical improvements which required a greater investment of capital. However, since there was no affordable credit system, the small farmer was faced with the excessively hard conditions imposed by the moneylenders. Although it is true that it was not the first time farmers had been forced to resort to usury, its frequent mention in texts would seem to indicate that it had become a more generalised and more often used practice. The Commission of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, in response to a questionnaire on The Farming and Livestock Crisis, reported on the ‘terrifying proportions’ of loans with almost 25 percent interest, which ‘robbed the farmer of the scant yield of his harvest, if there was anything left after the tax collectors had taken their share’. They concluded that ‘there is no doubt that here, and above all in the southern part of the province, the situation is reaching or is close to reaching desperate levels in this respect’.18 In 1888, El Imparcial recalled the fact that ‘in Almudévar they say that in the village alone there are debts of more than two million [reales] and similarly, in the district of Tamarite mortgages on properties come to more than 25 million. In many places, the creditors take charge of the grain before it leaves the threshing floor’.19 The difficult situation which affected rural areas of Huesca gave rise to silent responses and others which were less silent. Migration was one of the more silent responses, which saw the start of a considerable drop in

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population in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Although there was positive population growth from 1900 onwards, not even in the 1930s did population figures reach the levels seen in 1876.20 The migrants came from the ranks of the small peasants trapped by the effects of the turn-of-thecentury crisis – which obliged them to lower prices while at the same time it was impossible for them to reduce production costs – and by the effects of usury and taxation. They headed for Saragossa, Barcelona or Lérida from the central and southern regions, or crossed the Pyrenees to France from the mountainous regions of Jaca, Boltaña or Benabarre.21 There were some municipal areas which lost more than 25 percent of their population between 1877 and 1897. Population losses in the region were as follows: Ainsa (32.46 percent), Aler (27.31 percent), Ansó (25.38 percent), Benabarre (23.63 percent), Benavente (37.07 percent), Beranuy (29.15 percent), Capella (26.01 percent), Coscojuela de Sobrarbe (26.99 percent), Erdao (39.41 percent), Lascuarre (33.59 percent), Laspuña (41.12 percent), Plan (37.81 percent). The rural exodus did not only affect mountainous regions, although they were the most badly affected; in Somontanos and La Tierra Llana the figures were just as significant: Adahuesca (13.22 percent), Albelda (13.69 percent), Albero Bajo (18.06 percent), Alberuela de Tubo (21.51 percent), Alcubierre (11.32 percent), Alins (33.7 percent), Arbaniés (17.23 percent), Arguis (21.73 percent), Barbastro (11.88 percent), Binéfar (11.06 percent), Calasanz (22.25 percent), Castejón de Monegros (21.4 percent), Castilsabás (15.26 percent), Lagunarrota (13.84 percent), Lanaja (11.15 percent), Peralta de la Sal (11.57 percent), Pertusa (13.32 percent), Piedramorrera (23.52 percent), Poleñino (11.22 percent), Quicena (12.12 percent), Sasa del Abadiado (17.9 percent), Tamarite de Litera (15.23 percent), Tardienta (12.07 percent), Usón (20.29 percent), Velilla de Cinca (12.66 percent). Joaquín Costa told of the reasons cited by the Municipal Census Committees: the one in Estada pointed out that migration was caused by ‘poverty affecting the residents due to the failure of their crops because of drought, frost and hail suffered over the last few years’. In Laguarres it was remarked that ‘the constant barrenness of the crops has taken away the income which families previously had at their disposal to feed their children and they have been forced to go to foreign parts to search for the food that their native land refuses to provide’. In Fonz and Albelda, ‘due to poor harvests and consequently lack of work, most day labourers have been forced to migrate to France or Barcelona’. In Fraga, the same causes were cited to explain the migration ‘of day labourers in search of work in big cities and major trade centres’.22 Small peasants, landowners and sharecroppers, many of whom worked as day labourers on a temporary basis, left their land together with their whole families after being seriously affected by the consequences of the far-reaching agricultural depression. They left because the solution to their situation, it was said, had to come from updating technology and from developing competitive farming methods, improving the yield and reducing costs. However, this could only be achieved through investment, which was an unrealistic aim in the context of the peasant’s situation of hardship and

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misery. In addition, they were badly hit by constantly high taxation and the fact that there were no institutions offering cheap loans. For many of them, migration was the only possible escape route and it was often used during the last two decades of the century, exacerbating the process of expropriation and expulsion of considerable sectors of the small peasantry: ‘the situation of the villages is extremely sorrowful. Their respectable inhabitants are left with no option but to send the pick of their youth to faraway lands in search of the bread that their thankless homeland refuses to provide them with’.23 The huge number of farms adjudged to the Treasury Department due to failure to pay their taxes is, as Carlos Forcadell pointed out, another good indicator of the process by which many small peasants disappeared.24 In the economic year 1876–1877 alone, a total of 4,877 taxpayers had their farms seized; 1,020 were adjudged to the Treasury Department and 526 were sold. In the administrative area of Fraga alone, during the first three months of 1876 the properties of more than four hundred farmers in arrears were adjudged to the Treasury Department and sold. The following year, in thirty villages with a total of 7,378 inhabitants, the properties of 1,286 taxpayers were seized and sold. This was not so much a means of resistance against excessive taxation, but rather a material inability to pay the taxes, as some contemporaries pointed out.25 However, along with these, there were other less silent forms of response which bore witness to confrontations and latent social tension.26 These were traditional forms of collective action which were free of political objectives. They took place locally without prior planning and their immediate causes were also linked to taxation. Such is the case, for example, of the riots provoked by increases in the unpopular consumption tax, given that it directly affected the prices of basic goods. The Decree of 26 June 1874 and subsequently that of 1877 increased the number of taxed products, including salt, cereals, eggs, milk and firewood. In these cases, the objective was still the fight for survival, this time by means of reducing the price of the principal items of consumption. One of the most significant riots was the one that took place in the capital of Huesca, where there had been unease at the decision to increase taxes since the beginning of July 1885. The first to show their discontent and disagreement were the meat sellers and farmers who took their products to market. However, it was not long before the unease spread to the rest of the population. The real conflict began on 27 July – although some had been warning of the tension and the possibility of disputes since mid-July –27 when a clash between a consumption tax officer and a farmer named Román López Galindo resulted in the latter being shot dead. His death triggered the anger of the people, who protested by burning the consumption tax offices and closing public shops and businesses. In light of the serious nature of such breaches of the peace, the governor handed over control to the army, which imposed a siege until 7 August.28 Similar disturbances, with similar characteristics (burning down tax offices, clashes with guards and tax employees, meetings and demonstrations in front of the town halls …) took place in other areas of the province. In Fraga, in November 1886, a demonstration held in front of the town hall led the local

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authorities to resort to calling in the army. The situation was similar in Tamarite in 1889, when demonstrators shouting ‘Down with the Consumption Tax!’ proceeded to burn the tax offices and close the shops. It is true that the tax had been unpopular for a long time, but there is no doubt that the bad economic situation of the province increased the severity of the riots. The close relationship between the difficult conditions of day labourers, small farmers and craftsmen and the riots they were involved in did not go unnoticed by certain contemporaries who pointed out that ‘next winter there will be disturbances caused by hunger if the authorities do not attempt to start public works from which the labourers can make a living’.29 The riots did not only take place in the nineteenth century, but instead spilled over into the next century, occurring once again in Monzón and Barbastro in 1903, in Sariñena in 1905, in Graus in 1911 and in Benabarre in 1905 and 1915.30 A great many of those who took part in the riots were charged and brought to trial for crimes of public disorder, damage and coercion during the riots. Many more were also brought to trial for failure to pay their debts and especially for disobeying the authorities by refusing to pay personal taxes and consumption tax. Unlike those accused of crimes linked to the rioting, who were acquitted, the others were sentenced to between two and four months in prison. In many cases, opposition reached such limits that the consumption tax officers were unable to seize people’s assets. In other cases, for instance when the assets of a resident of Yésero and his 70-year-old mother were seized, the presence of two policemen was required.31 The heightening of social tensions was also expressed through the increase in attacks on property, through the threats received by wealthy landowners and the kidnapping of members of their families. There were threats like that received by the landowner Luis Barber, which demanded ‘5,000 duros’ (25,000 pesetas) if he did not wish ‘to see your house destroyed and your livestock slaughtered’, or that received by Rafael Palacín Sala, a resident of Montanuy, which demanded that he deposit ‘300 duros (1,500 pesetas) in the cabin at Planarrasco’, threatening not only to burn down his house, but also to kill his family. There were kidnappings such as the one involving Teodoro Porquet, a wealthy landowner from Albalate de Cinca, whose family were required to pay a ransom of 10,000 pesetas, or the one involving a landowner from Callén, Francisco Berceró, who died during the kidnapping.32 It would have been relatively simply for the analysts of the time to lay the blame for these occurrences on banditry or on the perverse tendencies of a certain individual. However, far from drawing such conclusions, there were some who highlighted other reasons: ‘This occurrence (the kidnapping of Porquet), which had not been seen since the times of the infamous “Cucaracha”, instead of being a sign of the perverted nature of its residents, reveals the critical state in which they find themselves. They face hardship and poverty because they cannot work to make a living to provide for their families and meet their most basic needs’.33 Similarly, Rafael Montestruc, when referring to the death of Francisco Berceró, put forward the following argument:

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God help me for making excuses for such a terrible crime, but I hope it teaches a lesson and pricks the conscience of those who could prevent similar acts. Bear in mind that there is terrible poverty, that hunger drives people to do many things, that families have needs and that when these needs reach horrific levels, horrors occur because the spirit of survival and family bonds speak louder than honourable, honest behaviour. And the powers that be can rest assured that when winter arrives and the most urgent needs become even more pressing than they already are, then the Civil Guard will find it impossible to control crime in this region. Rest assured that such misery can only be stopped by starting public works and providing the labourers with work. […] Everyone is frightened not of the peasants, who are honest people, but of poverty, which breaks the bounds of all noble feelings and forces those who suffer its effects and see their children die of hunger to take whichever path they must to fulfil their needs.34

There was therefore agreement on the need to initiate public works, yet while this request came from the most disadvantaged sectors as a means of guaranteeing their subsistence, the wealthy sectors demanded them as a means of controlling social disputes of which they were afraid and of which they were beginning to be victims. At the same time, they also demanded an increase in the Civil Guard to protect their property, above all in those regions where social inequalities were more marked, especially Huesca, Fraga and Sariñena. In fact it was these central and southern areas that saw an increase in the theft and burning of stored wheat during the 1880s and 1890s. In parallel with these events, there were also other actions which showed different forms of resistance against the restructuring process affecting social relationships as a result of capitalism being introduced into rural areas. Such responses against the trend towards the privatisation of common land were less muted than migration. They were generally not very striking – although no less important for that reason and often illegal. Court documentation provides a record of these criminal acts and provides a fairly rich and complex image of the peasantry, allowing us to take a closer look at a social group about which there is little written information. For such a long time, they were portrayed in history books as being victims of hunger or, as Fontana pointed out not so long ago, as passive individuals who only sporadically displayed irrational collective rage.35 The study of peasant crime is gradually allowing peasants to be rescued from abstraction, in addition to identifying and investigating their behaviour in the framework of the social and political circumstances within which their individual actions took place. Until 1855, the privatisation of common lands had mainly affected assets belonging to the church and the municipal councils had managed to maintain their control over the processes of production and appropriation of the yield from their assets. The General Law of Disentitlement of 11 May 1855 brought about substantial changes by introducing a process which greatly affected the assets of municipal councils. It is not necessary to stress the fact that these assets represented the main source of income for the municipal council and the backbone of peasant economies since they were an essential supplement to their income.

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However, central control of these assets did not give rise to consonant forms of resistance and much less any kind of solidarity. The municipalities attempted to resist losing their assets, but the fact that the town councils needed to collect money to reorganise their estates and the fact that these were controlled by the local oligarchies, which were interested in gaining control of common assets, made it difficult to stop the process. Yet the peasant response, usually on an individual basis, to reductions in the amount of common land available did lead to resistance against having to give up their traditional rights to use this land, which was vital for their survival. Such resistance did not take the form of conventional disputes such as strikes and demonstrations, but was expressed by means of the ‘unauthorised’ use of rights and assets that had been of collective use until that time, especially the use of woodland. Resistance did not involve collective, organised social action. Instead, it involved individual, unplanned actions; everyday forms of resistance – if we refer to Scott’s aforementioned famous expression – and diverse forms of protest which resulted from peasant strategies aimed at maintaining their traditional systems of social reproduction in light of new capitalist rules and the new bourgeois order. For the peasants, who were dispersed throughout the countryside and who faced a great many obstacles to organise any collective action, they were particularly important. The peasants’ protests, which were classed as criminal offences under the new legislation, did not seek any material gain but were simply an attempt to guarantee their subsistence. Despite the fact that they were by no means spectacular, the large number of protests was a clear sign of the tension that existed in the countryside and of the central issue in peasant disputes which was their fight for the recognition of lost rights.36 This central issue can be explained by the fact that common land represented a vitally important means of guaranteeing peasants’ subsistence. They resorted to woodland areas mainly to get wood which they used for cooking and heating and for making farm tools. In addition, one of the main uses of woodland, especially in high mountain areas, was for grazing, which allowed them to tend their flocks. This was a key element of the peasant family’s income since it provided wool, milk and meat. Woodland areas also provided other produce, including wax, honey, esparto grass, resin, plants and fruit, in addition to hunting and fishing. Woodland areas therefore performed a clear function both for the local treasury because of the income received from leasing the land, as well as for the local inhabitants. This was particularly true for the poorest people, since although they did not have the same degree of access or the same right to use common lands as the wealthier peasants, they were at least able to guarantee a minimal level of subsistence. The abolition of the seigniorial system had already converted large areas of land into private property. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, for example, of the 1,128,548 hectares of woodland in Huesca, only around 25.5 percent (288,901 hectares) were for public use. The remaining area (839,647 hectares) was private land 37 which came from the sale of common land and waste land, and also from the creation of game reserves and the

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usurpation of land. Between 1859 and 1862, the area of woodland exempt from privatisation decreased by more than 33,500 hectares, which mainly affected the administrative areas of Huesca and Sariñena, which lost 10,550 and 16,822 hectares respectively,38 and Tamarite, which lost all its exempted woodland. The transfer process continued during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s and continued to affect the areas of Somontano and Tierra Llana. According to the Catálogo de Montes de Utilidad Pública, published in 1901, the area of woodland available for public use in these areas had fallen to 215,926 hectares, mainly in the mountainous regions of Boltaña and Jaca (171,639 hectares). The system of common land therefore underwent profound changes during the nineteenth century and such changes inevitably gave rise to tension, confrontations and social struggles over its use, since privatisation directly attacked the common law rights regarding common land. For small peasants, the loss of these rights and of a long-established source of food and energy meant that they were considerably more vulnerable to the effects of economic crises, and for the poorest people the changes meant that they no longer had any protection against hunger or emigration. Greater dependence on the market economy did not necessarily make peasant families any poorer, as Alberto Sabio pointed out, but it did make them much more susceptible to price changes, over which they had absolutely no control.39 Considering the fact that they represented a threat to the stability of their domestic economies, the peasants countered the assertion of private property rights and attacks on collective customs and uses by strengthening customer relationships and in particular by putting up active resistance to the loss of traditional practices that were now considered illegal. Legal documents allow an approximate estimate of rural crimes between 1890 and 1914. As we shall see, a high percentage of these demonstrate the degree of peasant resistance to the commercialisation and privatisation of common land.40 Of all the crimes registered in Huesca in 1893–1899, 45 percent of these were crimes against property; almost three-quarters of those were against rural property linked directly to farming (agriculture, livestock and woodland) (see Table 9.1). In any case, there must have been more crimes related to these farming activities since certain crimes against property were entered as crimes against people because they involved violent behaviour. Table 9.1 Crimes in the Province of Huesca, 1893–1899 Type of Crime

Percentage of Total Crime

Agriculture Livestock Woodland Other crimes against property Crimes against people Administration Other crimes

10.02 6.90 15.59 12.24 44.32 3.78 7.12

Total

99.97

Source: AHP, Sentence Register, 1893–1899.

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Table 9.2 Crimes against Property, Huesca, 1893–1899 Type of Crime

Percentage of Total Property-related Crime

Agriculture Livestock Woodland Other crimes against property Total

22.38 15.42 34.82 27.36 99.98

Total farming activities

72.62

Source: AHP, Sentence Register, 1893–1899.

As can be seen in Table 9.2, most of the crimes were related to woodland areas, which demonstrates the fact that many people were reluctant to abandon their traditional activities and consequently accept the new, rigid laws regulating the use of woodland. The new laws legitimised new social relationships which came into direct conflict with tradition and popular morality since they represented a threat to their long-held rights. The unauthorised use of woodland therefore became increasingly common and involved a considerable degree of social protest against the attacks on peasants’ common law rights. It came to represent a symbol of peasant resistance against the commercialisation and privatisation of natural resources. However, the number of woodland crimes indicated in judicial sources, even though this was a substantial figure, tends to underestimate woodland-related conflicts. This interpretation can be confirmed by observing reports of woodland infractions which were published each month in the Gaceta de Madrid (which is fully depicted in the study undertaken by Alberto Sabio),41 not to mention the occasions on which the offender or offenders were not caught.42 On most occasions, the crimes were minor offences whose only aim was to allow the peasants to stock up on materials they required, as can be seen in the texts of some of the sentences: the crimes generally involved poaching and the theft of firewood, esparto and manure. Thus for example, in January 1895, a farmer from Sariñena stole two bundles of firewood from a private estate. During the trial the defence acknowledged ‘that the accused did indeed take the firewood, but he did so because of the intense cold that he felt at the beginning of this year, when he had no work, no bread and no firewood’. In October 1897, another farmer, from Villanueva de Sigerna, was reported by the Civil Guard for collecting firewood from the woodland at La Sierra ‘to use in his home’. Similar statements were made by Juan Antonio Baldominos and Antonio Má after they were caught in the public woodlands of Jubierre, Castejón de Monegros, and later put on trial in 1904.43 On other occasions, the stolen items were not intended for domestic use, but rather to be sold in the market, but this was still a means of guaranteeing the offenders’ subsistence after privatisation had taken away resources that they now had to find by other means. One such example was the case of a 60-year-old day labourer who, after cutting down three pine trees in the forest of Aila (Arguis) and taking them to Arascués to sell them, declared that he had done so ‘because he needed the money he could get for them to feed his family’;44

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There were also cases of people stealing firewood which they would later make into charcoal and sell. This type of offence was very common around the woodlands of Valcuerna, Fraga. It would seem to be clear that, although punishing the offenders was a fairly effective way of dealing with the problem, most of the motives behind most of the offences were linked to subsistence and not to the logic of the market economy. The insignificant nature of many offences (minor theft of firewood, wood or fruit) and the humble origins of the majority of the offenders would seem to suggest that commercial profit was not the driving force behind their behaviour, although clearly this cannot be said for all the crimes committed in the woodlands, as we shall see later. There were also a great many cases of peasants feigning ignorance, apparently unaware of the fact that they had committed a crime and claiming that they had acted in good faith. Statements like the following one were extremely common. In 1904, Bonifacio Bailo Casamayor, an inhabitant of Alcubierre, was caught unawares by the Civil Guard in the hill lands of La Sierra when he was trying to steal a pine tree. During the trial, he declared that he had not known he was committing a crime since he ‘believed that he had the right to take dead firewood’. Basing his defence on his lack of knowledge, he asked to be acquitted but in the end he was given a fine of 125 pesetas.45 In many cases the most common excuse was for people to declare that they did not know that they were within the woodland limits, as well as claiming that they were exercising rights granted by custom. These same rights were quoted by inhabitants of Gurrea de Gállego during their trial in 1897. The two inhabitants were charged in November 1896 after being caught collecting firewood in the local woodlands of San Cristóbal, which had previously been the property of the Count of Parcent and were now owned by Tadeo Sancho. Among the ‘deliberations’ of the trial was the fact that the offenders were ‘acting according to the custom of the inhabitants Gurrea de Gállego of collecting firewood in the woodlands of the aforementioned town and were unaware that these rights had been taken away’.46 It was not that these rights had not been removed, but rather that the inhabitants repeatedly refused to acknowledge that fact. It is therefore worth recalling the background to this case. In 1886, the heirs of Tomás Castellano went to the Tax Officer to cancel the rights associated with some estates, among them the Romerosa and Lacruz, which had been established by deed between the inhabitants and the Count of Parcent in 1842 and allowed them to gather loose firewood for their own domestic use with the exception of wood from oak, pine, savin and certain other trees. The Town Council of Gurrea reacted by presenting several complaints against the heirs’ request and appeals were made on various occasions until in April 1893 the government court of the Treasury Department ruled that there were grounds for removal. Despite this, the inhabitants of Gurrea continued to make use of the woodlands and in 1896 the mayor was forced to publish an edict reminding people that the right to such use had been removed, which meant that it was forbidden to do so. From then on, the private guards of that particular area of woodland kept watch to make sure that none of the inhabitants cut down and stole firewood. Any infractions were reported to the authorities.

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However, offences continued to be committed. Some years later, in 1904, when another resident of Gurrea, Sebastián Luna Azpetia, was charged with cutting down and gathering twenty-four bundles of firewood from the woodland of Lentiscar, which also belonged to the heirs of Tomás Castellano, he declared that he cut the wood ‘to use it and because he believed he had the right to do so as an inhabitant of Gurrea de Gállego, since the residents of this village and the La Paul neighbourhood had been gathering firewood from the hill lands of Lentiscar for a long time’. The defence lawyer then insisted that the offender had acted ‘in good faith, believing that he was exercising his right as a resident of Gurrea’.47 At about the same time, the trial was held of thirteen other residents charged with the same offence. However, the sentences had become more severe and the offenders were not acquitted, as they had been in 1897. Instead, they were sentenced to between two and four months in prison. Claiming that they were acting ‘in good faith’ did not hide the fact that it was actually part of the struggle to affirm rights which they felt should be granted by custom.48 The legal records also provide information, albeit indirectly, about other forms of resistance against the privatisation process which had begun with disamortisation. Although they are not very common, information is available about collective purchases. In 1906, when Julián Laper Escabosa was caught tying up bundles of firewood that he had cut in the woodland of Novales, he based his defence on the ‘right to gather firewood […] because it belonged to an estate bought jointly by all or by a majority of the residents of the village’.49 He was later acquitted. It is interesting to examine the geographical location of these crimes against woodland property which were tried in the Provincial Court. Table 9.3 Crimes against Woodland Property by Judicial District, 1893–1914 Judicial District Barbastro Benabarre Boltaña Fraga Huesca Jaca Sariñena Tamarite

Percentage of total crimes against woodland property 4.51 1.50 3.75 18.79 23.30 13.53 33.83 0.75

Source: AHP, Justice Department, Sentence Register.

As can be seen in Table 9.3, almost 76 percent of the crimes were committed in the judicial districts of Huesca, Sariñena and Fraga. It is worth noting that these three districts were the ones most badly affected by the disamortisation process. Whereas Boltaña and Jaca, where there was mainly woodland of pine, oak and beech, had managed to keep around 70,000 and 52,000 hectares of woodland (respectively) exempt from the process – which together represented almost 82 percent of the total figure for the province – Huesca, Fraga and Sariñena were the districts that lost the most common land and

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were the most badly affected by the General Classification of 1859 and the 1862 Catalogue of Public Woodland Exempt from Disamortisation.50 In the district of Sariñena, legal records tell of crimes committed in Pertusa, Peralta de Alcofea, Sariñena, Sena, Grañén etc. However, they were particularly numerous in two municipal areas, Castejón de Monegros and Villanueva de Sigena, where almost all the offences took place in the woodlands of Jubierre and La Sierra. In Fraga, apart from some crimes against private woodland property in Velilla and Torrente de Cinca, most of the offences were committed in Valcuerna de Fraga, where there were many offences of burning firewood to make charcoal. In Huesca, there are records of offences in Lupiñén, Sarsamarcuello, Ortilla, Siétamo, Ayerbe, Aniés, Novales, Belilla, Banastás, Huesca and Esquedas (Mount Figueruelas, property of the Count of Sobradiel), but above all in the public woodlands of Pujalveta, San Cristóbal and Lentiscar of Gurrea de Gállego and in the private woodlands of Tomás Castellano in Loarre (Mount Artasona) and Alcalá de Gurrea (Mount Tormos). There is a curious and noteworthy similarity between the geographical distribution of the municipal areas where most of the crimes against woodland property took place and those areas where there was greater inequality in terms of land and wealth distribution. A quick glance at a map showing where the offences took place and one showing property ownership is sufficient to see the link. It would therefore appear that there were more offences in those areas which were most badly affected by the disamortisation process, which were also those where property was less equally distributed.51 An analysis of the social background of the defendants confirms that they were mainly day labourers and poor peasants (Table 9.4), precisely those who were most affected by restrictions to their access to these resources. The sentence registers of the Provincial Court are useful in this respect because they provide information about the origins and social background of the offenders. According to legal records, 77.94 percent of the crimes against rural property (Table 9.5) and 84.73 percent of those against woodland property (Table 9.6) were committed by farmers and day labourers. In the case of the farmers, it is difficult to determine the amount of land that they owned, but the type of infractions committed and the fact that other offenders appeared as ‘landowners’ suggests that they were not wealthy farmers, but humble peasants instead. The most significant fact, however, is the high percentage of day labourers, who committed more than 43.5 percent of crimes against woodland property, indicating that the main offenders were, to a large extent, landless peasants or peasants who owned very little land and who combined the leasing of small plots of land with their work as paid labourers in order to supplement their meagre income. The offenders were usually men above the age of legal responsibility, most of whom had no criminal record. In terms of crimes against forest resources, for instance, only 4.41 percent had previously committed a criminal offence although it is impossible to determine if their criminal record was for the same offence since such information is not included in the legal records.52 There were also instances of children under the age of legal responsibility being involved either on their own or with their parents or elder siblings in the theft of firewood, branches and esparto grass. This was probably part of a strategy

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to avoid more serious punishments or to be acquitted because the offender was not legally responsible. Table 9.4 Social Background of Crimes against Property, 1893–1914 Social Background of Offenders

Number of Offenders

Percentage of Total Offenders

Farmers Day labourers Landowners Shepherds Forest rangers Women Servants Others Unknown

153 136 2 18 1 32 9 76 20

35.01 31.12 0.45 4.11 0.22 7.32 2.05 17.39 2.28

Total

447

99.95

Source: AHP, Sentence Register. Table 9.5 Social Background of Those Committing Crimes against Rural Property, 1893–1914 Social Background of Offenders

Number of Offenders

Percentage of Total Offenders

Farmers Day labourers Landowners Shepherds Women Servants Forest rangers Others Unknown

134 117 2 16 13 4 1 27 8

41.61 36.33 0.62 4.96 4.03 1.24 0.31 8.38 2.48

Total

322

99.96

Source: AHP, Sentence Register. Table 9.6 Social Background of Those Committing Crimes against Woodland Property, 1893–1914 Social Background of Offenders

Number of Offenders

Farmers Day labourers Landowners Women Shepherds Others Total Source: AHP, Sentence Register.

Percentage of Total Offenders

54 57 1 3 2 14

41.22 43.51 0.76 2.29 1.52 10.68

131

99.98

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The fact that most of the offences were closely related to basic goods required by peasant families would appear to confirm the relationship put forward here between the crimes committed, privatisation, restrictions in the use of common lands and the fight for subsistence. The most common offences were the theft of firewood, cutting down and stealing trees and poaching (Table 9.7), but most of them were offences of little importance with no other aim than to ensure offenders’ subsistence. When two residents of Peralta de Alcofea stole five bundles of firewood from a private estate; when two other residents of Loarre cut down two pine trees from the public woodland at Sarsamarcuello; when five farmers were caught by the Civil Guard with four horses laden with firewood in Castejón de Monegros; when a woman from Almunia de San Juan cut some olive branches from a private estate belonging to Simón Rivera with the help of her two children aged 19 and 13 years; when a resident of Alcubierre was put on trial for cutting down a pine tree in the woodlands of La Sierra; when a 15year-old day labourer stole a bundle of firewood from woodland belonging to Francisco Aznarez; when two other day labourers, aged 19 and 16 years, stole two bundles of firewood from an estate belonging to Manuel Gavín in Jaca; or when Antonio Oliván Gavín, a resident of Sariñena, was sentenced to three months in prison for stealing manure and esparto grass, it is difficult to imagine that the motive behind these crimes was anything other than mere subsistence. Table 9.7 Crimes against Woodland Property, 1893–1914 Crime Cutting down trees Stealing firewood Making charcoal Stealing branches Stealing esparto grass Ploughing Fire Damage to woodland Poaching

Percentage of Total Woodland Property Crime 22.13 35.87 11.45 6.10 3.05 2.29 2.29 0.79 16.03

Source: AHP, Sentence Register.

Despite committing only minor offences, from the sentences given it would appear that the offenders were severely punished. In the case of offences against woodland property, only 16 percent of the defendants were acquitted, 9.5 percent were given fines, 56.61 percent were given prison sentences of between two and six months and almost 6 percent were given a fine and a prison sentence. Prison sentences of more than six months were given for crimes involving bodily harm, murder, the theft of livestock or recidivism. Thanks to the study undertaken by Alberto Sabio, we know that other, more serious offences were committed, above all crimes involving illegal pasturage and ploughing, which were not connected to the basic family

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needs. However, a large proportion of these offences do not appear in the Sentence Registers, meaning that they did not reach the Provincial Court. The very structure of local power and the fact that the municipal authorities were in charge of processing – or not processing – the reports presented to them by the forest rangers explain both the overwhelming presence of small peasants and day labourers in the law courts, as well as the insignificant number of medium and large landowners, whose crimes were largely ignored. Alberto Sabio recalls, for example, how in 1885 an offence involving illegal pasturage was overlooked because, ‘since the mayor has one of the largest herds of livestock, it is not in his interest to carry on with the legal proceedings’.53 Thus, the local dignitaries took advantage of their hereditary position not only to obtain greater access to publicly owned assets, but also to avoid fines and to make it difficult for certain criminal proceedings to reach the law courts. The limited number of trials related to ploughing covers up the importance of this process and its relationship with the poverty and difficulties experienced by small peasants, as well as with the strategies of the wealthy landowners, who intended to transform woodlands and pasture into farming land – often by means of sharecropping and leasing the land to modest peasants – in order to maximise their profits. In fact, the courts tended to refuse cases of illegal ploughing because they believed that it was a problem that should be solved at administrative level as long as no boundaries were crossed, which was never the case in woodland areas.54 However, despite the fact that there is no record of such practices in court documents, it is true that over a period of eighty years between 1850 and 1930, more than 80,000 hectares of land were ploughed up in the province of Huesca.55 Much of the ploughed up land was common land and this practice was undertaken either with the permission of the municipal councils and, to a lesser extent, the forestry authorities, or on an arbitrary basis. Despite the fact that it affected woodland set aside for public use, the extent of this process bears no relation to the small number of trials held for this offence. Between 1893 and 1914, among the more than one thousand sentences that can be consulted, there were only three trials for illegally ploughing up land: one was initiated by the court of Jaca in 1914 for ploughing up hill land from Valmayor in the village of Majones and seven day labourers were charged with a total of nine counts of usurpation. In the other, in 1897, two residents of Ballobar were charged with cultivating land in the woodland belonging to María de las Heras, the Countess of Ballobar. One of the accused and the mother of the other one had already been involved in a court case with the Countess for planting crops on the same land.56 In Huesca, this process of ploughing up the land was not the result of demographic pressure, neither in the period being considered nor at a later date. Between 1887 and 1930, the population of the province of Upper Aragón fell in real terms, whereas between 1900 and 1910 the amount of cultivated land increased by almost 16,000 hectares.57 The reasons behind this can be found in the tendency of big landowners to favour clearing woodland areas in order to maximise their profits, in addition to the structure

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of land ownership and its uneven distribution, as illustrated by the fact that in the administrative areas of Sariñena and Fraga – areas in which extremely poor small peasants lived alongside a small number of large landowners – by far the largest amount of public woodland was ploughed up and cultivated. In addition to what the large landowners did, the difficult living conditions faced by the small peasantry after the introduction of the market economy in rural areas and restrictions in the use of common land and woodland property led them to plough up and cultivate the land, actions which were hidden behind offences such as starting fires. More detailed reports are available in the press or in the forestry records than in the provincial courts. As Alberto Sabio recalls, the so-called ‘social issue’ conditioned the forest rangers to temporarily accept using the land for growing crops.58

Conclusion Analysing these examples demonstrates that the disputes and protests that took place in the province of Huesca between 1880 and 1914 were mainly, if not exclusively, based on the struggle for subsistence. These disputes, or at least the most conspicuous ones, irrespective of whether they were collective or individual protests (demonstrations, riots, attacks on private property, threats against landowners, theft of grain etc.) tended to increase in certain situations during which the failure of crops and the high cost of basic goods threatened the economies of many peasant families. Despite being landowners, whenever small peasants were only able to survive by resorting to paid work, any increase in unemployment when there was no work made their already precarious situation even worse. This in turn led to an increase in protests demanding not only that salaries be maintained, but rather that jobs be created. The effects of the great depression eventually took away any security which a good harvest had previously represented, bringing about considerable decreases both in income as well as in the value of the land. Medium and large landowners managed to avoid the crisis since the drop in prices only affected their profit margins. The same cannot be said of many smallholders whose narrow subsistence margin was dramatically affected by spectacular price drops. Between 1883 and 1885 alone, the average price of wheat fell 22 percent and the price of oil fell 25 percent during the 1880s. The price of wine, the only product which appeared to have escaped the crisis, fell around 34 percent between 1886 and 1889.59 Living on the poverty line and unable to invest in new technology which would allow them to face up to external competition, these smallholders were forced – not because of traditionalism and agrarian ignorance, but instead because they had no other option – to resort to usury and indebtedness as a means of guaranteeing their subsistence and their property at all costs. Together with these factors, the tax increases, which came at a time when economic conditions were extremely delicate, ended up taking away the limited profits that small landowners managed to make from their crops if their land had not already been confiscated, that is. It was precisely the unpopularity of some of

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the government’s measures, particularly increases in taxes and the hated consumption tax, that was at the root of many of the traditional forms of collective action. From the turn-of-the-century crisis onwards, it was repeatedly stated that it was important to promote agriculture that was capable of meeting the needs of the Spanish economy. Without questioning the structure of land property or the production system itself, it was said that the solution had to come from reducing the number of fields that were left fallow, introducing intensive crops, extending irrigation and updating technology, which allowed increases in yields without increasing production costs and which guaranteed competitiveness and the profitability of the land. In Huesca, the constant increase in migration until 1900, the fact that population levels did not recover even during the first third of the twentieth century, news of the difficulties – not to mention poverty – of those who had remained, and the recurrent displays of discontent would seem to suggest that the outlook cannot have been very promising for many people. In the microstructure of the peasant community, where everyone knew each other, uncertainty must have played an important role in strengthening customer relationships, which did not imply the disappearance of class tensions. In places where most small peasants lived close to subsistence level, the need for protection was more pressing. However, peasants also used other means of ‘protecting’ themselves, especially against the privatisation process which capitalism introduced into rural life. Their particular forms of protecting themselves, by attempting to ensure the survival of their traditional way of life, were channelled into various and, we should not forget, persistent forms of resistance – and therefore forms of protest – the central core of which was none other than the defence of their right to use common lands, which had previously guaranteed a minimal, if not egalitarian, income to the members of the rural community. The reasons behind the actions were not down to the unadventurous nature of the peasants, but rather to practices which, even if it meant turning them into criminals, conserved the defensive perimeter around their means of subsistence. The new capitalist order had threatened the existence of certain basic guarantees by privatising collective assets and collective rights. In light of this process, although they were not very spectacular, the forms of resistance were backed up by an ethical code which morally justified the continuance of traditional, collective practices and implied the rejection of the norms and rules imposed by the new, capitalist order.60

Notes 1. On peasant protest movements in contemporary farming societies, see among others B. Moore, Los orígenes sociales de la dictadura y la democracia, Barcelona, 1973; E.R. Wolf, Las luces campesinas en el siglo XX, Mexico, 1972; H.A. Landsberger (ed.), Rebelión campesina y cambio social, Barcelona, 1978; T. Skocpol, Los estados y las revoluciones sociales: un análisis comparativo de Francia, Rusia y China, Mexico, 1984; and T. Shanin, La clase incómoda. Sociología y política del campesinado en una sociedad en desarrollo (Rusia 1910–1925),

218

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

Carmen Frías Corredor Madrid, 1983. An assessment of the studies on agrarian social protest in Spain can be found in J. Casanova, ‘Resistencias individuales, acciones colectivas: nuevas miradas a la protesta social agraria en la España contemporánea’ (in press), whom I thank for giving me the opportunity to read the text before it was published. The movement to unite employers can be followed in the meticulous study carried out by G. Sanz, Organización y movilizaciones de propietarios agrarios en Aragón. Redes de intervención política, gestión comercial-crediticia y reproducción social (1880–1930), Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Zaragoza, 1999. For data on the structure of land ownership in 1899, C. Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo en el Alto Aragón. Procesos electorales y comportamientos políticos (1875–1898), Huesca, 1992. For the structure of land ownership in the Second Republic, L. Germán, Aragón en la II República. Estructura económica y comportamiento político, Saragossa, 1984. J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, 1985; and ‘Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 22: 2 (1986), 5–35. J. Fontana, ‘Los campesinos en la historia: reflexiones sobre un concepto y unos prejuicios’, Historia Social, 28 (1997), 3–11. El Diario de Huesca, 21 August 1882, cited in J.J. López González and J. García Lasaosa, Orígenes del movimiento obrero en Aragón (1854–1890), Saragossa, 1982. For an assessment of property distribution by administrative areas, see Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo, 207 ff. The information and figures by municipality can be found in the Appendix of the Ph.D. diss. El Diario de Huesca, 21 August 1882; and El Norte de Aragón, 26 August 1882. Actas del Ayuntamiento, 5 March 1894. El Diario de Huesca, 8 December 1882. El Diario de Huesca, 12 February 1887. El Diario de Huesca, 3 March 1898. El Diario de Huesca, 6 June 1896. El Diario de Huesca, 9 October 1891. El Diario de Huesca, 17 October 1886. El Porvenir published two articles by the journalists Julio Martínez de la Fuente and Carmelo Pérez Barrón, entitled ‘Nuestra protesta’ and ‘La lección de Sancho Panza, Gobernador de Barataria’, for which they were accused of making slanderous allegations against the authorities. Archivo Histórico Provincial [henceforth cited as AHP], Justice Department, Sentence Register, 1915, nº 47. With regard to the impact of the turn-of-the-century crisis in the province, C. Forcadell and L. Germán, ‘La crisis finisecular en la agricultura interior: el caso de Aragón’, in R. Garrabou (ed.), La crisis agraria de fines de siglo, Barcelona, 1988, 69–93; and C. Forcadell, ‘La crisis agrícola y pecuaria de finales del siglo XIX. La provincia de Huesca en la información escrita de 1887’, Argensola, 92 (1981), 279–302. Cited in Forcadell, ‘La crisis agrícola y pecuaria’. El Imparcial, 22 January 1888. 1876 = 263,230; 1877 = 252, 239; 1887 = 255,137; 1890 = 260,306; 1897 = 239,081; 1900 = 244,867; 1910 = 248,257; 1920 = 250,508; 1930 = 242,958. For a general analysis of turn-of-the-century migration, see R. Robledo, ‘Crisis agraria y éxodo rural: emigración española a ultramar (1880–1920)’, in Garrabou, La crisis agraria, 212–44. For data on migration in Aragón, L. Germán, ‘Aragón invertebrado. Atraso económico y dualismo interno (1830–1939)’, Revista de Historia Económica, VI: 2 (1998), 311–39. In C. Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo en el Alto Aragón. Procesos electorales y comportamientos políticos (1875–1818), Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Zaragoza, 1991, 646–49. El Diario de Huesca, 17 March 1881. Forcadell, ‘La crisis agrícola y pecuaria’. ‘There would have to be frequent supplements to the actual newspaper if all the sales of farms seized for non payment of taxes were to be announced. Although many owners wish to avoid such an extreme situation and the resulting humiliation and suffering, all their efforts come

Disputes, Protest and Forms of Resistance in Rural Areas

26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40.

219

up against the sheer impossibility of being able to pay the public taxation charges’. El Diario de Huesca, 11 October 1876. With regard to antitax protests, R. Vallejo, ‘Pervivencia de las formas tradicionales de protesta: los motines de 1892’, Historia Social, 8 (1990), 3–27. On their characteristics, see D. Castro, ‘Protesta popular y orden público: los motines de consumo’, in J.L. García Delgado (ed.), España entre dos siglos (1875–1931), Madrid, 1991, 109–23; and ‘Agitación y orden en la Restauración. ¿Fin del ciclo revolucionario?’, Historia Social, 5 (1989), 37–49; and A. Gil Novales, ‘La conflictividad social bajo la Restauración (1875–1917)’, Trienio, 7 (1986), 73–217. This was the case of El Diario de Huesca, which on 11 July spoke of ‘the storm threatening local tranquility and the origination of a serious dispute’. Actas del Ayuntamiento, 28 July 1885 and 29 July 1885; El Diario de Huesca, 28 July 1885, 29 July 1885 and 7 August 1885; La Crónica, 28 July 1885. News of the riots were in El Trueno. Periódico semanal escrito con mucha sal, 2 August 1885. La Crónica de Huesca, 3 August 1889; and López González and García Lasaosa, Orígenes, 317. P. Maluenda, ‘Propiedad de la tierra y orden social en Huesca. Una aproximación a la conflictividad rural durante el primer tercio del siglo XX’, in C. Frías (coord.), Tierra y Campesinado. Huesca (siglos XI–XX), Huesca, 1996. AHP, Sentence Register, 1897, 147. There were similar examples in 1894 (sentences 75 and 79), 1895 (sentences 55, 60, 62, 83 and 123), 1897 (sentence 147), 1899 (sentences 87 and 109), 1902 (sentences 37, 81 and 82), 1904 (sentence 15), 1906 (sentences 72, 122 and 170), 1908 (sentences 72 and 75), 1909 (sentences 28, 70 and 108). News reports about Luis Barber were in El Diario de Huesca, 4 February 1877; news reports about Teodoro Porquet were in El Diario de Huesca, 8 August 1888; news reports about the death of Francisco Berceró were in El Diario de Avisos, 25 August 1887; threats against Rafael Palacín are in AHP, Sentence Register, 1915, sentence 65. El Diario de Huesca, 8 August 1888. El Diario de Avisos, 25 August 1887. Fontana, ‘Los campesinos en la historia’. Scott’s work on the forms of peasant resistance opened new perspectives on the study and interpretation of certain practices which the historiography of social movements had taken to be the result of primitivist phases. Protests linked to certain crimes faced with the introduction of the capitalist system into the rural world have also been highlighted in studies on other areas: from France and England to India, Malaysia and Kenya. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. For the Spanish case, and following the same line of interpretation, see F. Cobo et al., ‘Privatización del monte y protesta campesina en Andalucia oriental (1836–1920)’, Agricultura y Sociedad, 65 (1992), 253–302. Grupo de Estudios de Historia Rural [GEHR], ‘Más allá de la propiedad perfecta. El proceso de privatización de los montes públicos españoles (1859–1926)’, Noticiario de Historia Agraria, 8 (1994), 99–152. Figures for the province of Huesca are in A. Sabio, Los montes públicos en Huesca (1859–1930). El bosque no se improvisa, Huesca, 1997. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 36, which includes a comparison of the hill lands exempt from disamortisation for 1859 and 1862. Sabio, Los montes públicos. The analysis of these crimes was carried out by consulting the book of sentences for the period between 1893 and 1914, from the legal section of the provincial historical archives. Some books are in very poor condition, which meant that it was impossible to consult them. For the 1880s, for example, it was only possible to consult the book for 1884, and only between the months between January and September. From 1893 onwards, the books are in better condition, although it is only possible to consult the books in full from 1911 onwards. The available data was as follows. 1893: from sentence 78 to 202; 1894: from 16 to 124; 1895: from 33 to 155; 1897: from 100 to 203; 1899: from 71 to 143; 1902: from 1 to 84; 1904: from 10 to 73; 1908: from 11 to 89; 1909: from 17 to 110; 1910: from 12 to 100; the books corresponding to 1906, 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914 can be consulted in full.

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41. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 210–11. 42. One of the most memorable cases took place in El Pinar de Alquézar, when in 1905 no fewer than 1,085 trees were cut down in one year. The Forestry Authorities were unable to determine who was responsible. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 217. 43. AHP, Justice Department, Sentence Register, 1895, sentence 90; Sentence Register, 1897, sentence 180; and Sentence Register, 1904, sentence 53. 44. AHP, Sentence Register, 1884, sentence 31. 45. AHP, Sentence Register, 1904, sentence 60. 46. AHP, Sentence Register, 1897, sentence 103. 47. AHP, Sentence Register, 1904, sentence 62. 48. AHP, Sentence Register, 1904, sentence 62. 49. AHP, Sentence Register, 1906, sentence 54. 50. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 36 ff. 51. Take, for example, the Gini Index for the most conflictive areas: Alcalá de Gurrea: 0.79; Castejón de Monegros: 0.71; Fraga: 0.70; Grañén: 0.84; Gurrea de Gállego: 0.68; Sariñena: 0.68; Sena: 0.76; Torrente de Cinca: 0.67; Valfarta: 0.79; Siétamo: 0.70; Villanueva de Sigena: 0.75. Further information about these figures is available in Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo, Ph.D. diss., Appendix. 52. Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo, Ph.D. diss., Appendix. 53. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 219. 54. A. Sabio, ‘Fuentes y metodología para el estudio de los montes públicos en Aragón, 1859–1935’, in Metodología de la investigación científica sobre fuentes aragonesas (IX), Saragossa, 1994, 223–92. 55. V. Pinilla, Entre la inercia y el cambio. El sector agrario aragonés (1850–1935), Madrid, 1995. 56. AHP, Sentence Register, 1914, sentence 7; and Sentence Register 1897, sentence 195. 57. Sabio, Los montes públicos, 222. 58. Sabio, ‘Fuentes y metodología’. 59. Frías, Liberalismo y republicanismo, Ph.D. diss., 398–407. 60. In the early 1970s, E.P. Thompson and J. Scott insisted that many collective actions were not a direct result of hunger, but rather of the violation of certain moral suppositions. E.P. Thompson, ‘La economía moral de la multitud’, in Tradición, revuelta y conciencia de clase, Barcelona, 1979, 62–134; and Costumbres en común, Barcelona, 1995; and J. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in South East Asia, New Haven, 1976.

CHAPTER 10

THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF MINERS IN BISCAYE, 1876–1936 Antonio Escudero

This study is made up of three parts. First, I will make some comments on how standards of living are measured and on the optimist-pessimist debate. I shall then provide information on the standards of living of miners in Biscaye (province of the Basque Country) between 1876 and 1913, putting forward conclusions which do not shy away from the abovementioned debate. In the third part, the same will be done for the period between 1914 and 1936.

Measuring Well-Being and the Optimist-Pessimist Debate Some economists maintain that income per capita is the best indication of wellbeing as it plays a fundamental role in determining happiness. It also avoids the need to make value judgements and it is related to other elements of the quality of life. Others consider this value to be inadequate given that it does not take into account equity, life expectancy, working conditions, the degradation of the environment, the amount of leisure time available or simply the pleasures of life.1 Other indicators have therefore appeared as an alternative to income per capita. Years ago, Nordhaus and Tobin put forward the MEW (Measure of Economic Welfare) and Samuelson proposed the NEW (Net Economic Welfare), aimed at adjusting income by means of other variables (the value of leisure, the added value of the work of housewives, the costs of contamination or the costs of urban life).2 In addition, while accepting the hypothesis that greater equity contributed to greater social welfare, Kakwani and Sen created indicators based on the distribution of income.3 A more recent indicator is the HDI (Human Development Index) created by the United Nations. This HDI includes three elements (real GDP per capita, life expectancy and the adult literacy rate) and in certain cases yields surprising results. In terms of income,

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in 1990 the United States of America was the world leader. In terms of the HDI, it was in eighteenth place. At the other end of the scale, Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in terms of income, was in fortieth place.4 However, it does not seem likely that indicators such as the HDI can overcome the difficulty involved in measuring welfare, taking into account the insoluble problem of determining the relative importance of the variables. Should we consider that income represents 80 percent of standards of living and that other variables should make up the remaining 20 percent? Or should we reduce the financial aspect to 60 percent and increase the rest to 40 percent? Is it better to have a greater income or a longer life expectancy and where does the balance lie? Does earning a high salary and working like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times give greater satisfaction than earning a lower salary working as a gamekeeper? Considering the wide range of tastes and preferences, all deliberations involve making value judgements. The reflections above do not intend to imply that it is impossible to assess living standards. Standards of living can be gauged against others when there are undeniable improvements in income and other elements affecting welfare. No historian would deny, for instance, that in the long run industrialisation increased workers’ quality of life. However, the debate about what happened during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution still continues despite the enormous amount of written material that the subject has generated and despite the fact that it began over seventy years ago (the first volume of Clapham’s Economic History of Modern Britain appeared in 1926).5 The following is a list of some of the problems that have complicated and prolonged the controversy: (1) There are ideological factors involved. More specifically, judgement is passed on capitalism or, at the very least, on certain forms of capitalism.6 (2) It is difficult to quantify nominal income (limited reliability of figures from official sources; non monetary income or very limited information about family incomes).7 (3) Converting nominal income into real income poses two problems. First, it is difficult to construct deflators which contain the retail prices of a wide range of goods and services; a suitable adjustment of the consumption of those goods and services and examination of the changes in demand which derive from Engel’s Law or changes in tastes.8 Secondly, it is a complex task to identify trends in real salaries in a period marked by extreme price fluctuations, so that the choice of the initial and final year of the series may distort the results.9 There are other problems in addition to these. The information available corresponds to social groups which are too small and there is thus a tendency to generalise results which do not take into account unemployment or include large groups of workers or the lumpenproletariat.10 However, the standards of living of British workers are usually measured using groups of prices and incomes that hide regional differences.11 Considering these problems, Hobsbawm suggested that wages should no longer be studied and that attention should be focused on consumption, but this line of research has not produced any definitive conclusions.12

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(4) There is no agreement over macroeconomic elements, in particular over income distribution.13 (5) One final problem has prolonged the controversy: that of the non chrematistic variables of well-being. In 1986, Rule presented an exhaustive study of some of these variables (rate of illness, life expectancy, working conditions, accommodation, environment, education and leisure).14 His conclusions were pessimistic. However, modern optimists argue that the information available is not conclusive considering the fact that we do not know enough about the quality of life before the Industrial Revolution.15 It is a known fact that efforts have been made to use anthropometry as a tool for quantifying non financial elements of well-being, yet the evidence is also ambiguous in this case.16 These five problems have complicated and prolonged a controversy which will probably never be resolved. Let us imagine that in a few years’ time two hypotheses had been corroborated to the point that a certain level of agreement had been reached. The wages of the majority of the workers increased but in contrast, other elements of their standards of living got worse. In such circumstances, there would still remain the unsolvable problem of deliberating over the financial and other aspects. Some representatives of the New Economic History have attempted to resolve the mystery by calculating wage bonuses to compensate for the drawbacks of life in British working-class neighbourhoods in the early nineteenth-century, assuring that they were indeed compensatory.17 However, it does not seem likely that anybody asked the people who lived in those areas, so it is an arbitrary exercise. In a book published in 1985, Snell condemns the subjectivity of judging the well-being of past generations with the tastes and preferences of the present.18 Thompson has also suggested a line of research which would study the experiences and expectations of workers who suffered or benefited from the consequences of the first phase of industrialisation.19 Knowing what those men and women thought of their living conditions would be the best way to bring the controversy to a close, but it would be difficult to gather together indirect statements which would allow a neutral judgement to be made.

The Standards of Living of Basque Miners, 1876–1913 In this second section, an analysis will be made of certain elements of the wellbeing of miners of Biscaye between the beginning of the large-scale exploitation of mines and the First World War. It will include a study of real wages; income distribution; the truck system; the working day and piecework; living accommodation and the environment; mortality and social legislation. In order to construct an accurate scale of real wages, there needs to be a reliable index of living costs in addition to reliable information on nominal daily wages. For the first, it is vitally important to know: (a) the retail price of goods and services consumed by workers in the mining area; (b) the relative importance of each of these goods and services and (c) changes in spending

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habits. There would also have to be enough information on nominal wages to resolve the following two problems: (a) the variety of daily wages paid by each company; and (b) the existence of supplementary wages for piecework. As almost always happens in history, unfortunately there is a considerable difference between what one searches for and what can be found from documentary sources. In an article presented at the XIV Symposium on Economic Analysis in Barcelona, an index was used which included the retail prices of six food items that were part of the miners’ diet and the prices also corresponded to those found in the mining area. That had the disadvantage, however, of not taking consumption into account.20 Nowadays a more rigorous system of disaggregating the different components is available, which was devised by Pedro Pérez Castroviejo.21 His index of the cost of living in the mining area includes the retail prices of seven products consumed by the workers (bread, bacon, wine, chickpeas, oil, rice and beef) and adjusts spending according to information obtained from account books of the time. Pérez Castroviejo himself has highlighted the disadvantages of his system. The series does not include goods and services which should be taken into account (potatoes, beans, rent, lighting, heating, cleaning, clothes, healthcare etc.) and neither does it take into account changes in spending habits. That notwithstanding, his deflator (Appendix 10.1) is at present the most reliable. Since 80 percent of the miners were labourers, it is necessary to work with their nominal wages (Appendix 10.3). There are inadequacies in the series because most of the wage figures come from indirect sources.22 Therefore, it does not take into account wage differences between different companies or what is undoubtedly more important, wage bonuses for piecework. It also has another defect: between 1876 and 1899, I have only been able to document the daily wages for fifteen years, meaning that I have had to fill in the gaps by estimating the wages. Considering this, deflator prices and wages could clearly be improved, and the following comments should thus be corroborated or refuted in future research. Nominal wages showed an accumulative average growth rate of 0.75 percent. This lethargy can be explained by the existence of a labour market which conformed to an almost perfect competition model, mainly due to its atomicity (large supply and demand of labour, neither side being able to change the wage balance). The demand for labour increased between 1876 and 1913 as the profitability of companies increased.23 That brought about an increase in salaries, but only a moderate increase due to the simultaneous increase in the supply of labour (massive migration to the mining areas from nearby farming areas with zero marginal productivity and a large number of temporary workers from those same areas). If we add to this the fact that there was no effective trade union movement – the workers did not win any of the wage strikes between 1876 and 1913 – and that there was an absence of monopolistic demand – there were more than 110 companies and employers did not form a cartel in order to lower daily wages – we can find the circumstances necessary to explain the very slow rise in nominal daily wages.24 The labour-demand curve moves towards the right as marginal productivity increases, but the supply curve moves in the same direction, thus producing a modest salary increase (Appendix 10.4).

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The changes to real wages appear in Appendix 10.1 and 10.5. The series shows greater fluctuations than the one for nominal wages since in the short term the real daily wage was determined to a greater extent by changes in food prices than by the monetary wage. With the exception of two temporary fluctuations which reduced real wages below the levels seen in 1876 – those of 1879–1880 and 1884–1889 shows that there was no long-term drop in real daily wages. However, increases in real wages were even smaller than increases in nominal wages (a cumulative average rate of 0.37 percent as against 0.75 percent). As a result, mine labourers in Biscaye received subsistence wages throughout the whole study period – around 1907, for instance, the daily expenses of a mining family with four members were approximately 3.15 pesetas and the daily wage was no more than 3.5 pesetas.25 This explains why they resorted to doing two activities in order to supplement the family income: the man did piecework and the family provided board and lodging or rented out rooms in their homes to single labourers. In this case, the women took care of the food, cleaning and laundry.26 It was also the reason behind the creation of cooperatives and company stores which from the beginning of the century onwards mitigated the effects of the low wages.27 It is worth comparing marginal wage increases with increases in profits. To this end, I shall use my estimation of the added values of the sector. Table 10.1 shows the difference between income from labour and that from capital, over the entire study period and in certain years of extraordinary profits. Table 10.1 Distribution of the Added Value of the Mining Industry in Biscaye, 1876–1913 Years 1876–1913 1880 1890 1898 1900

Capital Income (%)

Labour income (%)

60 70 73 79 77

40 30 27 21 23

Source: A. Escudero, ‘Valores añadidos de la minería vizcaína (1876–1936)’, Áreas, 16 (1994), 77–92.

In view of these figures, increases in workers’ monetary productivity levels were not accompanied by a greater distribution of income.28 The existence of the ‘truck system’ means that it is necessary to recalculate the real wages of those workers who suffered its abuses. The system consisted of obliging miners to buy in canteens run by foremen or contractors who deducted what they spent from their monthly wage. The information available does not allow an assessment of the prices in the canteens or the number of workers who were obliged to shop in them.29 That notwithstanding, the fact that that the main demand of the general strike in 1890 was the abolition of the truck system would appear to confirm that it was a widespread phenomenon. The Loma Agreement banned obligatory canteens, but the measure only came into effect after the general strike of 1903.30

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Miners’ working conditions can be gauged by means of two indicators: the working day and piecework. Between 1876 and 1890, the working day lasted 12 hours. After the strike of that same year, it was reduced to 10 hours, although employers’ documents illustrate that in many cases they worked 10.5 hours. Finally, the strike in 1910 set the working day at 9.30 hours.31 Piecework was known in the mines as the ‘tarea’ (literally ‘the task’). Gangs of three to five workers would undertake to load a certain number of wagons in return for a wage bonus.32 In this case, neither does the information available reveal the proportion of workers involved in piecework, although it would seem reasonable to presume that it was a common occurrence considering that wages were at subsistence levels and because its abolition was part of the demands of the general strikes in 1890, 1892, 1903 and 1906. However, many workers were against the abolition of work that allowed them to earn a higher daily wage.33 Pilar Pérez Fuentes and Pedro Pérez Castroviejo have studied living accommodation and the environment in mining areas.34 Until the early 1880s and in light of the distance of the mines from urban areas, single workers slept in huts owned by the foremen and contractors, whereas families had to resort to living in shanty towns. In 1882, the town councils of the seven mining districts and the mining companies reached an agreement by which licences to build within the limits of the mine would only be granted to companies or private individuals put forward by these. This meant that the houses of the shantytowns which sprang up around the hills of Triano were the property of the companies or of people close to them. The huts – many of which were obligatory until the strike in 1890 – were gradually replaced by inns which were also run by foremen and contractors. Working-class families went on to rent flats, in which it was common for them to offer board and lodging. By hindering the free construction of living accommodation, the laws of 1882 created an oligopoly which was beneficial to the owners of inns and other accommodation and detrimental to those living there. Proof of this was the level of overcrowding. As far as the inns were concerned, in 1890 health inspectors from the Health Department of Arbolada found that 565 labourers occupied 376 camp beds, meaning that it was normal for two workers to share a bed.35 The report by the Institute of Social Reforms shows that the problem still existed in 1904: ‘Each bed is always occupied by two workers and according to reports from certain workers, when one of them gets ill, he is not moved’.36 The data collected by Pilar Pérez Fuentes bears witness to the fact that there was also considerable overcrowding in family houses as a result of taking in lodgers.37 According to health reports of the time, sanitary conditions in the working-class slums were very poor.38 However, the situation began to improve at the beginning of the twentieth century thanks to the greater involvement of the town councils, which made investments in order to provide water pipes, a sewage system, public washing places and refuse collection.39 Changes in the mortality rate in the industrial and rural areas of Biscaye are shown in Table 10.2.

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Table 10.2 Gross Mortalitly Rates in Industrial and Rural Areas of Biscaye, 1860–1920 (%) Year 1860 1877 1887 1900 1920

Urban Areas Baracaldo Sestao 28.7 22.7 39.3 30.5 19.1

31.7 27.9 45 28.9 21.5

Rural Areas Larrabezua Morga 20.3 23.5 23.3 22.9 20.8

27.9 26.2 31 25.6 18

Source: M.E. González Ugarte, ‘Mortalidad e industrialización en el País Vasco, 1860–1930’, Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica, 12:1 (1994), 40.

It can be seen that the mortality rate in the urban areas of Baracaldo and Sestao increased during the industrialisation period (in the 1880s and 1890s) and decreased from the beginning of the following century but still remained higher than in rural areas. González Ugarte has also studied the causes of mortality in industrial and agricultural areas. Her results show that higher rates in the former were related to respiratory diseases and infectious diseases as a result of overcrowding and the lack of public hygiene.40 Arbaiza’s work on Baracaldo comes to the same conclusion. In this district, life expectancy at birth went from 39.7 years in 1877 to 23.4 years in 1890, although the trend was later reversed.41 By working out specific mortality rates for groups of illnesses, the author has distinguished the causes of death. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the high mortality rate was due to infectious diseases transmitted by air and by contaminated water. Later on, state involvement, the teaching of preventative measures by hygienists, in addition to improved nutrition, help to explain the start of the demographic transition.42 The mortality rates calculated by Pilar Pérez Fuentes in the mining areas of Abanto y Ciérvana and San Salvador del Valle (Table 10.3) are even higher than those of Baracaldo and Sestao, which illustrates the fact that the overcrowding and environmental conditions in the slums of Triano were even worse than in industrial areas. Likewise, infectious diseases of the respiratory and digestive systems were the main reasons behind the high mortality rate.43 Despite the fact that the Commission for Social Reforms was established in 1883, state involvement in issues concerning social legislation only came into effect from the beginning of the twentieth century.44 Four laws then improved the miners’ working conditions: the law of 30 January 1900 regarding work accidents; the law of 13 March 1900 regarding the work of women and children; the law of 3 March 1904 regarding Sunday rest and finally the work inspection regulations of 1 March 1906. In addition to improving hygiene and work safety, the first law introduced the principle of ‘professional risk’, which acknowledged disablement due to work accidents and set up a compensation system, even though the quantities were very small. The second law made it illegal for women and children to do certain types of work. It limited the working day of children aged between 10 and 14 years to 6 hours and also recognised women’s right to three weeks’ maternity leave after giving birth without losing their job.45 The law

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authorising Sunday rest increased the miners’ leisure time since until its enactment, they had only been allowed to rest on public holidays, of which there were around sixteen per year. Finally, the creation of local committees for social reform and, later, of work inspection committees allowed workers to report instances of the labour legislation being broken.46 Table 10.3 Gross Mortalitly Rates in Two Mining Areas of Biscaye, 1877–1913 (%) Year

Abanto y Ciérvana

San Salvador del Valle

1877 1887 1900 1910 1913

45.1 63.3 28.8 19.2 –

41.5 50.7 54.7 – 18.9

Source: Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 204.

The information collected so far allows several conclusions to be drawn. Between 1876 and the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a slight increase in miners’ real wages and from 1890 onwards, their working day was reduced from 12 to 10.5 hours. Against that, the distribution of income was not at all equitable. Many workers suffered the abuses of the ‘truck system’. The men had to resort to doing piecework and the women were forced to take in lodgers. There was no legislation to protect workers and the shanty towns where they lived were overcrowded and rife with disease. At the risk of making a value judgement, the modest wage increases and the modest drop in working hours did not compensate for the fact that all other aspect of their standards of living got worse. I am referring here to the increase in the death rate in the mining areas. This pessimistic situation changed as from the turn of the century. Despite the fact that there was no improvement in wages and income distribution and although piecework still had to be done, lodgers had to be taken in and workers still had to do a 10.5 hour day, other factors gave rise to a certain degree of optimism. The ‘truck system’ was abolished. The first social legislation was enacted and mutual aid societies were created.47 Consumption must have improved thanks to cooperatives and company stores and the new environmental conditions of the mining neighbourhoods increased the life expectancy of the miners. If we take the period between 1876 and 1913 as a reference, what happened in the mines of Biscaye does not correspond in the strictest sense to the pessimistic hypothesis (worsening of the working day and all other aspects of the quality of life) or the optimistic hypothesis (rapid and substantial improvements in wages and well-being). Instead, it coincides with the moderately pessimistic hypothesis put forward by Rule: marginal increases in wages which were subsistence wages for a considerable amount of time; an unequal distribution of income and as a result the relative impoverishment of members of the working class with regard to the bourgeoisie and the middle classes; and the fact that it took a long time to achieve improvements in working and environmental conditions which got worse at the beginning of industrialisation.48

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The Standards of Living of Basque Miners, 1913–1936 This third section will present data that bears witness to the fact that there were improvements in miners’ well-being after the First World War. Quoting nominal wages after 1913 is less problematic than during the previous period because information is available from the employers regarding average daily wages during the First World War and because in 1919 a minimum daily wage rate was established (Appendix 10.2 and 10.6). However, it has been impossible to produce an accurate index of the cost of living. I have therefore used a deflator (Appendix 10.2) based on the retail prices of six subsistence items obtained from the Statistical Report of the Town Council of Bilbao.49 The resulting series of real wages appears in Appendix 10.2 and 10.7. There was a considerable rise in nominal daily wages at precisely the same time as the demand for labour plunged due to the sharp fall in the demand for iron ore.50 This can be explained by the fact that the labour market was now a bilateral monopoly. The minimum wage was determined in advance by negotiations between employers and the unions. Negotiating wage 2, the drop in the demand for labour from D1 to D2 does not affect the daily wage, although it does lead to a drop in the number of workers employed (Appendix 10.8). In 1919, the Miners’ section of the Socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) won a historic victory and managed to force employers to set a minimum wage. The agreement also envisaged that wages would increase if the price of subsistence goods increased. One year later, the Mining Association denounced the agreement in an attempt to minimise costs – the prices of iron ore had plummeted in 1921 as a result of the postwar rationalisation crisis and the English coal miners’ strike. The employers intended to abolish the minimum wage and go back to a nine-hour working day. The communists suggested joining forces with the socialists to go on strike, but the UGT opted to negotiate with the Mining Association after the latter declared a lockout. The new agreement reached in 1922 reduced the minimum wage, although it was still the minimum daily wage and no changes were made to the eight-hour working day procured in 1919. The drop in wages caused such commotion among the trade unions that four workers died, among them José Bullejos, the general secretary of the communist trade union. The minimum daily wage went up again in 1924 after various strikes called jointly by socialists and communists as a result of rising food prices. The new agreement was for a period of nine years and stipulated that it could be denounced by either workers or employers if the price of subsistence goods rose or fell by 6 percent. The agreement was valid until 1930. In February of that year, the UGT began negotiations with the Mining Association, arguing that food prices had risen above the stipulated percentage. Three months later, the employers agreed to raise daily wages.51 Thus, the real wage increases shown in Appendix 10.7 were due to the effectiveness of trade union action. Greater class consciousness and the fact that miners were better organised allowed the daily monetary wage to rise above the cost of living. Workers’ spending power only dropped between 1914 and 1917

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as a result of the inflationary gap caused by the war and because, in spite of the strikes held in 1916, the UGT did not manage to raise daily wages at the same rate as the price of subsistence goods. Later on, real wages increased a great deal more than during the period 1876–1913 (an average cumulative rate of 1.84 percent compared to 0.37 percent). The increase in daily wages brought about considerable changes in the distribution of income of the sector, as illustrated in Table 10.4, which shows distribution of the added value during the whole study period and both before and after the existence of the minimum wage. Table 10.4 Distribution of the Added Value of the Mining Industry in Biscaye, 1913–1936 (%) Years 1913–1936 1913–1918 (before the minimum wage) 1919–1936 (after the minimum wage)

Capital Income

Labour Income

35 57 26

65 43 74*

* Such a high percentage corresponds to a period of reduced profits in addition to three major crises in 1921, 1926 – the new coal miners’ strike in England – and in 1929). Source: Escudero*, ‘Valores añadidos’.

Wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in piecework – in fact, trade unions no longer demanded its abolition. The Royal Decree of 3 April 1919 established an eight-hour working day. There was no longer any need to offer board and lodging as a result of the drastic reduction in the number of miners and higher daily wages, factors which also put an end to overcrowding. In 1930, the mortality rate was around eleven to twelve per thousand and life expectancy was approximately 50.3 years due to the fact that the spread of infectious diseases from the first phase of industrialisation had been halted.52 Infectious diseases transmitted by air fell because conditions were less overcrowded, because of preventative measures and because of vaccination. The drop in respiratory diseases was due to improved nutrition and living conditions, whereas the number of diseases caused by contaminated water fell, thanks to continual improvements in the urban infrastructure.53 Finally, between 1919 and 1936 a more ambitious programme of social legislation was enacted (life pensions in the case of work accidents; longer maternity leave in addition to maternity benefit; pension schemes and paid holidays).54 Estimating the miners’ standard of living prior to the First World War involves the problem of weighting the various elements of well-being. This problem does not exist after 1917, as all these aspects improved. In conclusion, it is worth highlighting that what happened in the mining areas after 1919 confirms two general hypotheses regarding changes in workers’ income after the first phase of industrialisation. First, it confirms that wage increases must be linked to both an increase in productivity and the strength of the trade unions. Secondly, it illustrates that limitations in the workings of perfectly competitive labour markets have helped to improve the distribution of income.

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Appendices Appendix 10.1 Real wages of labourers in the mines of Biscaye, 1876–1913 Year

Price of Seven Subsistence Goods (Index Numbers) (1)

1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913

100 98.2 101.7 105.3 105.3 95.5 112.5 108 107.1 110.7 116.9 114.2 117.8 121.4 116 108 105.7 107.1 108.9 103.5 104.4 113.3 113.3 104.4 102.6 102.6 108 107.1 108 108 116.9 112.5 111.6 107.1 106.2 111.6 108 114.2

Nominal Wage in Pesetas (and Index Numbers) (2) 2.5 (100) 2.5 (100) 2.5 (100) 2.5 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.75 (110) 2.87 (114.8) 2.87 (114.8) 2.87 (114.8) 2.87 (114.8) 2.87 (114.8) 3 (120) 3 (120) 3 (120) 3 (120) 3.01 (120.4) 3.10 (124) 3.22 (128.8) 3.20 (128) 3.21 (128.4) 3.31 (132.4) 3.39 (135.6) 3.28 (131.2) 3.25 (130) 3.28 (131.2) 3.32 (132.8) 3.30 (132)

Real Wage (3)

100 101.8 98.3 94.9 104.4 115.1 97.7 101.8 102.7 99.3 94 96.3 93.3 90.6 94.8 101.8 104 107.1 105.4 110.9 110 101.3 106 115 117 117 111.4 115.7 119.2 118.5 109.8 117.6 121.5 122.5 122.4 117.5 122.9 115.5

(1) Index of the cost of living in the mining area: Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 158. (2) The series of nominal wages has been produced from the following sources: Contribución al estudio de la minería en Vizcaya (Archivo Julio Lazurtegui);. Libro de Actas de la Asociación de Patronos Mineros (Archivo del Círculo Minero);

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S. Castillo (ed.), Reformas Sociales. Información oral y escrita publicada de 1889 a 1893, facsimile, Madrid, 1985, vol. 5; Fusi Política obrera; Instituto de Reformas Sociales, ‘Peticiones que las sociedades obreras elevaron al gobierno en el año 1909. Información sobre el trabajo en las minas’, Revista del Trabajo, 21 (1928); Report for the year 1895 on the trade of Bilboa and district (1898); W. Gill, ‘On the Present Position of the Iron Ore Industries of Vizcaya and Santander’, The Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 50 (1896), 36–103; Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida; Sanz, Salillas and Puyol, Informe; and Fernández de Pinedo, ‘Beneficios, salarios y nivel de vida’. These sources do not include information for 1877, 1881, 1886, 1888, 1889 and 1891–1894. As a result, I have filled in these years by extrapolating the closest daily wage. (3) Real wage =

Nominal wage index ! 100 Cost of living index

Appendix 10.2 Real Wages of Labourers in the Mines of Biscaye, 1913–1936 Year

Prices of six subsistence Goods in Bilbao. (Index Numbers) (1)

Nominal Wage in Pesetas (and Index Numbers) (2)

Real Wage (3)

1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936

100 104.4 111 120 128 131 162 171 193 145 151 164 164 169 157 154 164 172 157 153 155 159 145 150

3.25 (100) 3.25 (100) 3.25 (100) 3.57 (109) 3.85 (118) 4.5 (138) 5.5 (169) 6.9 (212) 6.9 (212) 5.85 (180) 5.85 (180) 7 (215) 7 (215) 7 (215) 7 (215) 7 (215) 7 (215) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230) 7.5 (230)

100 95.7 90 90.8 92.1 105.3 104.3 123.9 109.8 124.1 119.2 131 131 127.2 136.9 139.6 131 133.7 146.4 150.3 148.3 144.6 158.6 153.3

(1) Prices of six subsistence goods which were part of the miners’ diet (bread, bacon, chickpeas, beans, potatoes and wine): Archivo Municipal de Bilbao, Boletín Estadístico del Ayuntamiento de Bilbao. (2) Nominal wages: Libros de Actas de la Asociación de Patronos Mineros and Libros de Actas de la Cámara Minera de Vizcaya (both sources are from the Archivo del Círculo Minero).

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(3) Real wage =

Nominal wage index ! 100 Cost of living index

Appendix 10.3–10.8 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1876

1881

1886

1891

1896

1901

Appendix 10.3 Nominal Wages in the Mines of Biscaye (1876–1913)

D2 O1 O2

D1

Wage 2 Wage 1

Q1

Q2

Labour Factor 0 Appendix 10.4 Labour Factor

1906

1911

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140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1876

1881

1886

1891

1896

1901

1906

Appendix 10.5 Real Wages in the Mines of Biscaye (1876–1913)

250

200

150

100

50

0 1913

1918

1923

1928

Appendix 10.6 Nominal Wages in the Mines of Biscaye (1913–1936)

1933

1911

235

The Standard of Living of Miners in Biscaye, 1876–1936

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1913

1918

1923

1928

1933

Appendix 10.7 Real Wages in the Mines of Biscaye (1913–1936)

D1 D2

Wage 2 Wage 1

Q2

Q1

Labour Factor 0 Appendix 10.8 Labour factor

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Notes 1. It goes without saying that there are objections to the use of this value as an indicator of wellbeing. For example: income makes an assessment in terms of prices and these are not always determined in conditions of perfect competition. Neither does it take into account activities such as the work of housewives or the black economy. On the other hand, it takes into account items which do not affect well-being, such as expenditure on defence or inefficient bureaucracy, yet it does not include others which increase well-being, such as environment or artistic patrimony. Finally, variations in exchange rates make it difficult to make comparisons between different countries. See the now classic works of W. Nordhaus and J. Tobin, ‘Is Growth Obsolete?’, Fifteenth Anniversary Colloquium V, New York, 1972; and G. Myrdal, ‘Contribución a una teoría más realista del crecimiento y el desarrollo económico’, Trimestre Económico, 161 (1974), 217–229. 2. Nordhaus and Tobin, ‘Is Growth Obsolete?’; and P.A. Samuelson, Economía, Madrid, 1980, 208–10. 3. This hypothesis is based on the fact that, given the diminishing marginal utility of money, the added utility is greater when there is greater distributive equity. A.K. Sen, ‘Informational Bases of Alternative Welfare Approaches: Aggregation And Income Distribution’, Journal of Public Economics, 3:4 (1974), 387–403; and J. Kakwani, ‘Welfare Measures. An International Comparison’, Journal of Development Economics, 8:1 (1981), 21–45. 4. J.E. Stiglitz, Economía, Barcelona, 1993, 730. 5. Considering the size of the bibliography on the subject, I shall limit myself to quoting seven publications which summarise the most important contributions: B. Inglis, Poverty and the Industrial Revolution, London, 1972; A. Taylor (ed.), El nivel de vida en Gran Bretaña durante la Revolución Industrial, Madrid, 1986 [1975]; P.K. O’Brien and S.L. Engerman, ‘Changes in Income and its Distribution’, in R. Floud and D.N. McCloskey (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. I, Cambridge, 1981, 161–81; J.G. Williamson, Did British Capitalism Breed Inequality?, Boston, 1985; J. Mokyr, ‘La Revolución Industrial y la Nueva Historia Económica’, Revista de Historia Económica, 2–3 (1987), 203–244 and 441–482; J. Rule, Clase obrera e industrialización, Barcelona, 1990; and J. Fontana, ‘Nivel de vida, calidad de vida: un intento de estado de la cuestión y algunas reflexiones’, in XV Simposio de Análisis Económico, Barcelona, 1990, vol. I, 1–26. 6. Although the lugubrious tone of the first pessimists and the cheerful tone of the first optimists have gradually disappeared, even today the language still denotes a certain degree of subjectivity. Thus, while a modern-day pessimist would refer to the ‘environmental horrors’ of working-class neighbourhoods (Rule, Clase obrera, 132), a modern-day optimist would speak of the ‘inconveniences of urban life’ (J. Mokyr, The Lever of the Riches, Oxford, 1990, 479). 7. The collective work edited by Scholliers on European salaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries confirms this: P. Scholliers (ed.), Real Wages in 19th and 20th Century Europe. Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Oxford, 1989. 8. In this respect, it is worth quoting the objections which T.S. Ashton (‘El nivel de los trabajadores ingleses, 1790–1830’, in Taylor, El nivel de vida, 93–113), made about the deflators used by Clapham, Gilboy and Tucker or the various results obtained by Feinstein, Lindert, Williamson and Crafts in their estimates of real incomes using various weightings in the price index: C.H. Feinstein, ‘Capital accumulation and the industrial revolution’, in Floud and McCloskey, The Economic History, vol. I, 128–42; P.H. Lindert and J.G. Williamson, ‘English Workers’ Living Standards during the Industrial Revolution: A New Look’, Economic History Review, 36:1 (1983), 1–25; and N.F.R. Crafts, ‘British Economic Growth, 1700–1831: A Review of the Evidence’, Economic History Review, 36 (1983), 177–99. 9. In this respect, bear in mind the criticism made by Perkin about Hartwell’s optimism (H.J. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880, London, 1979; and R.M. Hartwell, ‘The Rising Standard of Living in England, 1800–1850’. Economic History Review, 13:3 (1961), 397–416). The latter began his calculations of real salaries in 1750, a

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year of extremely high prices, and finished in 1850, a year of low prices. It is well-known that Flynn attempted to solve the problem by balancing the uneven years by means of mobile averages which produced fortnightly trends between 1750 and 1850, but there have been strong objections to his results from Tuzelmann and more mild objections from Lindert and Williamson. M.W. Flynn, ‘Trends and Real Wages, 1750–1850’, Economic History Review, 27:3 (1974), 395–413; G.N. Von Tunzelmann, ‘Trends in Real Wages, 1750–1850, Revisited’, Economic History Review, 32:1 (1979), 33–49; and P.H. Lindert and J.G. Williamson, ‘English Workers’ Living Standards’. 10. Many years ago, Tucker created a salary index of four professions in London, maintaining that this was valid for all craftsmen of the city: R.S. Tucker, ‘Los salarios reales de los artesanos de Londres, 1729–1935’, in Taylor, El nivel de vida, 77–91. One only has to read what has later been written about unemployment, temporary work and piecework carried out by workers at home to call this generalisation into question: see, for example, P. Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, London, 1969, or E.P. Thompson, La formación histórica de la clase obrera. Inglaterra (1780–1832), Barcelona, 1977. Using series of living costs from three British cities and a sample of salaries, Ashton maintained that the standards of living of qualified workers improved while those of unqualified workers got worse, adding that the first group was bigger than the second (Ashton, ‘El nivel de los trabajadores ingleses’). However, contributions by Hughes, Perkin and Taylor bear witness to the fact that there is not enough information available to take stock of the number of workers who benefited, or their professions: J.R.T. Hughes, ‘Henry Mayhew’s London’, Journal of Economic History, 29:3 (1969), 526–36; Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society; and A. Taylor, ‘Introducción’, in Taylor, El nivel de vida, 15–56. Lindert and Williamson have estimated that real salaries in England doubled between 1820 and 1850, basing their argument on the idea that the salaries of adult males in full-time work are the best indicators: Lindert and Williamson, ‘English Workers’ Living Standards’. However, Thompson had previously warned that ‘if we only take into consideration the group made up of qualified men who had regular jobs, the controversy over living standards would have been settled a long time ago in favour of the optimists’: Thompson, La formación histórica, 210. Crafts also insisted that there was a wide variety of salaries as a result of the segmentation of the labour market: N.F.R. Crafts, ‘Real Wages, Inequality and Economic Growth in Britain, 1750–1850’, in Scholliers, Real Wages, 75–95. More recently, Feinstein created a new index of English workers’ wages which substantially alters Bowley’s old wage index by incorporating the income of nine groups of craftsmen and employees: C.H. Feinstein, ‘New Estimates of Average Earnings in the United Kingdom, 1880–1913’, Economic History Review, 43:4 (1990), 595–632. There is also controversy over pauperism (see, for example, Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society; and P.H. Lindert and J.G. Williamson, ‘Revising England’s Social Tables, 1688– 1812’, Explorations in Economic History, 19:4 (1982), 385–408). 11. Neale, Barnsby, Gourvish, Horn and Malcolmson tell of the differences in wages and jobs between industrial and agricultural regions and between the countryside and the city: R.S. Neale, ‘El nivel de vida, 1780–1844: un estudio por regiones y por clases’, in Taylor, El nivel de vida, 207–230; T.C. Barnsby, ‘The Standard of Living in the Black Country during the Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 24:2 (1971), 220–39; T.R. Gourvish, ‘The Cost of Living in Glasgow in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 25:1 (1972), 65–80; P. Horn, The Rural World, 1750–1850, London, 1980; and R.W. Malcolmson, Life and Labour in England, 1700–1780, London, 1981. More recently, Crafts, Berg and Hudson have stressed the regional differences in salaries given the segmentation of the labour market: Crafts, ‘Real Wages, Inequality’; and M. Berg and P. Hudson, ‘Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review, 45 (1992), 24–50. 12. Hobsbawm and Hartwell argued over this issue: E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘El nivel de vida británico, 1790–1850’, in Taylor, El nivel de vida, 115–148; and Hartwell, ‘The Rising Standard of Living’. The British New Economic History has reached a certain degree of consensus on increases in the consumption of the working classes after 1814. For example, Feinstein, ‘Capital accumulation’, and Crafts, ‘British Economic Growth’. But some of its members harbour doubts as to whether consumption really increased before 1840 –for example, Mokyr, ‘La Revolución Industrial’–. Chapter 2 of Rule’s book (1990) provides an exhaustive analysis of the bibliography of consumption and concludes with the same pessimistic

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13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

Antonio Escudero impression as Burnett’s classic work: Rule, Clase obrera; and J. Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England, 1815 to the Present Day, Hardmondsworth, 1968. In the 1960s, Deane, Cole and Williams saw the first calculations of per capita income in England: P. Deane and W.A. Cole, British Economic Growth (1688–1959). Trends and Structure, Cambridge, 1962; P. Deane, ‘New Estimates of Gross National Product for the United Kingdom, 1830–1914’, Review of Income and Wealth, 14:2 (1968), 95–112; and J.E. Williams, ‘The British Standard of Living, 1750–1850’, Economic History Review, 19:3 (1966), 581–606. These calculations were questioned by, among others, S. Pollard and D.W. Crossley, The Wealth of Britain, 1085–1966, London, 1968, and by A. Taylor, ‘Introducción’.Even greater controversy surrounded the distribution of wealth. Hartwell maintained the hypothesis of a greater sharing of working wages, whereas Hobsbawm argued that during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, income was less egalitarian given the high rates of saving and investment: Hartwell, ‘The Rising Standard of Living’; and Hobsbawm, ‘El nivel de vida británico’. Deane, Cole and Soltow agreed with the optimists, but Perkin and Kuznets shared the pessimistic view: Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth; L. Soltow, ‘Long Run Changes in British Income Inequality’, Economic History Review, 21:1 (1968), 17–29; Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society; and S. Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure and Spread, New Haven, 1966. Neither have British cliometrics managed to reach an agreement. Williamson and Lindert confirmed the hypothesis of greater inequality: J.G. Williamson, ‘Earnings Inequality in Nineteenth Century Britain’, Journal of Economic History, 40:3 (1980), 457–75; and Lindert and Williamson, ‘Revising England’s Social Tables’. However, O’Brien and Engermann argued that with Deane-Cole’s estimation of 1.2 percent growth of per capita income, there could not have been a worsening of the well-being of 80 percent of the population with lower incomes and thus rejected the idea that deterioration in the distribution of income would affect the debate on standards of living: O’Brien and Engerman, ‘Changes in Income’. New estimates from Crafts and Harley have considerably lowered these growth rates and thus the distribution of wealth is still a relevant factor: N.F.R. Crafts, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution, Oxford, 1985; Crafts, ‘British Economic Growth’; and N.F.R. Crafts and C.K. Harley, ‘Output Growth and the Industrial Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View’, University of Warwick, 1992, mimeograph. One view on the issue on inequality at the start of industrialisation can be found in Y.S. Brenner, H. Kaelble and M. Thomas (eds), Income Distribution in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, 1991; and also in C.K. Harley, ‘Una nueva evaluación macroeconómica de la Revolución Industrial’, Revista de Historia Económica, 2 (1993), 259–303. Harley illustrates the difficulty involved in estimating the distribution of income considering the high degree of regional and class segmentation of the markets. Rule, Clase obrera. For example, J.G. Williamson, ‘Urban Disamenities, Dark Satanic Mills and the British Standard of Living Debate’, Journal of Economic History, 41: 1 (1981), 75–83; and Mokyr, ‘La Revolución Industrial’. Using U.S. and British anthropometric data from 1840–1900, Fogel maintained that wellbeing and stature were not directly related: R.W. Fogel, ‘Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 14:2 (1983), 445–81. However, a more recent study provides data which is extremely pessimistic: R. Floud, K. Watcher and A. Gregory, Height, Health and History. Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980, Cambridge, 1990. Williamson, ‘Urban Disamenities’. K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor. Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900, Cambridge, 1985, 4. Thompson, La formación histórica, vol. II ‘Niveles y experiencias’. A. Escudero, ‘Evolución de los salarios reales en las minas de Vizcaya (1876–1936)’, in XV Simposio de Análisis Económico, vol. II. The series of real wages which I calculated at that time showed a growth rate of 0.54 percent compared to the figure of 0.37 percent obtained by using Pérez Castroviejo’s deflator.

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21. P. Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida en las primeras fases de la industrialización vizcaína, Madrid, 1992, 127–58. 22. The only wages which come directly from Payroll Books are those which Fernández de Pinedo obtained from the archives of Altos Hornos. The sources used are detailed in the footnote to Appendix 10.1. E. Fernández De Pinedo, ‘Beneficios, salarios y nivel de vida obrero en una empresa siderúrgica vasca, Altos Hornos de Vizcaya (1902–1927)’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 1 (1992), 125–53 23. See sections 3.5 and 6.14 of A. Escudero, Minería e industrialización de Vizcaya, Barcelona, 1998. 24. There is a record of the Basque miners’ strikes which includes information on the year, whether they were general or partial, the cause and the end result: see A. Escudero, Expansión y decadencia de la minería vasca (1876–1936), Ph.D. diss., Universidad del País Vasco, 1986, vol. III, 730–45. 25. This was the daily budget (in pesetas) according to Solinis: bread, 0.36; bacon, 0.5; dried beef, 0.30; vegetables, 0.25; potatoes, 0.25; salt and onions, 0.05; cod, 0.25; oil, 0.15; sugar, 0.12; coffee, 0.05; milk, 0.10; cleaning, 0.10; clothing, 0.26; lighting, 0.07; firewood, 0.10; and rent, 0.35. This came to a total of 3.15 pesetas. The figures come from Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 146. 26. It was very common for families to offer board and lodging in mining areas: P. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir en las minas. Estrategias familiares y relaciones de género en la primera industrialización vizcaína (1877–1913), Bilbao, 1993, 254–55. 27. Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 243–45. 28. Physical productivity was on the increase from 1876 until the end of the century. It later fell as a result of the falling returns of the seams. That notwithstanding, monetary productivity did not fall since the prices of the mineral increased substantially between 1896 and 1913. See A. Escudero, ‘Trabajo y capital en la minas de Vizcaya’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 1 (1992), 95–12. 29. The commissioners of the Institute of Social Reform attempted to discover the exact number of obligatory canteens, but the results of their research were extremely varied. Whereas only three contractors acknowledged the fact that they had canteens, the leader of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), the Socialist trade union, said that they were very common: E. Sanz, R. Salillas and J. Puyol, Informe referente a las minas de Vizcaya, Madrid, 1904, 121–24. 30. For a study of those two general strikes, J.P. Fusi, Política obrera en el País Vasco (1880–1923), Madrid, 1975, 120–23 and 234–42). Two Royal Decrees of 11 December 1903 and 18 July 1907 finally succeeded in banning the canteens (Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 235). 31. On the working day, Sanz, Salillas and Puyol, Informe; Asociación de Patronos Mineros de Vizcaya [henceforth cited as APMV], Escrito presentado en la información abierta por RO del Ministerio de la gobernación de 18 de agosto de 1910. Sobre las condiciones en que se presta el trabajo en las minas y reglamentación que convendría establecer en esta clase de explotaciones, Bilbao, 1910; and Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 180–82. 32. Another, less common form of piecework consisted of loading a certain number of wagons and then leaving the mine. In this case, the workers only received their daily wage; Sanz, Salillas and Puyol, Informe, 56–58. 33. The report from the Instituto de Reformas Sociales by Sanz, Salillas and Puyol and that of the Asociación de Patronos Mineros de Vizcaya provide information on many workers’ opposition to the abolition of piecework. In fact the socialist press acknowledged that this demand divided the miners: Sanz, Salillas and Puyol, Informe; APMV, El trabajo en las minas de Vizcaya, Bilbao, 1907; and Fusi, Política obrera, 60–61. 34. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 183–98; and P. Pérez Castroviejo, ‘Aproximación al estudio de la vivienda de los trabajadores mineros vizcaínos’, Áreas, 16 (1994), 177–94. 35. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 188 36. Sanz, Salillas and Puyol, Informe, 101. 37. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 187–95. 38. M. Echevarria, Higienización de Bilbao, Bilbao, 1984.

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39. For the industrial area of the ria, see M. Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares y transición demográfica en Vizcaya (1825–1930), Ph.D. diss., Universidad del País Vasco, 1994, 433–45. For the mining area, see Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 192–95. 40. González Ugarte, ‘Mortalidad e industrialización’, 49–51. 41. Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares, 418. 42. Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares, 424–45. 43. Pérez Fuentes, Vivir y morir, 207–15. 44. On the origins and development of social legislation in Spain, see A. Soto, El trabajo industrial en la España contemporánea, Barcelona, 1989; and M.D. de la Calle, La Comisión de Reformas Sociales (1883–1903). Política social y conflicto de intereses en la España de la Restauración, Madrid, 1989. 45. In Biscaye, only a small number of children and women were employed since the work required considerable physical strength – breaking up huge blocks with sledgehammers and then transporting the pieces in containers. 95 percent of the workers were males over the age of 18 years. Three percent were adolescents aged between 14 and 18 years who did the separating and sorting and two percent were women: Escudero, Minería e industrialización, section 6.10. 46. On the work done by these committees in the mining areas of Biscaye, see Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 295–315. With regard to work inspections, see J. Bernabeu, E. Perdiguero and P. Zaragoza, ‘Medicina del trabajo en España. Aspectos normativos: de la Inspección a la Inspección Médica del trabajo (1906–1935)’, in R. Huertas and R. Campos (eds), Medicina Social y clase obrera en España (siglos XIX y XX), Madrid, 1992, 295–320. 47. With regard to these organisations, see Pérez Castroviejo, Clase obrera y niveles de vida, 246 and 258. 48. Rule, Clase obrera, 49–50. 49. The six products were part of the miners’ daily diet: bread, bacon, chickpeas, beans and wine. The report (Boletín Estadístico del Ayuntamiento de Bilbao) is from the Archivo Municipal de Bilbao. 50. The demand for iron ore fell after the First World War as a result of the excess of a substitute – scrap metal – which could be used in Siemens-Martin furnaces: Escudero, Minería e industrialización, chapter 5. The drop in demand dragged the demand for labour down with it – in 1913, the sector employed 11,918 workers, whereas between 1919 and 1936, an average of only 5,166 workers were employed. 51. For a more detailed study of union conflicts between 1919 and 1936: Escudero, Expansión y decadencia, vol. II, 720–40. 52. The mortality rates can be found in González Ugarte, ‘Mortalidad e industrialización’, 40. Life expectancy in Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares, 418. 53. Arbaiza, Estrategias familiares, 443–45, has contrasted the role of each group of diseases in the drop in the mortality rate in industrial and mining areas. 54. Escudero, Expansión y decadencia, vol. III, 728–35; and Soto, El trabajo industrial.

CHAPTER 11

REPUBLICANS, SOCIALISTS AND ANARCHISTS WHAT REVOLUTION WAS THAT? Javier Paniagua

The Term Revolution There was a time when people believed in revolutionary transformations. They thought that the order of things was going to change radically, that new political and social structures would come into being and that even human behaviour would change; all this to make way for new values, social models and systems of production. For a while, the students of 1968 in the United States, France, Germany and other European countries tried to change the world (‘Let’s have a revolution’ read the slogans on the walls of the Sorbonne). Many historians and political scientists have asked whether the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the transformations that the democratic republics of Eastern Europe underwent could be referred to as revolutions. Were they revolutions in the same sense as the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution of 1917? The term revolution is never free of ambiguities and it has many different meanings. It is not the same to refer to the Industrial Revolution or the Scientific Revolution as it is to speak of the bourgeois or liberal revolutions, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution or the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The noun is almost always preceded by an adjective in order to qualify it, to differentiate it and to make it unique. Hence we find that a single definition of what constitutes a revolution is always unsatisfactory, even though political scientists have striven to do just that by searching for similarities between very different processes.1 As

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Hobsbawm pointed out, the definitions are not based on reality and they tend to establish a belief in a universal type of revolution. They are so broad that they hardly ever offer any solution when a specific case is under scrutiny. An example of this is Zagorin’s proposal that a revolution uses violence as a means to achieve a specific set of goals, which makes it difficult to distinguish the Mexican Revolution from the 1973 military coup in Chile. There are descriptive definitions such as that proposed by Griewank (1973). He pointed out that all revolutions are characterised by (a) a sudden violent process; (b) a social content that is defended by specific social groups and which leads to a mass movement; and (c) an ideology with a programme. All this culminates in a process that redistributes power from certain social sectors to others.2 Historians have chosen a more practical approach which consists of studying the processes of the ‘great revolutions’ and their periods without making comparisons that are as incomplete as they are unconvincing. However, that also leads to the frustration of not being able to make more general observations, of not being able to provide more general, wide-ranging answers. The whole question becomes more complex if we use the expression ‘historical crisis’, as we do in the cases of the general crisis of feudalism or the seventeenth Century crisis. Here, this refers to a lengthy process characterised by changes and disagreements in a specific system of production which led to particular political and cultural situations which heralded imminent changes. It is thus essential to refer to conditions prior to the revolution when undertaking any analysis. In fact, belonging to a common system can result in conflicts whose only common element is their rejection of that system, but whose causes and consequences tend to be very different. La Fronda, the socalled Catalan, Portuguese and Neapolitan uprisings of 1640, have little in common with the English Revolution but it can be said that there is a general ‘mood’ that presupposes a seventeenth century crisis and encourages us to examine and debate the significance of this crisis in relation to both feudalism and the growth of capitalism. There are also common disruptive elements, a shared sensitivity towards these factors and links between them within a specific system and period. Whether they be the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Socialism and Anarchism, Representative Democracy or Nationalism, they are all woven into a complex fabric that helps us to explain specific cases. From this perspective, we can refer once again to the French, Russian, American or Mexican revolutions. In doing so, we consider the term revolution to mean radical political changes that result in changes in the economic and social systems. These changes aim to alter the relations of power and not merely change the ruling elite. Henceforth, we can leave aside the evolutionary concept of revolution, as in industrial or scientific revolutions, since these refer to a different type of change.

Spanish Revolutionary Movements’ Perceptions of ‘Revolution’ We can now proceed to establish how the Spanish revolutionary movements perceived revolution, or to be more precise, how the various groups and

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sections of society – assembled around the rallying positions of republicans, socialists and anarchists respectively – undertook to change the political and social system of Spain between 1837 and 1939. It is the period encompassing the full consolidation of the bourgeois revolution in Spain and the process towards democracy that was instigated by republicans or others who were clearly committed to social change – socialists or anarchists. The approach of this chapter is not so much a study or theoretical rendition of what actions they took or what questions they resolved, or indeed an attempt to establish what means they had at their disposal (there is already an extensive bibliography on this), but to understand their concept of revolution and how they thought they were going to bring it about, what their intellectual rationale for a revolutionary process was, and to what extent we can interpret their revolutionary beliefs today. Republicans The term republican is too broad for it to be encapsulated in a single entity. There are many forms of republicanism each with their own republican leaders that give rise to a wide range of organisations and groups that often fiercely compete with each other while they have nothing in common except their name. This was true of the eleven months that the First Republic lasted (1873–1874) or the heated conflicts between Lerrouxists (followers of the firebrand populist Alejandro Lerroux) and Azañists (followers of the exquisite intellectual Manuel Azaña) during the Second Republic (1931–1939). The history of republicanism is a history of splintering, of permanent division on ideological issues, of a lack of convergence of strategies and on the analysis of events. As J.A. Piqueras wrote: ‘I think I have fathomed the Spanish republicans of the 1800s in that, attempting to explain the adherence of a certain sector of the Spanish population to republicanism, we look at historical fact rather than grand political theory’.3 When we look at republicanism in Spain, and once we have analysed the events, the achievements and the many miseries, we need to identify its common theoretical ground beyond the obvious one of a president replacing a monarch, claiming popular sovereignty and calling for liberty of expression and assembly. It may well be that after more than a century has elapsed, we fail to perceive the substantial differences between constitutional monarchies and republican regimes. It was not the case in the middle of the nineteenth century when the monarch was seen as a product of the past that had had no choice but to adapt to the new situation based on a doctrinaire kind of liberalism. It was a liberalism elaborated by classes that had instigated the socalled bourgeois revolution, at times transforming themselves from feudal lords of the manor to nineteenth century bourgeois. By keeping some of the Ancien Régime’s values intertwined with a sort of liberalism, these classes ensured their social hegemony in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In spite of substantial internal dissension, republicanism meant a radical break with the Ancien Régime, a fervent desire to consolidate the ideals of democratic liberalism without transactions. In short, it represented a break with the past where the value of citizenship and popular sovereignty accounted

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for the belief of certain social sectors in the myth that the people themselves held the key to all changes. The people, synonymous with citizens, consisted of all the productive sectors, all those who performed labour, who contributed with their work to the nation’s wealth. The array of citizens ranged from craft workers, traders, professionals, civil servants, intellectuals, factory workers down to the dispossessed peasants, victimised by speculation following the disentitlement of the land – in short, all those who depended on their work for their livelihood and expected that political structures would act not as barriers to but as facilitators of their aspirations. J.A. Piqueras affirms that ‘generally speaking, republicanism has been an option for the popular classes and sectors of middle-class professionals, traders, employees and even farmers in some areas’.4 These sectors perceived the continuation of the monarchy as hindering progress, a formula that upheld the power that many had inherited from the Ancien Régime. The Republic was definitely a reckoning with the past. This idea was clearly expressed by Sixto Cámara: ‘Kings no longer rule, nor do ministers, nor nations; it’s the big industrialists and speculators who govern [and] although they may be men of courage and certain merits, they do not differ from the old aristocracy but for the fact that the latter displays its titles of nobility and the former Treasury bonds and banknotes’.5 The republican federalism of Pi i Margall, the translator of Proudhon in Spain, would take the social question further than most other republican tendencies: ‘The same mission of the other liberal parties has still not concluded, nor is it perfect. Not long ago, Mr Olózaga was addressing us in Parliament in relation to an innocuous inequality resulting from the laws of feudal entitlement. The sale of Church and public lands has not concluded. The conditions thereof, which are completely unacceptable for the democratic party, can and must be changed’.6 It was normal to expect that all those sectors that were neither political nor social players during the reign of Isabel II (1863–1868) were to see republicanism as a vehicle of expression for their demands, which reached their climax in the revolution of 1868. The mainstream liberalism of moderates and progressives was compelled to identify democracy with a free market of ideas and beliefs. In practice, however, the thrust of the liberal revolution in Spain was watered down by a number of factors. There have always been political restrictions that included the legal limits to freedom of press, the control of local administrations and an electoral body limited to the wealthiest and most educated citizens. The Constitution of 1845 is a document that clearly reflects the political ideology of the neoconservative moderates. The existence of two Institutions, the Monarchy and Las Cortes (parliament), was justified on historical grounds in the constitution’s preamble for they ‘regulate, in consonance with the present needs of the State, the old rights and privileges [fueros] of the kingdoms’. By using the principle of shared sovereignty, any mention of national sovereignty was omitted. As Díez del Corral points out, ‘the term moderate, more than expressing content, expresses negation’7 of all that represents fully-fledged democracy. One way or another, the so-called progressive liberals were to be co-opted by the system. The historian Comellas writes ‘the generation of 1845 is one of convergence that aims to close the breach opened up by the

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Revolution – or believes it to be already closed. There is much boasting about overcoming the injustices and arbitrariness of the Ancien Régime and the violence and excesses of the Revolution’.8 However, he goes on to say that: ‘progressivism is therefore the counter-balance, the element of contrast, or even – from a moderate point of view – a burden and a hindrance’.9 In fact, the evolution of the Democratic Party between 1849 and 1868 was an alternative to the old progressivism that was losing its signs of identity, in particular after the European revolutions of 1848, yet republicanism would nevertheless go beyond its political and social agenda. As Piqueras points out, ‘[u]ndefined democrats were the bed-fellows of declared republicans for decades’.10 Progressivism had opened up channels for active democratic participation that enjoyed a period of expansion before being put down under the Espartero Regency. The ‘Copy Of The Organic Statutes and the Provisional Regulations of the Confederation of Spanish Regenerators’, found by Eiras Roel, who considers that it dates from 1842, had as its basic objective ‘to uphold, above all else, the Sovereignty of the People and liberty’.11 This statement affords us a good impression of the inherently defensive posture taken on by the Progressive Party under Espartero. Antiradicalism was also one of the central themes of the Statutes. ‘The Confederation should, by drawing upon more humane and liberal principles, replace – though not totally remove – the swarm of religious brotherhoods that, supposedly as institutions that offer relief in the wake of human miseries, enslave the popular classes by instilling superstitious fears and fanaticism’.12 There was indeed a process that would make republicanism the result of so much frustration. Liberals, progressives, democrats and republicans all took their turn at defending the possibility of bringing about a fully-fledged democracy in Spain. This movement would be further complicated by the adoption of federalism and nationalism by the Catalan Left, all occurring in a heavily centralised country. The popular classes, which for one reason or another turned to republicanism,13 became the only reference point for the removal of all the social and political impediments that excluded them from political decision-making processes. Their opportunity came in the First and Second Republics but ended in frustration as they came up against the barriers of a political system propped up by the military, the ideology of the Spanish Church and financial/business sectors. The others had no option but to break down the barriers, since they were never allowed to become part of a liberalism which was becoming more dogmatic and exercised more control over the means of political participation. As Duarte rightfully affirms ‘Spanish democratic culture of the Nineteenth Century is usually presented, even today, as a global project but with a gaping lack of basic elements that in turn were barely effective’. In fact, however, ‘this kind of analysis tends to overlook the fact that democratic republicanism, like any other political culture, proved to be a differentiated ambit of coexistence’.14 We know that bourgeois revolution and liberal democracy are not exactly the same; nor do they necessarily have to occur at the same time, yet they cannot be explained independently. The inherent dynamics of productive

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forces and the appearance of new social sectors condition not only economic growth but also a political opening-up which republicans embodied. In spite of the substantial number of contradictions throughout the history of republicanism, it nevertheless offered an alternative interpretation of liberalism to prevent it from becoming an empty political formula. Theoretically speaking, liberal democracy is basically a process and in Spain, this was often perverted before any formal proposals had a chance to germinate. Republicans tried to fill the concept of democracy with popular myths, ideas about national sovereignty, laicism and social legislation. As a last resort, they tried to accomplish the liberal revolution by transforming the system and vindicating the role of the citizen instead of the subject; the republicans sought to empower those that, through lack of economic resources and education, had no political voice, and from here both anarchism and socialism emerged. Even Castelar, who represented right-wing republicanism, in one of his flowery speeches in Alzira in October 1880 while summing up the failure of cantonalism (the movement for local autonomy that ended in chaos) which led to the downfall of the First Republic, stated that: ‘democracy cannot influence, democracy cannot prevail, democracy cannot govern as long as it fails to bring together natural law and the principles of universal suffrage, freedom and its organisations, progress and its sovereign impulses, the jury system and its practices, the modern spirit and its institutions’.15 If we were to compare the republicans of the First and Second Republics, we would come across differing discourses (let us contrast Castelar, Salmerón, Pi i Margall and Fernando Garrido with Lerroux, Rodrigo Soriano and Azaña). The failure of the First was to leave its mark on a whole generation, but its ideals and strategies continued to be valid: free lay education, taxation reform, universal suffrage, a Constitution with a single-house Parliament, freedom of trade and industry and freedom of association. Both groups of republicans shared a populist impulse that sought to incorporate the issue of people’s sovereignty as a fundamental category. As Piqueras has pointed out, if republicanism up to 1874 was the product of the defence of democratic aspects of the bourgeois revolution that had been suppressed by the Bourbon monarchy, it was to continue with this defensive role during the Restoration and their mission was supposedly to be completed with the enactment of the 1931 republican constitution. Surprisingly, it was Azaña, in one of his first parliamentary debates, who was to respond to the criticism of Rodrigo Soriano, a key republican figure, in relation to the presence of a monarchist in the position of Under-Secretary in the War Ministry. If the General Under-Secretary has been a monarchist, I do not know. It could well be true. Well, what about it? Does Sr Soriano really think that it is a crime or that we will punish so many officers, generals and even the modest classes because they have served the monarchy? […] when people prove with their conduct that they loyally serve a regime which employs them; it is a duty expected of every man and of myself in this particular case, […] to declare so publicly.16

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Above any difference of opinion, there was loyalty and respect to the legislation in force, for the ‘republican revolution’ could not fall into the same petty despotism that it had long denounced within the monarchist parties. Citizens’ virtue and responsibility prevail over favouritism. We are clearly dealing with a conservative strand of republicanism and another more socially oriented strand that is more readily inclined, along with the federalists, to regard social issues as a basic factor in the triumph of the republic. It was, as John Rawls has expressed in current terms, the defence of a set of minimum conditions of social justice necessary for the participation of rational beings in the context of participatory citizenship.17 As has already been stated, there is a lack of consensus regarding the notions of equality and liberty in the tradition of republican (in other words democratic) thought. Nonetheless, their understanding of the political arena in contemporary Spain contrasts with moderate and progressive liberals’ willingness to reach agreements. Republicanism is the product of nineteenth Century transformations which began with the Constitution of Cádiz (1812), with the bourgeois revolution, and which came to an end, in certain regards, with the Constitution of 1978 as the culmination of a plural and lay state where the freedom of thought and speech is, in principle, guaranteed. Those basic democratic principles were considered revolutionary in the early 1930s. As Jiménez de Asúa stated in his book, which voiced support for those convicted for the ant-monarchical uprising of December 1930: ‘those responsible for the crime are not those that have been sentenced but the forces that represent a reactionary minority that have cut the throat of sacred Spanish insurgency’.18 Jiménez de Asúa’s was the discourse of the urban classes which grew throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, and in particular after 1900. It corresponded to the slow and steady development of an industrial revolution that was to transform class relations; these relations were legally consolidated between 1812 and 1837. Stated in classical terms, there was no superstructure which was out of step with the reality of the productive forces of the time. The republican revolution constituted the expression of the democratic forces that capitalism had engendered. At several times, it held together many popular positions that were integrated into the political demands that were made, while empowering the citizen to change the status quo. To a large extent, the revolutionary populism of the republicans represented an attempt by sectors distanced from the big economic and political decisionmaking processes to have a say in the rebalancing of power. Some would call this modernisation; others simply see it as a question of contradictions of class, or of sectors of these classes, which Republicanism brought together over and above interests which were sometimes opposed to one another but which in certain historic circumstances were considered of the utmost importance to continue ‘until the final struggle’, as socialists and anarchists believed.19 Socialists Ever since the First International, socialists insisted on offering an alternative to republicanism. They saw themselves as the true future, the representation of the working class that Marx had theorised. It was the start of a new era that was to

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finish with the contradictions of capitalism and would culminate in the socialist revolution and the abolition of the class system. The growth of the organisation was slow, however, and membership was very low for the party (PSOE) and the union (UGT), if compared to Germany, Italy and France. They took longer than other social-democratic parties to enter Parliament and their isolation disadvantaged them in the Spanish political arena for quite some time. In this sense, the role of the founder, Pablo Iglesias, was crucial in designing their strategy, though it did not mean that the socialists did not intervene to oppose the Cuban War or the Montjuich trials against the anarchists. They were convinced that proceeding without partners was the way towards working-class hegemony. They were confident that one-day, oppression and exploitation would be triumphantly overcome. In the meantime, it was imperative to strengthen the organisation and allow it to grow, since they already had Marx’s theories, albeit by way of Guesde’s style of French socialism. As far as the socialists were concerned, the republicans were, as a political force, a thing of the past as they had failed to accomplish their programme due to lack of social support and deep internal, structural and ideological divisions. The socialists had also adopted a great deal of liberal republican content – secular society, public education, freedom of expression, universal suffrage without restrictions etc. – but their objectives were social equality and the end of the class struggle through the abolition of private property and the socialisation of the means of production. Everything that might diverge from these aims would delay the emancipation of the working class. There were nevertheless calls from certain sectors in favour of ‘cooperation with other advanced parties within the bourgeois camp’ as expressed at the Fifth Congress of the PSOE in 1899. Everything was nevertheless kept under the control of Iglesias, who in 1902 was still refusing the request of the Castellón branch for greater autonomy to formulate pacts with republicans. The republican parties were part of a political system that both Internationals had denounced as perverse and deceptive and contributing nothing to the proletarian cause; this was the position adopted by Iglesias in spite of disagreement from within the party. During the reign of Alfonso XIII (1902–1931), things slowly began to change, either because the old style of republicanism had become well and truly defunct and a new generation was making a fresh attempt to unify all the tendencies, or because some socialists could not see a way of overcoming the PSOE’s political exclusion. On 3 March 1903, the National Assembly of republican groups held in Madrid seemed set to resolve the question of unity by overcoming secular divisions and hence paving the way for democratic reforms, but it was not to be. Iglesias stood his ground against other key leaders such as Morato or García Quejigo, director of the journal Nueva Era. For Pablo Iglesias, socialism and its trade union, the UGT, were growing slowly but convincingly without having to resort to any shoddy pacts. In reality, militant groups were not stable enough and there were not enough of them to effectively intervene in social and political processes. By 1906, there was a rebellion of the Bilbao Grouping that accepted by majority the idea of coalition for joint candidatures in the 1907 provincial elections. Part of the

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Madrid Grouping felt that rejecting any alliance would do more harm than good to the organisation. Vicente Barrio, the General Secretary of the UGT in 1907, also expressed his support for collaboration as it afforded the possibility of opening up the party to other sectors. The opportunity came with the conservative Maura government. The liberals in the Cortes had lost ground and the republicans were once again divided and threatened by aggressive conservative policy. Firstly, there was rapprochement between liberals and conservatives – especially the collaborationist camp of Melquiades Alvarez – and later between these two and the socialists. The Eighth Congress of the PSOE in 1908 still made it impossible to form alliances in any kinds of elections and in early 1909, Iglesias was still stating in Madrid’s Casa del Pueblo, that ‘the republicans, undermined by personal ambitions, like the monarchists, think more about occupying positions than about ideas’.20 The socialists could not agree to a truce in the class war. Things were soon to change: The Moroccan War, the Tragic Week of 1909, the rejection of monetary payments in lieu of military service – all served, at least in part, to bring about a change of strategy. Democratic principles were now in jeopardy and there were reminiscences of the 1899 Congress which held that alliances with other forces were admissible in order to ward off a reactionary triumph. This situation was made public on 9 November 1909, when Iglesias met with the main representatives of the various republican groups. It signalled the end of the isolation of the PSOE and modified its theoretical and ideological debates on the role of socialism in Spanish politics. A revolution was required, but before that could happen, what many socialists referred to as the bourgeois revolution needed to be settled once and for all in Spain. The elimination of the monarchy was seen as requisite for the success of the socialist revolution. We could well take stock of Antonio Zozaya’s view: It is axiomatic and evident that when a political structure represents a whole system of negation, its personal nature contradicts the conclusions of science; it assigns a functional role to the state as we see all the way from Bagehot to Gneist. When this structure clings to tradition as its only base, its very disappearance is no longer a question of form but an enormous need demanded by civilisation and progress. This is what is happening with the Monarchy.21

Hence the socialists became republicans, though for some it was accidental, in a move to attain democracy. Not all the parties were the same and it was impossible to reduce the debate to the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat. The socialist revolution had no hope of taking place without minimal conditions of political liberty and social legislation. As Rodrigo Soriano was to affirm at a meeting in Valladolid in March 1910, what applied to Pérez Galdós could also apply to ‘Pablo Iglesias, in terms of intelligence, integrity, work and perseverance’. They were indeed ‘industrious men called to bear the weight of our great mission that has already begun […] in the great republican-socialist coalition’.22 The party timidly opened itself to

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sectors that had, until then, remained outside: Besteiro, Álvarez del Vayo, Núñez Arenas and Pérez Solís all approached the PSOE; as disciples of the philosopher-pedagogue Krauss, they saw the party as an instrument of political activity and a means of educating the working masses. Things were not going to be easy as the debate over republican collaboration gave rise to controversy within Spanish socialism over what the revolutionary process for a fully socialist society should be. This debate became evident in the Second Republic with Prieto and Caballero’s different views on the roles to be taken with regard to the elimination of capitalism. It was precisely that issue that was in contention during the 1930s: the paradigm was that capitalism was bankrupt and that socialism would inevitably take over. There would be no alternatives; the problem was determining what the best strategy was for the establishment of a state that would allow socialists to carry out their revolutionary transformations. It entailed two options: collaborate with left-wing republicans to undertake a minimal programme that would also be supported by non socialist sectors; or, on the other hand, support the alliance with other revolutionary workers’ groups that would make a decisive frontal attack to bring down capitalism. The Russian Revolution was, without a doubt, a reference point which, although there was no desire to imitate it, provided guidelines aimed at bringing peasants and factory workers/craft workers together without resorting to pacts with the bourgeois parties. After 1912, in the wake of the broken Conjunción or Socialist-republican alliance, things were not going to be the same. In principle, all the socialist leaders felt that a change of regime was essential for workers’ interests and that the working class should rally to support any action leading to the establishment of a Republic so that the republican parties could conclude their revolution. It was quite another matter to collaborate in coalition governments as Prieto proposed in the Second Republic (1931–1939), a posture that was initially supported by Caballero, or to leave everything to the republican parties, as Besteiro proposed. It was not going to be easy for the socialists to determine what the best way towards revolution would be, above all, in the aftermath of the crisis of 1917, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the proclamation of the Second Republic. The party had been vulnerable, mainly due to the involvement of non worker sectors, and the UGT attempted to become the main backbone of socialism. Caballero sought to differentiate one organisation from the other, yet in practice they had evolved as a pair, like a tree-trunk with two enormous branches. In many quarters, belonging to the UGT meant being a socialist and vice-versa. It was in fact a fight for hegemony that was to last until the onset of the Civil War. After the failed 1917 general strike, politics was regarded by socialists as perverse and corrupt in the hands of those who were supposed to be the allies of socialism, the republicans, and in this respect they shared the same opinion as the anarchosyndicalists. The working class lost many key figures due to deaths and repression and still no change had been brought about to the system. From that point onwards, an overall lack of faith in bourgeois politics became endemic. At the Ninth Congress in 1918, the socialists contemplated

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the possibility of participating in the national government and by a narrow margin, it was decided that there would be ‘no collaboration under any circumstances whatsoever with a bourgeois government’. It seemed preferable to continue with the anarchosyndicalist alliance, in spite of ideological differences and differences in trade-union strategies. In the end, it was the whole of the working class and landless peasants or casual workers who, joined together in trade union movements, would take control and set up a new order to replace capitalism, although this process need not necessarily involve violence. For Prieto, however, his collaboration with Azaña was not accidental, as had been the case with Caballero and other PSOE leaders, and neither was it brought about by temporary circumstances. Instead, it formed part of the same project that the socialists would continue to develop more deeply over time so that socialism was the natural result of having introduced democracy and the reforms necessary to lessen social injustice. At the three extraordinary congresses held between 1920 and 1921, the PSOE went through a crisis coinciding with the birth of the Third International and the debate about the role it should take in relation to the communist revolution in Russia. The main leaders resolved to distance themselves from a revolution which originated in conditions which were very different to those in Spain. They believed that the most important thing was to worry about Spanish workers in order to create the conditions which would lead to socialism. Just as Arranz chronicled, Besteiro affirmed that ‘looking at the Russian steppes without seeing what is happening in the cities of Castile, Extremadura and Andalusia […] is pure demagogy, easily able to attract an enthusiastic following and maybe even useless sacrifices, all inevitably followed by scepticism’.23 Largo Caballero, according to the interpretation given by Santos Juliá, did not differentiate between evolution and revolution since he perceived both as ‘daily labour, which is ceaseless, intelligent, serene, firm and energetic’.24 It was therefore perceived to be of primary importance to strengthen workers’ organisations, above all the UGT, by making use of all legal means at their disposal. Nevertheless, Santos Julía also admits that once a series of historic conditions had been met, Caballero clearly championed a violent proletarian revolution as opposed to a peaceful one. Before Primo de Rivera’s coup d’état in September 1923, Besteiro had written that ‘the qualities of tenacity, heroism and sheer commitment are not in themselves sufficient in facing the problems of the proletariat, which require an urgent solution. Today, without knowledge, skills and powerful technical and intellectual resources, the best-orientated worker’s organisation would, if not disappear altogether, not be able to develop any further’.25 It was a position in line with what in late nineteenth century Germany was called ‘academic socialism’, but Besteiro was to go a step further by being fully involved both in the party and in the UGT. However, small differences were to take on considerable importance. Caballero’s syndicalists considered that inevitably the moment would come when the reactionary forces would block the progress of socialism and in response the working class, standing alone, would have to resort to violence.

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There were two ways of understanding socialism (because small differences became considerable differences), two ways of understanding the revolution, two ways of interpreting social changes. This duality would in one sense or another reappear in Spain’s transition to democracy after 1975, although the times were different and the revolutionary paradigm was not hegemonic. Anarchists and Others What can be said of the anarchists, anarchosyndicalists, communists and libertarian socialists that were so influential between 1880 and 1939? Under different names but with common roots, they understood revolution to be something entirely different. Political power was not one of their revolutionary objectives, in fact it was an insurmountable obstacle. Either the revolution would do away with the State or there would be no revolution at all. Anarchism took root in Spain from the time of the First International and fostered a syndical organisation that had to compete with the UGT. The latter had already been in existence for two decades, but it had did not managed to unite the whole of the working-class, which had remained divided ever since its beginnings. Between 1888 (the year of the disintegration of the Federation of the Workers of the Spanish Region, the heir to the IWA which had been constituted on 23 September 1881) and 1907, with the setting up of Workers’ Solidarity of Catalonia, anarchism developed amidst propaganda calling for action and attempts to reconstruct internationalist syndicalism. There were a large number of journals, books and brochures that helped construct a libertarian culture, particularly in some Catalan worker circles.26 The anarchists propagated a whole series of ideas that would be difficult to unify under a broad category; diverse influences often made for ready contradiction. In some cases the harmony of nature is the basis of natural goodness in the face of antinatural evil, yet in other cases, such a principle is hotly debated and it is argued that in nature there are also examples of confrontation, catastrophes and the domination of some groups over others. Kropotkin focused on the question in El apoyo mutuo and considered that humans tend to assist each other. It is only when instincts of greed predominate and when humans deny others their rights that despotism and hierarchies arise.27 Reason, science and culture are elements that liberate humankind. Social organisation ought to be based on scientific principles that will establish themselves due to the weight of their own dynamic merit. Anarchy is the only way that humanity can find harmony, and that is the basis for a future society. The social structure must be in consonance with science and revolution is nothing more than the natural path towards social contentment. Capitalist society is antiscientific as it based on the dominance of certain groups over others by establishing a moral rationale of submission and exploitation. Great majorities are denied their basic needs. This posture explains at times the connection of anarchism with naturalism, vegetarianism, freedom of sexuality, hygienism and an overall rejection of conventionalisms. Plays such as An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen were performed at workers’ cultural

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associations because they criticised the conventions and religious morality that fostered submission and rejected free thinking.28 In many regards, the anarchists were closer to the republicans than the socialists were. Both shared a historical vision of the French Revolution and subsequent revolutionary processes that led to the creation of free societies which were betrayed by the bourgeoisie. They had similar anticlerical stances and shared a federalist concept of society that had been propagated by Pi i Margall’s translation of Proudhon. Both groups took part in a wide range of activities, such as Freemasonry and the rationalist teaching movement and they strongly opposed the colonial wars. At the Madrid Congress of 1900, when the Regional Federation of Resistance of the Spanish Region was constituted, representatives of the Lerrouxist strand of republicanism attended. Lerroux himself read the final manifesto and in the early 1900s he kept in contact with sectors of workers in Barcelona that voted him into parliament (1901).29 The republican fraternities provided a certain amount of social cohesion and a channel for the articulation of demands in cities that were undergoing continuous growth. In a similar vein, the novelist Blasco Ibáñez in Valencia attempted to reflect social contradictions in the style of Zola. Workers and federalists maintained a tradition of collaboration from before 1868 and it withstood any attempts by the International leadership to break it. One sector of the IWA supported collaboration with the federalists, although it is true that antipoliticism, above all in memory of the Commune, gained strength and led to the rejection of political parties as a means of achieving their demands. Even so, some collective anarchists such as Llunas, called for greater understanding between republicans and socialists in order to form a wide-ranging revolutionary awareness that would make for progress and abolish reaction.30 Yet as anarchosyndicalism structured itself within the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), libertarian options gained strength as ideas from revolutionary syndicalism came together with the anarchist tradition of Bakuninist and Kropotkinian in the new union. Syndicalism on its own was capable of fighting against the bourgeoisie and constructing a new society, independent from political parties. It rejected the state as unnecessary for future administration as production would be managed by the Syndicalist Federations. The general strike became the fundamental myth in the destruction of the capitalist order. According to Álvarez Junco, partial struggles were conceived as ‘battles that form part of a war […] like steps that can only culminate in social revolution’.31 Specific strikes in a company would have to become strikes involving an industrial federation and that would lead to a general strike. This brand of syndicalism began, in one way or another, to be in open conflict with the UGT. Sindicalists believed in a very flexible and non bureaucratic organisation. They resorted to direct action, fighting the bosses, without intermediaries and without state arbitration. In spite of these differences, UGT members and syndicalists took part in various trade union alliances and collaborated in joint activities at the height of the Civil War. Hence there were a number of common elements that were derived from a shared tradition characterised by a mistrust of political parties and, of the parliamentary system, and opposition to the state, together with the

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conviction that the working class was the true protagonist of the social revolution. The reconstruction of the FRE (Spanish Regional Federation) in 1900 proclaimed: ‘Spanish workers! Let us turn away for a moment from the scrutiny of the party or school; let’s unite as if we were a compact mass embodied as a sole man called to battle against our common enemy – Capital’.32 The UGT and the syndicalists disagreed on issues regarding organisation and tactics, but were united when faced with the threat of conservative reaction, as occurred in 1916, 1934 and 1936.33 At the heart of the CNT, nevertheless, there were two fundamental schools of thought at odds over two different concepts of the revolutionary process. One was reformist (trentismo – the group of thirty that signed the manifesto against the CNT Radicals) and sought to consolidate the syndical organisations without wasting energy on futile action. It wanted to prepare the Federations of Industry for the construction of a future society where trade unions would become the key elements of productive organisation.34 The other school of thought called for immediate revolution (the FAI – Federación Anarquista Ibérica – was the most characteristic exponent of this), but did not assign the basic role in future transformations to trade unions. Instead, the unions were perceived as an essential element to provoke unrest and for the proclamation of libertarian communism in which the state would disappear and self-sufficient communes would organise production, on occasions in collaboration with the unions. The revolution was to be different from the one enacted by the Bolshevists, who had severely repressed the anarchists.35

Conclusions We have before us three revolutions – the republican-democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and the libertarian revolution – which overlap and are interlinked. They all form part of the legacy of sectors that confronted the Spanish capitalist system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and they all influenced and resisted each other. By means of these revolutions, broad sections of society attempted to intervene in the processes of Spanish capitalism in order to avoid feeling excluded by classes and politicians that were ill disposed towards a social and institutional consensus. The Spanish right wing, embodied by moderate liberals, progressives and authoritarians inspired by the military, were not prepared to accept major changes to their hegemonic role if that meant sharing political mechanisms that could change the balance of power. As Paul Preston points out when recalling his early years of research in Spain: I was quite fascinated to gather from my historical readings and from my observations of daily life, that the right-wing was hard and inflexible, ‘smallminded’, compared to the relatively flexible conservatism that I knew then in England. It was also amazing to ascertain to what extent the right wing, in spite of their own ideological, strategic and tactical differences, and in sheer contrast to the behaviour of the left, would act in a united way behind the same objectives.36

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Gabriel Jackson made a similar comment in an interview.37 The Right demonstrated their nature during the First Republic with the conspiracy that led to the monarchical Restoration and they repeated the performance in the Second Republic with another military uprising which repressed popular resistance even more harshly. The popular psyche of Spain was impregnated by a belief that social and political change were a product of struggles – at times involving bloodshed – aimed at securing a voice and vote for sectors marginalised by Spanish capitalism and this was expressed in three projects for revolution: the republican, the socialist and the anarchist. They expressed the hopes and demands of the popular classes. The pact or consensus for a stable society within a market context, but with social guarantees, lasted longer in Spain than in other European states and only appears to have come about at the end of the twentieth Century. The functionalist interpretation somehow avoids the question of exploitation and reduces it to a lack of cohesion between elites, new values and social mood. However, it may be a result of the dominance of classes that were not willing to share power, perhaps because the development of productive forces was slower and capitalism weaker, and under such circumstances there was little willingness to make pacts. In the end, the republican-democratic model merged with the demands made by social democracy, i.e. social services and benefits that make up the welfare state. At the same time, individual freedom began to be valued, as were mutual assistance and respect for the environment, which were first discovered by the anarchists through their models of communalism and syndicalism. This synthesis also includes the efforts of various strands of the Left which would perhaps make conservatism more flexible, in much the same way as Preston spoke of English conservatism.38 It is true that we still need to consider the nationalist variable, which in regions such as the Basque Country and Catalonia were an added dimension to political and social demands and which also faced radical opposition from sectors of the Spanish Right. In this matter, the objections included elements which were more contradictory, since not all the Left was willing to accept nationalistic differentiation per se, as was the case with the socialists and the republicans, the exception being the federalists. The majority of the anarchists were not open to nationalistic differentiation, in spite of their proclamation of the abolition of the state. They considered it to be a creation of the Catalan bourgeoisie, yet at certain times they collaborated with Esquerra Republicana under Macia y Companys.39 It was no coincidence that anarchism took root in Catalonia when the state was being questioned.40 The Spanish Right maintained its inflexible position, which only intensified under Franco, but its intransigent tradition dated back to the early years of the twentieth century when political Catalanism began to be formulated, as Fernández Almagro stated with regard to the book La Nacionalitat Catalana published by Prat de la Riba: ‘In short, it is a pathetic attempt to justify Catalan nationalism as if it were a faith which they want at all costs’.41 In this sense, not all the pacts have been fully accomplished at the end of the millennium, though the trajectory of the autonomous regions has embraced a good part of republican, socialist and anarchist federalism. It is

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hence rather archaic, to address at this late stage the basic cause of the Civil War as being the position taken by the Left in October 1934. For Pío Moa, the Left did not accept the December 1933 election results and proposed a political and social revolution and ‘the insurgents of October were not thinking of the 14 April republic, with all its changes, but rather of a totalitarian regime’.42 The same author nevertheless does affirm that ‘the origins of the Civil War can be found in the complex social and economic problems at the end of the nineteenth century. Even though those problems were acutely real […] they did not predetermine the Civil War, except in a Marxist analysis’.43 One does not need to be a Marxist, nor a Weberian, in any case an Augustan Providentialist, to understand that the Left in Spain – made up of republicans of all sorts, socialists of all tendencies and anarchists of all shades – found itself facing a Right that did not embrace democracy until as late as 1978.

Notes 1. E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘La Revolución’, in R. Porter and M. Teich (eds), La Revolución en la Historia, Barcelona, 1990, 16–70; A.S. Cohen, Introducción a las teorías de la revolución, Madrid, 1977; T. Skocpol, ‘France, Russia, China: A Structural Analysis of Social Revolution’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18: 2 (1976), pp. 175–210; and T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolution, Cambridge, 1979. 2. K. Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutonsbegriff, Frankfurt 1973; and P. Zagorin, ‘Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography’, Political Science Quarterly, 88 (1973), pp. 23–52. 3. J.A. Piqueras, ‘Detrás de la política. República y Federación en el proceso revolucionario español’, in J.A. Piqueras and M. Chust (comps), Republicanos y Repúblicas en España, Madrid, 1996, 1. Also A. Hennessy, La república federal en España Pi y Margall y el movimiento republicano federal (1868–1874), Madrid, 1966; O. Ruiz Manjón, El Partido Republicano Radical (1908–1936), Madrid, 1976; J. Cullà, El republicanisme lerrouxista a Catalunya (1901–1923), Barcelona, 1986; J. Alvarez Junco, El emperador del paralelo. Lerroux y la demagogia populista, Madrid, 1990; M. Suárez, El reformismo en España. Republicanos y reformistas bajo la monarquía de Alfonso XIII, Madrid, 1986; C. Dardé, ‘Los partidos republicanos en la primera etapa de la Restauración (1875–1890)’, in J.M. Jover (dir), El siglo XIX en España: doce estudios, Barcelona, 1974 pp.; A. Duarte, El republicanisme català a la fi del segle XIX, Vic, 1987; and N. Townson (ed.), El republicanismo en España (1830–1977), Madrid, 1994. 4. J.A. Piqueras, ‘Republicanismo, política y clases en la España de la Restauración’ (unpublished text). 5. S. Cámara, El espíritu moderno, Madrid, 1848, p. 30. 6. ‘La Discusión’ (1864), reflected in J. Trías (ed.), Pi i Margall. Pensamiento Social, Madrid, 1968, p. 209. 7. L. Díez del Corral, El liberalismo doctrinario, Madrid, 1984, p. 525. 8. J.L. Comellas, Los moderados en el poder (1844–1854), Madrid, 1970, p. 130. 9. Comellas, Los moderados, p. 129. 10. Piqueras, ‘Detrás de la política’, p. 28. 11. A. Eiras Roel, El Partido Demócrata Español (1849–1868), Madrid, 1961, p. 110. 12. Eiras Roel, El Partido Demócrata Español, p. 111. 13. J.A. Piqueras and E. Sebastià, Agiotistas, negreros y partisanos, Valencia, 1991. 14. A. Duarte, ‘Los posibilismos republicanos y la vida política en la Cataluña de los primeros años de la Restauración’, in Piqueras and Chust, Republicanos y repúblicas, p. 185.

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15. E. Castelar, ‘Discurso pronunciado en el banquete celebrado en su obsequio el día 2 de octubre de 1880 por la Democracia Histórica de Alcira’, in Colección de Discursos Políticos del eminente orador don Emilio Castelar, Valencia, 1880, p. 162. 16. Cited in J. Paniagua (ed.), Manuel Azaña. Discursos parlamentarios, Madrid, 1992: Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de Diputados, 29 October 1931. 17. J. Rawls, Theory of Justice, Cambridge, 1971; and Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York, 1993. 18. L. Jiménez de Asúa, Defensa de una revolución, Madrid, 1931. 19. R. Reig, Blasquistas y Clericales, Valencia, 1986; J.A. Piqueras, La Revolución Democrática (1868–1874). Cuestión Social, colonialismo y grupos de presión, Madrid, 1992; and A. Oliet, El conflicto social y la legitimación de la monarquía ante la revolución de 1868, Madrid, 1989. 20. Cited in S. Juliá, Los socialistas en la política española (1879–1982), Madrid, 1997, p. 63. 21. A. Zozaya, La contradicción política, Madrid, 1894, pp. 134–35. 22. ‘Después el mitin brindis de Soriano’, Nueva España, 29 March 1910. 23. L. Arranz, ‘La ruptura del PSOE en la crisis de la Restauración’, in S. Juliá (coord), El socialismo en España, Madrid, 1986, pp. 161–89. 24. Juliá, Los socialistas, p. 122. 25. J. Besteiro, ‘La organización obrera y la cultura’ [1923], in Obras Completas, Madrid, 1983, vol. I, p. 480. 26. J. Paniagua, La sociedad libertaria, Madrid, 1989; and Anarquistas y Socialistas, Barcelona, 1982. 27. C.E. Lida, ‘Educación Anarquista en la España del 800’, Revista de Occidente, 97 (1971), pp. 34–47; C.E. Lida, ‘Literatura anarquista y anarquismo literario’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. XIX: 2 (1970), pp. 360–81; F. Giner de los Ríos, ‘Para la historia de las teorías libertarias’, Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, 1899; Mackay, Los anarquistas, Valencia, 1906; and P. Kropotkin, El apoyo mutuo, Valencia, 1909. 28. J. Álvarez Junco, La ideología política del anarquismo español (1868–1910), Madrid, 1991. 29. Álvarez Junco, El emperador del paralelo. 30. J. Llunas, Los partidos socialistas españoles, Barcelona, 1982. 31. Álvarez Junco, La ideología política del anarquismo, p. 564. 32. Circular of the FRE, La Protesta, 1901, n.100. 33. D. Abad de Santillán, Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español, México, 1967. 34. The tradition of this dates from the late nineteenth century. By 1881, ‘the anarchists had taken up a legalistc and moderated path – argues Álvarez Junco – of a clearly presyndical nature, and it is undoubtedly true, as Díaz del Moral believes, that in the preparation of the 1881 Congress, there was enormous influence from anrchist, republican-federal and regionalist forces’. Álvarez Junco, La ideología política del anarquismo, p. 444. 35. E. Vega, Anarquistas y sindicalistas durante la segunda república. La CNT y los sindicatos de oposición en el País Valenciano, Valencia, 1987; and W. Bernecker, Colectividades y Revolución Social. El anarquismo en la guerra civil española (1936–1939), Barcelona, 1982. 36. P. Preston, Las derechas españolas en el siglo XX: autoritarismo, fascismo y golpismo, Madrid, 1986, p. 10. 37. J. Paniagua, J.A. Piqueras and J. Prats, ‘Conversación con Gabriel Jackson’, Aula-Historia Social, 2 (1998), pp. 4–14. 38. F. Tomás y Valiente, Códigos y Constituciones (1808–1978), Madrid, 1989. 39. R. de Vargas-Golarons et al., Anarquisme i alliberament nacional, Barcelona, 1987. 40. J. Paniagua, ‘Una gran pregunta y varias respuestas: El anarquismo español: desde la política a la historiografía’, Historia Social, 12 (1992), pp. 31–57. 41. M. Fernández Almagro, Catalanismo y república española, Madrid, 1932, p. 53. 42. P. Moa, Los orígenes de la guerra civil espanola, Madrid, 1999, p. 19. 43. Moa, Los orígenes, p. 17.

CHAPTER 12

THE CIVIL WAR – A CLASS STRUGGLE? THE DIFFICULT TASK OF RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST Julián Casanova

The question posed in the title of this chapter leads a discussion of the nature of the crisis that pervaded Spanish society during the 1930s. Over the last three decades, old and varied testimonies have been dusted off and many historians have attempted to explain the causes and examine the development of the conflict. Today, greatly improved access to primary sources allows us to take a different approach towards those events. Subjective views have given way to impartial interpretations and detailed regional studies have demonstrated greater interest in taking a more in-depth look at the key issues of the subject. In all respects, the intentions and results are actually very diverse. In Spain, there has been some success in updating our historiography with regard to other countries, but there is still the need for a global analysis of the conflict. Among foreign historians, the predominance of broad, general explanations has often meant that the specific roots of the important problems have been ignored.

Changes in Historiography Until this point, the historiography of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) has undergone various phases and taken various different routes. The slow undermining of the victors’ propaganda discourse was nothing more than a reflection of the mixture of continuity and changes which took place in sociopolitical and cultural contexts from the early 1960s onwards. In this case, continuity was ensured by a group of historians who, having removed

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the most blatant and untenable parts of the old propaganda, kept the main lines of its interpretation. Only a few years before the dictator’s death, Vicente Palacio Atard, Ramón Salas Larrazábal and Ricardo de la Cierva left future generations such comments as ‘the threat of communism could immediately be felt’. They affirmed that it was the regional autonomous governments, the republican legislation and the subversion of October 1934 which led ‘both the “majority of the nation” as well as most of the soldiers to adopt increasingly politicised and belligerent attitudes’. They also stated that ‘the July uprising represented the agonistic and rebellious death throes of half a nation which could not resign itself to the fact that it was dying; it did not come from a series of discussions or a legalistic treatise, but rather from the individual and collective survival instinct of the very deepest Spanish tradition’. The involvement of the army, ‘which did not have the slightest inclination to rise up and violently overthrow the situation’, was therefore unavoidable and the fact that war broke out was also inevitable and even necessary.1 The credibility of the victors’ explanations had begun to be damaged, however, before these new versions appeared and no further attention is going to be paid here to a distorted and tendentious approach which has already failed to withstand criticism and which, more importantly, did not pass the empirical test it was subjected to by the new historiography on the Civil War. It is worth highlighting here, however, that the persistency of this approach under the dictatorship and the clear advantage that it held over any alternative interpretations conditioned the historiographical debate for a very long time and its effects have lasted longer than would be supposed. First, it put many supporters of the Republic on the defensive. These supporters, especially those who were in exile, felt obliged to counteract these propaganda myths and deny or justify – at times with the same degree of partiality and invariably with fewer material resources – the numerous accusations made by Franco’s regime. Secondly, the tiresome insistence that the republican forces were responsible for starting the war made many historians move away from these biased explanations and towards a more objective approach which shared the responsibility in the fairest possible way. Finally there was the extremely important subject of religion which, after all, was, together with the struggle against communism, the issue which evoked the greatest international sympathy for Franco’s cause after the war. It was eventually possible to go beyond the myth of the war as a crusade in defence of Christian civilisation and for the majority of historians to describe the anticlerical practices as ‘deplorable excesses perpetrated by uncontrollable fanatics’ in the heat and the clamour of the crisis.2 The process of attributing responsibilities for the conflict in a fairer way was started and finished by the first historians who approached those events with rigorous intellectual and academic knowledge. At a time when Spanish historiography of the twentieth century hardly existed – after the purging and the breakdown of the liberal tradition – and began to be constructed, these foreign historians took on the task of putting forward a different interpretation of the war as an alternative to the one imposed by Franco’s regime. Despite being excessively obsessed at the beginning with

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demonstrating that the polarisation of the left and right had been the main cause of the Civil War, this historiography evolved from a political methodology towards a greater concern for social issues. Questions such as ‘could the disaster have been avoided?’ or reflections on the ‘Spanish tragedy’ have given way to highly specialised research at regional level in which the explicit discourse of the political leaders does not play such a dominant role. In any case, this is now a less monolithic historiography than when it first started and it is of very high quality. Above all, it has been forced to examine its approaches because of the considerable transformation and the qualitative improvements which Spanish historiography of the Civil War period has undergone over the last fifteen years.3 When the first books of these Anglo-American authors appeared, their results could only be compared with those of the works of Franco’s propagandists. In other words, no historian who was not on Franco’s payroll had carried out an in-depth analysis of the conflict. In the last few years of the dictatorship, when little by little the opportunity to escape from this sorry situation emerged, the twentieth century was, with the exception of a few oases, a desert still to be explored. With regard to the Second Republic and the first third of the century, there were a good number of ideological studies, a large sample of papers on elections, parties and their internal struggles and a considerable – in quantitative terms – bibliographical output on the working-class movement which basically picked up the accounts of committed activists written prior to 1939 or in exile. Subject to important subsequent rectifications, it is fair to recall that all this research activity was the necessary starting point in order to formulate problems and concepts which had until then been ignored by the narrow-minded and exiguous dominant historiography. The situation began to change noticeably during the second half of the 1970s, coinciding with the end of the dictatorship’s ideological control and the publishing of new sources. However, it was above all the five-year period between 1981 and 1986, marked by the celebration of two fiftieth anniversaries – those of the proclamation of the Republic and the outbreak of the Civil War – which led to a veritable flood of studies on the subject. The reasons for this can be found, in my opinion, in the combination of a set of new sociopolitical circumstances – which became evident for example in the democratisation of the university system, in more widely available financial resources and in various institutions’ support for research – with the accumulative effect of three phenomena whose influence had started to be felt some years before. On the one hand, since 1970, the Pau colloquia had brought together under the leadership of Manuel Tuñón de Lara a wide range of historians who, with the exception of the then flourishing Catalan and Valencian historiographies which were almost never present there, symbolised some of the most serious attempts at breathing new life into historical study in Spain. Devoted almost exclusively to social and political history before 1936, these colloquia were also useful for educating and inspiring other historians who, once again under the leadership of Tuñón de Lara, published their works on the war during the early 1980s. On the other

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hand, this was also the moment to reap the benefits of the intellectual and academic tuition that certain Spanish historians had received abroad. This allowed them to formulate new questions on the research material and to construct previously unknown theoretical assumptions. Finally, the sudden appearance of good-quality local and regional history became a valuable instrument in the reconstruction of the past.4 As a result of all these transformations, the historical debate began to include references to social classes and their customs, popular movements, peasants, women and other social groups which until that time had only been used to fill in the gaps left by what were meant to be the true protagonists: the political parties and their leaders. The political approach still dominated the interpretation of these social movements, which should come as no surprise given Spain’s limited tradition of social history, but it undoubtedly represented the first step towards a more dynamic vision of the past which examined the collective attempts to bring about changes in the social order of that time from different points of view. Having outlined in broad terms the evolution of the historiography of the Civil War, it is now a question of taking a deeper look at these new interpretations to determine their scope. This is directly, although not exclusively, related to the question in the title of this chapter. Appraising what has been done until now and reflecting on this issue will inevitably lead us to examine certain forgotten issues and to seek inspiration in studies from other countries which have dealt with these subjects. And logically the chapter will conclude with a reconstruction, in light of all the contributions, of the interpretative framework required to analyse the social conflicts during the war period.

Structures and Inaccuracies One of the most obvious consequences of this change in historiographical direction has been that the explanations are no longer based on the national and racial character of the conflict and instead it is researched by examining the long-term socioeconomic structures. The origins of this new approach come from a wholesome and logical exercise in intellectual rigour: it is not possible to understand such a wide-reaching, intense conflict if no examination is made of the structural peculiarities capable of generating it. With slight variations, almost always due to the presence or the absence of narrative elegance rather than the theory which supports it, this area of study has been scrutinised by the best exponents of Anglo-American historiography, by Marxist historiography – in particular French and Spanish – and by all those authors who, without explicitly demonstrating the postulates of any of them, have tried to avoid the simplicity of monocausal descriptions. In practical terms, an attempt has been made to figure out the connection between the structure of Spanish society and the outbreak of war. To achieve this, some – as is the case of Tuñón de Lara – placed greater emphasis on the ‘historical process of the structural crisis’ which from 1898 and through

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various ‘levels or steps’ led to the ruling coalitions loss of legitimacy and the definitive crisis of the state; and others – with the British hispanicists being the best examples – preferred to pay more attention to the analysis of the sociopolitical context of the Second Republic as Spain’s first experiment with democracy, to illustrate their thesis. Although in both cases there is the idea that the period of the republic was, in the words of Tuñón de Lara, ‘the moment when all the latent conflicts and contradictions existent in the structure as a whole came to the surface’, it is important to highlight here that this different emphasis also leads, as we shall see, to a different interpretation of the final cause of the War.5 The thesis based on the ‘historical process of the structural crisis’ attempts to demonstrate that Spain during the first third of the twentieth century was a society in which there was a mixture of ‘archaism’ and ‘modernity’, on the borderline between the model of society of the ‘Old Regime’ and that of the ‘bourgeoisie’; that this duality became apparent in ‘major imbalances between the tempos or rhythms of the different levels’ of its ‘sociohistorical configuration’, its economy, politics, ideology or culture; and that these imbalances led to various crises which, since they could not be resolved, became more intense and more serious until they culminated in the events of July 1936. In short, it could be said that the slow advance of capitalism during this period was not matched by a modernisation of the political system able to ‘contain’ the new social forces which emerged from the development of capitalism. The ‘social block’ which held all the power gradually lost its legitimacy and its ability to represent, in a process which was initially regarded as a ‘crisis of hegemony’ and very soon turned into a ‘State crisis’. In short, it was a crisis of domination which culminated in the advent of the Second Republic, a decisive situation which was unable to resolve the range of major problems facing it because ‘the loss of political power experienced by the sector which held the economic power’ made it very difficult to maintain the balance. Since it was impossible to regain the ‘decision-making centres of power’ by pacific means, the ‘old ruling coalition’ was left with no alternative ‘to find a way out of the crisis but to violently break the consensus and the established legal order’. The ‘structural imbalances’, the ‘temporary causes’ or the ‘exact forms that the old antagonisms and problems which always underlay Spanish society took on during the 1930s’ – prepared the events which had a ‘sudden and devastating’ effect on the ‘explosive charge’ that had built up. The three elements of structure, climate and events, so typical of French historiography, placed the ultimate responsibility for the ‘tragedy’ – conditioned right from the very start – on the reaction of the ‘most rigid sectors’, the ‘ruling coalition’. It is obvious that with an argument of this type there is a clear desire to analyse the social classes and their struggles. However, this supposed theoretical instrument clarifies very little in practice. By regarding, on the one hand, the ‘power block’ as a minority against which all the other classes and ‘layers of society’ fight, or should fight – because they are ‘not part’ of it – does not take into account the fact that the relations between classes do not

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only imply domination and struggle, but also subordination and adaptation to the established social order. Neither does it recognise, or at least it avoids analysing, the wide social base and the considerable public support which the reactionary coalition and those involved in the military coup enjoyed in July 1936. Secondly, it is supposed that politics is determined by class tensions and struggles (the famous base and superstructure model to which E.P. Thompson objected so strongly)6 but it is no more than a supposition because there is no empirical research to back up this statement. Finally, the abstract language used may seem to reflect a means of writing history which is profound and which represents a move away from merely providing an account of the facts, but once the theoretical shell has been broken, there is nothing inside.7 Although it was not exactly the language which troubled the British and U.S. Hispanists, the explanation that the majority of them put forward regarding the origins of the war has never managed to overcome the limitations that have already been mentioned which, it should be remembered, came from reducing the analysis of the ‘failure’ of the Republic, as a final cause of the conflict, to examining the different policies implemented during these years. Having rejected the explanation of ‘inevitability’ and less explicitly that of ‘bipolarisation’, the specific area of the political parties and their struggles continued to condition the overall thesis. In an attempt to reply once again to the question of whether the Republic had been the prelude to the ‘catastrophe’, Shlomo Ben-Ami concluded, for example, that the republican regime had inherited ‘serious regional, religious and social divisions’, but that ‘the mere existence of these problems cannot be taken as a recipe for inevitable disaster’. The ‘eventual failure’ of the Republic was not, therefore, ‘irreversibly conditioned by the structural imperatives or by any intrinsic inability of the Spanish people to govern themselves’. Instead, ‘it was caused by the policies, some of which were clearly bad and totally inadequate, and by the reaction to them’.8 In practical terms, identifying bad policies as the origin of the conflict places the blame on the politicians who were responsible for them and excludes the social forces that put so much effort into bringing about the failure of the Republic, as well as the structures that determined that these policies were bad or that those which would have been good were not available. Subjectivity and personal preferences play a role, implying that all the political decisions were the result of conscious decisions of the republican leaders. They, and not the structures, determined the results. In order to get out of the predicament caused by this thesis, we should pick up the line of thought which already exists in some research work that suggests that the war was in fact the result of the failure of a military coup d’état which did not immediately achieve its main objectives of taking control of central power and bringing down the republican government. By attempting to answer the questions of why there was a military uprising and why that uprising was unable to achieve its objectives is not the same as analysing the failure of the Republic in abstract terms. It leads the historian to take a deeper look at the most relevant features – or peculiarities – of the

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historical tradition inherited by the Republic of which it could never rid itself (the interventionism of the army; a state with highly centralised yet inefficient structures and administrations; the weakness and fragmentation of civil society) and to attempt to give meaning to – instead of nurturing myths about – the revolutionary process which reached breaking point in July 1936. For contrary to what many believe, it is not paradoxical that the counterrevolution and a coup d’état triggered the revolution. As the most recent literature on the subject demonstrates, this is instead a basic element in the origins of revolutions and it is highly likely that without the collapse of the state’s means of constraint as a result of the division of the armed forces caused by the coup, the revolution would never have taken place.9 The Civil War was therefore the result of a military coup which can be accounted for by the interventionist traditions of the army, by the nature of that armed bureaucracy and by its privileged place within the state and within society. This coup d’état came up against resistance because Spanish society in 1936 was not the same as it was in 1923. It had had the experience of a Republic which opened up the historical possibility of finding solutions to unsolved problems, which faced considerable instability – from the economic crisis and the rivalry between the two trade unions which were looking to channel working class activity, to the hostile reaction of numerous rich and poor farm owners – and which did not, or could not, set the necessary political means in motion to solve them. Up against such a high level of political and social mobilisation, the coup could not end, as so many others had, in a mere military uprising. It needed a new, violent and ‘definitive’ version, which had already been created by fascism in other parts of Europe, which would put an end to the crisis and heal, or in fact cover over, all the rifts that had been opened – or made bigger – by the Republic. The resistance against and support for the uprising also reflected these rifts: an army which was divided when faced with the coup (and let us not forget that without this division there would never have been a war because the coup would have succeeded); thousands of ‘extremely poor landowners’ defending the reaction; working-class demonstrations in favour of a government whose work and social policies could do little to benefit the poor and needy; and Catholics – especially Basques – who supported what others considered to be the symbol of extreme laicism and atheism. In short, Spain was not only divided between the Left and the Right, oligarchs and citizens or socialists and right-wing cedistas (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas – CEDA); and this conflict was going to resolve much more than the struggles between two social classes – the middle class and the working class, the haves and the have-nots. Such an approach inevitably leads, in my opinion, to a comparative historical analysis (which should never be confused with merely collecting scattered or linked pieces of knowledge about Europe at that time), because it is a multiple comparison which, apart from shedding light on the different national experiences, can provide different approaches to the historian’s individual explanation and provide answers to some of the issues which regional and local research has not dealt with.

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Oversights and Comparisons A good example of the extent to which advances can be made through multiple comparisons is Gregory M. Luebbert’s recent book entitled Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy, which was the first to include Spain in a wide-ranging comparative study of this crucial period and which presents some basic clues as to the creation of an interpretative framework of the Spanish case. With an unbiased mixture of comparisons and the detailed analysis of specific cases, Luebbert explores the political coalitions and class alliances which led to the stability of liberal democracy in Great Britain, France and Switzerland; to social democracies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Czechoslovakia; and to the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain.10 Spain was one of a group of Western societies where liberal movements had not managed to establish political hegemony before the First World War due to the divisions that existed among the middle classes concerning regional, linguistic and religious conflicts which, despite dating back to the preindustrial period, accompanied the creation of the nation-state and still remained as points of conflict during the mobilisation of the masses. For Luebbert’s explanation of the failure of liberalism, and consequently democratic stability, the important factor is not so much the degree of modernisation, its rhythm or speed, but rather ‘the inherited lines of conflict’ on which modernisation acted. From this point of view, Spain would be a ‘borderline case’ between the historical experiences of Eastern Europe – where the degree of backwardness prevented the absence of an economically independent middle class and a liberal tradition – and Western Europe, where modernisation was ‘politically neutral’, although it triggered historical hostilities. A satisfactory explanation of the failure of Spanish liberalism must therefore include both the effects of inherited divisions as well as the absence of modernity. For, according to Luebbert’s line of argument, the most relevant signs of Spanish backwardness – interventionism of the army, the weakness of civil society and the political parties, the existence of electoral fraud and the separation of economic and political power – pervaded the whole society and made it more difficult to ‘settle’ these differences.11 Given the lack of such hegemony, the liberal parties of Germany, Italy and Spain rejected – as opposed to what happened in France and Great Britain – any alliance with the socialist movements because they considered them to be a serious threat to the system. With no possible allies, the socialist parties and trade unions were only left with the independent organisation of the working classes to achieve their political and economic objectives. The result was that the liberal parties, unable to recruit the politically divided middle classes, found that they were up against a united, rapidly rising working-class movement. And the power of the organised working-class movement strengthened the particular evolution of these societies since during the crisis years of the interwar period it opened up certain alternatives for economic stability and closed others. The ‘obliged opening-up’ of political power to working-class parties undermined the constitutional orders which had been designed to keep them

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out of government. These institutional changes and shifts in the balance of political and economic power could not, however, be completed because greater participation destroyed the old orders ‘without providing the new players with a stable social base’. And that amounted to a ‘partial regime change’ which left these societies in a kind of ‘political limbo’ until the change culminated in fascism. The period between the end of the war and the establishment of the fascist regimes was, therefore, one of searching for a ‘stabilising coalition’ which could incorporate some type of suitable combination of the middle classes, the working classes and the peasantry in defence of the constitutional order. It was, in the opinion of Luebbert, ‘an interlude during which States were open to any possibility’, obstructed ‘by their inadequate social bases and by the unfeasibility of their classical economic policies’. The first three years of the Second Republic (1931–1939) witnessed the same failure of the liberalworking-class coalition and the consolidation of the bourgeoisie, the same political fragmentation of the middle classes and the same inability to form lasting coalitions like those which triumphed in other parts of Europe, basically because such alliances wwere difficult to form. Having clarified the fact that it was impossible to consolidate the liberal order, Luebbert places special emphasis on explaining why these Western societies did not resort to traditional dictatorships, except during Primo de Rivera’s ‘interlude’ in Spain, and why ‘western authoritarianism needed fascism’. The dictatorships which appeared in most of the societies of Eastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s after the collapse of the old empires ‘were only suitable for traditional societies’. For in the absence of a strong workingclass movement and faced with a low level of political mobilisation, ‘a traditional dictatorship was enough to protect the interests of those it served’. In Germany, Italy and Spain, on the other hand, the ‘stability of authoritarianism’ required many more things than in the East: the closure of parliaments, the abolition of political parties, the suppression of press freedom, and especially the destruction of working-class movements. It was not a question of different degrees, but rather of the type of regime. In practice, these steps were interdependent since in these Western societies no authoritarian regime could keep itself in power for any length of time unless all these factors were present at the same time. However, fascism could only become a major force in these societies if liberalism and social democracy failed in their attempts to ‘align’ what Luebbert referred to as the ‘family peasantry’, ‘that middle sector of farming society which owns enough land to employ members of the family and produce for the market, but not enough to need paid labour’. This ‘family peasantry’ was, together with the urban bourgeoisie and the working class, one of the key players on the political stage during the interwar period. Stabilising an ‘illiberal’ society in the West required the alliance of two of these players, since on their own none of them had enough strength to assert its authority over the others, by either democratic or authoritarian means. Given the impossibility of an alliance between the two urban classes, and considering the parity which existed in these societies between the urban and

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rural populations, any coalition had to include the rural sector. In any case, the coalition had to include the ‘family peasantry’ because, ‘among the farming population, it was the only sector which had a popular base, a high and stable percentage of political participation, a different political programme and the ability to destabilise the political system until that programme was implemented’. The rural proletariat also had its own programme, but it was incapable of leading itself and creating its own organisations. And due precisely to this inability to attack the existing order without external leadership, ‘it could be ignored if the sources of external leadership were eliminated’. It was also the case that the class conflict was as essential to the political existence of the peasantry as it was to the bourgeoisie and the urban working class. If the socialist parties attempted to mobilise the rural proletariat, they ‘became entangled’ in this conflict and threatened the small and medium landowners in various ways. The most serious threat came from the socialist campaigns on behalf of the rural proletariat to carry out agrarian reform. The facts that the redistribution would be carried out mainly at the expense of large landowners and that all kinds of reasoning were used to demonstrate that it would not affect small landowners did not appear to reduce this feeling of menace. In the same way that socialist efforts in favour of urban workers provoked serious mistrust among the ‘lower-middle classes’, even though they were not directly or materially threatened by them, socialist support of farm workers provoked an intense bitterness among peasant families. In fact, apart from the national singularities of these conflicts, ‘bitterness and a feeling of abandonment were the most common features of all the antisocialist peasant movements’. Thus, the coalitions formed among the rural and urban middle classes of Italy, Germany and Spain took on the common objective of eradicating the threat of working-class socialism and were particularly roused by the antisocialism of the ‘family peasantry’. The results of this process were determined by the policies and not so much by the size of the farming sector or of the rural proletariat. One of the prerequisites for the triumph of fascism was therefore the existence of a working-class movement committed to defending the rural proletariat. The fact that the urban working class needed allies and alone was not strong enough to establish democracy has been confirmed by various studies and in this respect a revision of Barrington Moore’s classical thesis can supplement Luebbert’s insofar as it outlined the historical and social conditions which created the possibility of forming alliances. As John D. Stephens has attempted to demonstrate in a comprehensive article in which he has put Moore’s thesis to the test with the inclusion, as comparative cases, of almost all the countries of Western Europe that had democratic governments between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the outbreak of the Second World War, agricultural class relations and the models of alliance between states and the classes which existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain were ‘necessary, but not adequate causes’ of the destruction of democracy. The existence of a

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powerful landowning class – in political and not only numerical terms – ‘changed the alliance-making possibilities of other classes […] and consequently also changed the political results. It presented the bourgeoisie with authoritarian alternatives and, insofar as the alliance involving landowners, the State and the bourgeoisie affected the politics of the middle classes and the peasantry, reduced the possibilities of the working class’.12 In more categorical terms: in those cases in which there were coalitions between the landowning classes, the State and the bourgeoisie – a fundamental condition, according to Moore, for the development of fascism – no alliance could be built which was strong enough to overcome such an opponent.13 Even when the First World War, in Italy and Germany, and the Second Republic, in Spain, changed the balance of power among classes and allowed democratic progress to be made, the working class was unable to uphold democracy because very soon new problems (the depression, working-class and peasant militancy, social protests etc.) and new possibilities of alliances for the wealthy classes led the bourgeoisie and the landowners to adopt an active instead of a passive stance against the democratic leadership.14 The conclusions which can be drawn from these comparative analyses, regardless of any objections which may be put forward by local historiography and smaller-scale empirical research, appear to be clear. Fascism, liberalism and social democracy were not alternatives which could be deliberately chosen by these societies, by their social movements or by the leaders that represented them because the results were already structured. In the Spanish case, the fact that it was impossible that liberalism could establish political hegemony, with the subsequent failure of all the attempts to form coalitions between liberals and workers, and the presence of an alliance between landowners, the State – the administration and the army – and the bourgeoisie, smoothed the way for the victory of the authoritarian and fascist alternative. From this point of view, the international nature of the Spanish Civil War takes on special relevance: what began as the culmination of a long history of internal and local conflicts ended in a war in which Italy and Germany – societies which had previously experienced the destruction of democracy – provided the assistance required for a fascist victory. With reasoning such as this, politics can never be reduced to the analysis of political parties and their leaders, and the intentions of the major players (either individuals or groups) are always modified – or dictated, in the more extreme case of Luebbert – by the ability and opportunity to act which the structural conditions either provide or withhold.

Class Struggle? What Class Struggle? Once all these variables have been included in the historical analysis, an answer to the question which gave rise to this chapter may be formulated by means of two different and supplementary interpretive means. On the one hand, and if credit is given to the thesis that the political upheavals of the Second Republic – and of the crisis of the Restoration – were above all the

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manifestation of a severe class struggle, then the Civil War – and the revolution which accompanied it – would be the continuation of politics and the same conflicts by other means. With the data provided by recent research, it would seem to be clear that, despite the fact that it was impossible to simplify the issue to a struggle between two classes, the support which certain classes or social groups lent to each side – you were either ‘on one side or the other’ or, using the language of the time, either a ‘red’ or a ‘fascist’ – converted the Civil War into a conflict between two different conceptions of the social order. On the other hand, however, there is also a great deal of evidence to suggest that class issues were not always the main issues of the two sides and this also makes it necessary to analyse other types of loyalties, mainly religious, linguistic, family, regional or nationalistic loyalties.15 The empirical basis applied to these two interpretative methods would therefore confirm that within the Civil War there were several different ‘civil wars’. First, and irrespective of whether or not it was a class struggle that caused the war, the most prominent exponents of these two methods have adequately demonstrated that, once the armed conflict had begun, the social antagonisms were at the centre of everyday life. Class repression, collectivisations and some of the political and social changes that took place right from the beginning in republic areas were a direct attack on local political power (or the bourgeoisie in the cities) on property, religious beliefs and authority. And the class element, which always accompanied, in terms of both content and form, the so-called National Movement has been corroborated by studies which show that levels of persecution, repression and annihilation of the opponent were much more systematic and common in regions where the predominance of large properties and the unfair distribution of wealth, made worse by specific unsolved problems such as the ‘seizure’ of common assets or the maintenance of cacique structures, had caused major conflicts and brought about the consolidation of a powerful, threatening, socialist trade union movement.16 On the other hand, and in the same way that the defence of religion was linked to the defence of the family, of property and of the social order, anticlericalism was not only an ideology and a negative practice that led the masses to do crazy things, nor can it simply be attributed to a feeling of rejection towards the clergy. It also corresponded to a particular vision of truth, society and human freedom which was an inspiration for various social movements, thus representing a basic ingredient in the political and cultural history of that period. The reasons behind the anticlerical feeling can be found in the particular characteristics of the Catholic Church as a classic model of ‘the religion of the status quo’, that is to say ‘a religious institution which, in exchange for the material support of the dominant class, promotes an ideology which favours the political and material interests of that class, while giving that ideology the status of the sacred and eternal truth’. If Spain was the example par excellence of a society with a ‘single coherent and dominant religion’, rejection of the traditional order was equivalent to the rejection of the official religion symbolised by the union of the church, the state and the leading groups.17

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Combining these two interpretative methods allows for a greater understanding of the nature of the violent solution which began in 1936 and triumphed as of 1939: it rescued the system from the crisis of domination it was immersed in, it cleared the way for capitalism, destroyed the political culture of the organised working-class movement, abolished nationalist alternatives and their languages and freed the church from anticlericalism. This is what the victors achieved in the struggle between two ‘coalitions of interests’ to control and organise the state and society. Later on, and going back to Luebbert, the regime led by Franco which emerged after the war was based on a coalition of classes formed against the excluded classes; and once it was established, it never paid any attention to the material interests – political, cultural or any other type – of those who were not part of this victorious coalition.18 The Civil War and the revolutionary process therefore adapted to the situation of ‘multiple sovereignty’, a concept defined some years ago by Charles Tilly, in which public authority was divided between two or more central powers which tried to control villages and regions which had until then been under the control of a single regime. In the Spanish case, the situation of ‘multiple sovereignty’ began with the collapse of the State and ended when, after the victory of one of these powers and the defeat of the other, a new ‘sovereign’ power emerged which monopolised violence and organised the State and society.19 In conclusion, after everything that has been said here, the same question could be raised as the one Adam Przeworski put to John E. Roemer when the former put forward some major objections to Roemer’s central thesis that ‘the objective of the exploitation theory is to explain class struggle’. What is class struggle? Who is involved? What is it about? Or, to phrase it differently, where do poor peasants, who were nonetheless satisfied with the social order which anarchists and socialists wanted to destroy, fit into this theory of the exploitation of women. Or where do religion, nationalism and the different expressions of political power fit in? As other scholars argue, social classes are not only determined by relations of exploitation or relations of control, but rather by both elements. The definition of social classes in purely economic terms should instead give way to an understanding that takes into account politics, not simply in terms of the government or the analysis of the parties and their disputes. And when all these factors are present in the practical analysis of the State, the army, the church, those sections of the population that were with them in the 18 July 1936 military rising and the weakness and divisions of civil society, then we are dealing with a deeper analysis than one that reduces everything to the analysis of republican politics. We are dealing with a less simplistic thesis than one that conceptualises the military coup as being simply the reaction of the most static sectors, and we are moving into a more specific area than the one that comes as a result of the language about ‘means of production’, ‘socioeconomic structures’ and the ‘ruling coalition’.20 There has been very little debate about all these issues among Spanish historians. A review of most of the journals and volumes published on the

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occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war would be enough to confirm that statement. Specialists were called on to repeat once again what they had already said and the younger academics presented their new empirical research. In fact, empiricism came out victorious. Afterwards came a period of calm and since then, no major progress has been made. Perhaps now is the time to coordinate all those studies based on partial aspects and limited frameworks. It is not so much a request for a summary, but rather a request for a debate – and there are instruments available – on the particular features of Spanish history and Spanish historiography. If such a debate is not held and if its results do not go beyond our borders, we shall continue to depend on imported interpretative structures. It is therefore not enough to know more than was known twenty years ago. A wider view of the conflict requires the analysis of the history of other countries in order to make a comparative analysis and to avoid provincialism and the profusion of irrelevant local history, two of the major defects of our historiographical practices. Because in historical studies, in addition to the availability of sources and their correct use, imagination and intellectual processes must always be present which can be produced from historical and current theoretical inspiration.

Notes 1. The first two quotes are taken from V. Palacio Atard, R. Salas Larrazábal and R. de la Cierva, Aproximación histórica a la Guerra Española (1936–1939), Madrid, 1970, pp. 24–29 and 103. The other quotes are from R. de la Cierva, Historia de la Guerra Civil Española: Perspectivas y antecedentes (1898–1936), Madrid, 1969, 756. The explanations given around that time by most military writers did not indulge in so much linguistic prevarication. For example, J.M. Martínez Bande et al., Síntesis histórica de la Guerra de Liberación (1936–1939), Madrid, 1968. 2. This idea comes from Bruce Lincoln, who maintains that, instead of rejecting these human actions as ‘aberrant’ or revolting, scholars should explore their origins and their significance: B. Lincoln, ‘Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain, July 1936’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 27: 2 (1985), pp. 244–46. In fact, until now, it has mainly been foreign historians and anthropologists who have worked hardest to put such anticlerical expressions in their specific historical context, but this will be discussed later. Criticisms of conceptualising the war as a crusade can be found in H.R. Southworth El mito de la cruzada de Franco, Paris, 1963; and H. Raguer La Espada y la Cruz (La Iglesia 1936–1939), Barcelona, 1980. For a more recent analysis of the political and ideological exploitation that Franco’s historiography made of the war, see A. Reig, Ideología e historia (Sobre la represion franquista y la guerra civil), Madrid, 1984. Preston also tackled the issue in his introduction to the work compiled by him, P. Preston (ed.), Revolution and War in Spain (1936–1939), London, 1984, pp. 1–13. The most exhaustive study of the general climate of the history profession during the first years of the Franco period can be found in G. Pasamar, Historiografía e ideología en la postguerra española: la ruptura de la tradición liberal, Saragossa, 1991. 3. Although parents always have an influence on their children, and masters on their disciples, that historiography has times and there are quite a few differences – in terms of methods, use of sources and absence or presence of theoretical concerns – between the first works of Thomas, Jackson or Carr and the later or more recent works of Malefakis, Blinkhorn, Preston, Lannon and all their followers, not to mention the work of Fraser – the best summary, in my opinion, written about the period – and the pioneer Brenan, who has been

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4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

Julián Casanova a real source of inspiration to all Hispanicists. There is currently a marked decline in the number of studies on the war by North Americans and there is still a significant British presence. Despite these differences, Santos Juliá’s diagnosis of this historiography made some years ago would still appear to apply, although from today’s perspective the most significant element was the warning that he gave about the connection – which had not been empirically established – between the failure of the Republic and its inevitable result in the Civil War: S. Juliá, ‘Segunda República: Por otro objeto de investigación’, in M. Tuñón de Lara et al. (eds), Historiografía española contemporánea, Madrid, 1980, pp. 295–313. The output of the German, Soviet, French and Italian historiography on the Civil War can be seen in the articles by W.L. Bernecker, S. Pozharskaya, C. Serrano and I. Saz respectively, in J. Aróstegui (coord.), Historia y memoria de la guerra civil. Encuentro en Castilla y León, Valladolid, 1988, vol. I, pp. 31–106. The importance of subjects prior to 1936 in the Pau colloquia can be seen in Tuñón de Lara et al., Historiografía española. Another reflection of the then still limited presence of the Civil War among these historians is the tribute to Tuñón de Lara published in two volumes entitled Estudios de Historia de España, Madrid, 1981. Tuñón’s main work on the war – with the exception of the third part of La España del siglo XX (Barcelona, 1974 [1966]) – did not appear until the 1980s and was analysed, along with the rest of his work, in J.L. De La Granja and A. Reig (eds), Manuel Tuñón de Lara. El compromiso con la historia. Su vida y su obra, Bilbao, 1993. With regard to the intellectual tuition received abroad, a good example is E. Ucelay, La Catalunya populista. Imatge, cultura i política en l’etapa republicana (1931–1939), Barcelona, 1982. This is one of the most original studies on the period. For the summary of this thesis and its two variants, the following works have been chosen: M. Tuñón De Lara ‘Orígenes lejanos y próximos’, in La guerra civil española. 50 años después, Barcelona, 1985, pp. 9–44; P. Vilar, ‘Historia e historiografia de la guerra civil española. Algunas reflexiones metodológicas’, in P. Broué, R. Fraser and P. Vilar, Metodología histórica de la guerra y la revolución españolas, Barcelona, 1982, pp. 78–86; Blinkhorn’s introduction to the book comp. M. Blinkhorn, Spain in Conflict (1931–1939). Democracy in its Enemies, London, 1986, 1–13; and S. Ben Ami, ‘The Republican ‘Take-over’: Prelude to Inevitable Catastrophe?’, in Preston, Revolution and War in Spain, pp. 14–34. For an analysis of how the correlation of forces among social classes brought on the crisis of the ruling class from 1917, R. Fraser, ‘Reconsidering the Spanish Civil War’, New Left Review, 129 (1981), pp. 35–49. What is new in all these approaches is the theoretical and empirical knowledge used and not the original idea – seeing the war as the culmination of a historical process – which was already present in G. Brenan, El laberinto español, Madrid, 1943, and which has been reproduced many times since then. The ‘renovated’ pro-Franco historiography also began to view the war as the ‘culmination of a permanent crisis’ whose roots lay ‘in the history of our complicated nineteenth century’ (R. de la Cierva, Importancia histórica e historiográfica de la guerra española, Madrid, 1967). E.P. Thompson, Miseria de la teoría, Barcelona, 1981. With regard to the language used, it is much clearer in Pierre Vilar than in Tuñón de Lara. See, for example, the following paragraph which, after referring to the need for any research on historical change to be based ‘on the systematic examination of the social structures and the class struggle involved in this change’, went on to say that: ‘the difficulty lies in passing from a known model of structures and struggles, which defines a “means of production”, to the analysis of a specific socioeconomic configuration, in which this model is not exclusively or uniformly present, even though it is “dominant” at certain levels’ (in Vilar, ‘Historia e historiografía’, p. 79). All the words and phrases in inverted commas in the text are translated from Tuñón De Lara, ‘Orígenes lejanos y próximos’, pp. 9–44. S. Ben Ami, La revolución desde arriba: España 1936–1979, Barcelona, 1980. This line of argument could already be found in S. Juliá, ‘El fracaso de la República’, Revista de Occidente, 7–8 (1981), pp. 196–211. The growing interventionism of the army as a result of the weakness of the civil institutions is explained in C.P. Boyd, La política pretoriana en el reinado de Alfonso XII, Madrid, 1990. With regard to the failed coup d’état and the revolutionary process, see J. Casanova, ‘Anarquismo y guerra civil: del poder popular a la burocracia revolucionaria’, in S. Juliá (coord.), Socialismo y guerra civil, Madrid, 1987, pp. 71–82.

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10. G.M. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, New York, 1991. I have summarised Luebbert’s thesis and the objections raised by other research studies in J. Casanova, ‘Liberalismo, fascismo y clase obrera: algunas contribuciones recientes a la historia comparada de la Europa de entreguerras’, Studia Historica, 10–11 (1992–3), pp. 101–24. They will therefore not be analyse in detail here, but used only for their contributions to the issue at hand. 11. A much more conclusive thesis on ‘the major, perhaps even insurmountable obstacles imposed by the delay in consolidating a framework of democratic coexistence’, can be found in J. Palafox, Atraso económico y democracia. La Segunda República y la economía española (1892–1936), Barcelona, 1991. Luebbert’s analysis, which is full of nuances, of this issue can be found in Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy, pp. 99–107. As can be seen, and in general terms only with reference to Spain, Luebbert rejects a very influential hypothesis in the literature on political modernisation put forward some decades ago by Ralf Dahrendorf and Alexander Gerschenkron, which emphasised the late industrialisation and the subsequent importance of the State in industrial development as major factors which hindered the growth of the middle classes, liberalism and democratisation. 12. J.D. Stephens, ‘Democratic Transition and Breakdown in Western Europe, 1870–1939: A Test of the Moore Thesis’, American Journal of Sociology, 94: 5 (1989), pp. 1019–77. 13. B. Moore, Los orígenes sociales de la dictadura y la democracia, Barcelona, 1973. 14. Stephens, ‘Democratic Transition’. In addition to France and Great Britain, which had already been studied by Moore, among the ‘democratic survivors’ Stephens includes Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and, as an instance of the ‘partial eclipse of democracy’, Finland. Moore’s interpretation of the bourgeoisie’s dependence on the landowning classes is challenged for the German case – with the opposite argument, claiming that the bourgeoisie was in fact the dominant political and economic class in imperial Germany – by D. Blackbourn and G. Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Oxford, 1984, pp. 54–55, 80 and 163–64. 15. The first method can be traced back to the review undertaken on the subject of collectivisations and the revolution. For a summary of these studies, comp. J. Casanova, El sueño igualitario. Campesinado y colectivizaciones en la España republicana (1936–1939), Saragossa, 1988. See also W.L. Bernecker, Colectividades y revolución social. El anarquismo en la guerra civil española (1936–1939), Barcelona, 1982; or A. Monjo and C. Vega, Els treballadors i la guerra civil. Història d’una indústria catalana col.lectivitzada, Barcelona, 1986. The two methods are to a certain extent present in the previously mentioned work of Ucelay, La Catalunya populista. On the varied nature of the nationalist and regionalist movements in the 1930s, J.G. Beramendi and R. Máiz (comps), Los nacionalismos en la España de la II República, Madrid, 1991. For the importance of religion, F. Lannon, Privilegio, persecución y profecía. La Iglesia Católica en España (1875–1975), Madrid, 1990, chapters 7 and 8. 16. After a thorough analysis, this is, for example, one of the conclusions reached by J. Casanova et al., El pasado oculto. Fascismo y violencia en Aragón (1936–1939), Madrid, 1992, p. 215. 17. The definition of ‘religion of the status quo’ comes from Lincoln, ‘Revolutionary Exhumations’, p. 247. The fact that anticlericalism was not simply a negative ideology can be seen in R. Rémond, ‘Anticlericalism: Some Reflections By Way of Introduction’, European Studies Review, 13:2 (1983), p. 121, the first article of the monograph devoted to the subject, in which there is also a good introduction to the Spanish case by J.C. Ullman. ‘The Warp and Woof of Parliamentary Politics in Spain, 1808–1939: Anticlericalism versus ‘Neo-Catholicism’’, Eurpean History Quarterly, 13:2 (1983), pp. 145–76. 18. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. 19. C. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, Reading, 1978, pp. 189–222. 20. A. Przeworski, ‘The Ethical Materialism of John Roemer’, Politics & Society, 11:3 (1982), 289–313, monographic devoted to the work of Roemer. The importance of political relations in the definition of class relations can be seen in the article in the same monograph by E.O. Wright, ‘The Status of the Political in the Concept of Class Structure’, Politics & Society, 11:3 (1982), pp. 321–41. For a summary and review of all these approaches, see P. van Parijs, ‘A Revolution in Class Theory’, Politics & Society, 15:4 (1986–1987), pp. 453–82.

CHAPTER 13

SUBORDINATION, SUPPLIES AND MORTALITY THE MONTAÑA CATALANA, 1939–1945 Joan Serrallonga

One of the most important consequences of the industrialisation process in Catalonia was the division of the region into economic areas which are unique in terms of their configuration and their attitudes. This is the case of the units that make up the so-called Montaña catalana, an area which includes the catchment basins of the Llobregat, Ter, Cardener and Freser rivers. A considerable number of industries took advantage of the cheaper hydraulic energy and set up industrial colonies which had a certain degree of selfsufficiency. Their workers were less conflictive, considerably cheaper and in addition, employers imposed working conditions which were worse than those found in the plains of Barcelona, as can be clearly seen from the partial reports of the Institute of Social Reforms. Jordi Nadal confirmed ‘the hegemony of the river areas’1 and the fact that they had considerable influence on the decision-making process in the whole of Catalonia throughout a long period of history. However, despite such functional fragmentation and certain important achievements of this mountainous region of Catalonia, there is no doubt that a great deal was due to the instructions that came from the area around the city of Barcelona. The Ter Basin, which we shall take as an example, housed manufacturing companies which were supplied with energy from the industrial canal of the River Ter and maintained its own distinctive characteristics until the first half of the twentieth century. The area’s early industrial settlements,2 which coexisted harmoniously with the less developed but powerful agricultural sector, spread throughout the river basin from Ripoll to Roda de Ter in the regions of Ripollés and Osona at the northern boundary of the province of Barcelona, and also began to enter the province of Girona. In the 1936

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Census, the two regions had 108,171 inhabitants (68.2 percent in the region of Osona) among their seventy-six municipalities. The municipalities had a small number of inhabitants, except for the cities of Vic, Ripoll and Manlleu (Table 13.1). After these cities there was a ranking of towns with between 1,200 and 3,200 inhabitants, most of whom worked in the local industries. Finally, there were a considerable number of farming and/or rural villages which had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. The phenomenon of the rural exodus was non existent during this period and appeared much later on, more specifically in the early 1970s. Table 13.1 Population of the Industrial Municipalities of the Ter Basin, 1936–1950 Municipality Ripoll (regional capital) Parroquia de Ripoll Les Llosses Montesquiu Sant Quirze de Besora Orís Sant Vicenç de Torelló Torrelló Les Masies de Voltregà Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà Manlleu Gurb de la Plana Les Masies de Roda Roda de Ter [Vic (regional and provincial capital)

1936 Census 1950 Census 7,380 1,242 1,261 1,184 2,018 680 1,662 4,889 2,114 1,885 7,056 1,836 846 3,151 15,398

7,451 1,115 1,028 1,087 1,886 655 1,848 5,154 1,820 1,925 7,294 1,821 886 3,208 16,975

1936=100 100.96 89.77 81.52 91.81 93.46 96.32 111.19 105.42 86.09 102.12 103.37 99.18 104.73 101.81 110.24]

The cotton textile industry was, without doubt, the undisputed queen of this economic area; a situation which remained unchanged until fairly recent times.3 This industrial group, comprising above all spinning mills and cotton manufacturing companies, determined all aspects of the area’s economy. Thus, for instance, in the municipal area of Sant Vicenç de Torelló, those workers involved in the cotton textile sector represented 65.7 percent of the total population in 1939. The figure was 51.2 percent in Sant Quirze de Besora, 48.6 percent in Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà and no less than 40 percent in a town of 6,396 inhabitants like Manlleu. Most of the work in the textile industries of the Ter Basin was done by women, with an estimated proportion of 3.7 women to every man even in 1939. The use of child labour was also a standard feature of these industries, which replaced adult labour with child labour from the very moment they were set up in the second half of the nineteenth century. The number of workers employed in the companies varied, but historically the average number was somewhere between 210 and 300 workers. There was a huge number of small workshops employing no more than 10–15 workers doing auxiliary work for the textile industry, on which they were totally dependent. Unique among the textile manufacturing companies was the Compañía Fabra y Coats,4 with mixed British and Spanish capital, which in

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1944 went from employing 483 to 824 workers and maintained this figure until the first half of the 1950s. During the first decades of the twentieth century, a company which set up in the Montaña catalana could save around 20 percent in wages compared to a company established in the plains of Barcelona, which helped to consolidate these industries of the river basin. In addition, the working class of Ter, which had traditionally been regarded as more submissive (one of the main reasons why companies decided to set up factories in that area), were late in developing workers’ organisations and still lived in a clearly dualist economy in the first third of the twentieth century. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the rapid emergence of a succession of industrial colonies (most of them semi-open) represented a significant degree of added control. The companies of the Ter Basin after 1939 (Table 13.2) had a nominal capital of between one and five million pesetas, but there were exceptional cases with considerably higher amounts: the S.A. Ymbern and Edmundo Bebié S.A. with fifteen million pesetas and the Compañía Fabra y Coats with fifty million pesetas. The company owners, who generally spent little time in the area, employed a large number of managers who held positions of trust within the companies and who confronted the workers’ organisations with extreme toughness prior to 1936. Those who occupied these posts (foremen, directors and managers) were dependable and efficient as representatives of their employers in the municipal consistories and they were employed to do the same work in the ghostly administration of Franco’s regime. The employers still had their headquarters in Barcelona, from where they carried out all their financial dealings. In political terms, the Ter region was clearly conservative, an area where caciquism (the Spanish term for the system of dominance by local political bosses), first by the centralist Conservative and Liberal parties and later by Catalonian regionalists, shared out the few remaining scraps of power. The city of Vic, seat of the Bishopric and the courts and the place where the wealthiest people lived, marked the accelerated rhythm of this conservative patronage. After the failed political attempts of the miniscule Carlist (ultraconservative Catholic followers of another branch of the House of Bourbon) organisations, they had a merely token presence in the district. Regionalist conservatism had free reign in the area, represented by important textile manufacturers (Rusiñol, Almeda, Sala, Bosch, Baurier) and their cronies. The Republic and the war brought about a short parenthesis in this state of affairs and broke the secular control mechanisms. However, with the arrival of the Francoist Army of Occupation at the beginning of February 1939, the old order was rapidly reestablished in all its glory with the addition of a clear touch of fascist discipline which, as we shall see, would end up crushing everything that opposed it. The constant influence of the church authorities, with the ultraconservative Bishop Perelló Pou in Vic (1927–1955), continued the process aimed at total subordination under the traditional order without any type of concessions. The admiring comments which Italian fascism made about the influential Canon Jaume Collell (1846–1932) did not fall on deaf ears. However, the subsequent attitudes of the clergy of Vic were notably closer to Franco’s regime, thus abandoning any previous regionalist follies.

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Table 13.2 Factories and Industrial Colonies in the Ter Basin (From Ripoll to Roda de Ter), 1939–1940* Municipality

Most important Factories and Colonies

Ripoll

La Preparación Textil s.a. (Juan Torras Hostench), Hilaturas Noguera, Hilados José Comas, Textil Bellvé s.a., Manufacturas Serra-Balet s.a., Vda. e Hijos de J. Reixach, Manufacturas Casanovas, S.A. Sempere Hnos. (La Seda), Casals Hnos. (metal, in 1940: Talleres Casals, s.a.), HispanoSuiza (metal). La Farga Casanova (metal, major premises in Campdevànol). Parroquia de Ripoll S.A. de Peinaje e Hilatura de Lana – Saphil (Colonia Santa María; headquarters in Terrasa), Industrias Botey. Les Llosses La Farga de Bebié: Edmundo Bebé s.a. (factory and colony). Montesquiu La Farga de Bebié: Edmundo Bebé s.a. (Conangle), Carburos del Ter. Sant Quirze de Besora Hilaturas Guixà s.a., Hilaturas Tomás s.a., Can Pericas (electronics). Orís La Mambla (factory and colony), S.A. Ymbern (SAY): Colonia El Pelut. Sant Vicenç de Torelló Fábrica Almeda Alemany (Colonia Vila-Seca), Cia. Fabra y Cotas (Colonia Borgonyà or Los Ingleses). Torelló Fábrica Pericas y Boixeda (Hilaturas del Ter), Fábrica Valldeperes (Hilaturas de Ges), Fábrica Espona (Cia. Font Hermanos), Salvans s.a., Invisa (turners), Ramon Vidal Espona (turners), M. Vidal (metal). Les Masies de Voltregà Hilaturas Marquet and Hilaturas Voltregà (Fábrica Gallifa), Industrias Riva s.a. (Colonia Poble-sec), La Farga Lacambra (copper foundry; Colonia de la Farga de Ordeig). Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà Hilados y Tejidos Rovira. Manlleu Hijos de V. Casacuberta, Fábrica Rusiñol (Colony), Fábrica de Tecla Sala (Colonia el Dolcet), Fábrica Almeda, Fábrica Rifá, Hilandera s.a. (Luis Jover Vidal), C. E. Roque (electic cables). Gurb de la Plana Fábrica el Tint, Fábrica Malars (Colony). Les Masies de Roda Fábrica Baurier (Colonia Salou), Fábrica Bosch de la Unión Industrial Algodonera (Colonia Còdol pret), Fábrica Jacinto Rifá (Colonia Can Grau), Fábrica els Molins (Baulenas y Cia.). Roda de Ter Fábrica Bardolet, Masferrer y Cia., Fábrica Pascual Fargas, Fábrica Tecla Sala (la Blava), Hijos de B. Salamí, Ramón Martí, s.a. (La Obra), S.A. Textil del Ter, Braons y Riera Maquinaria Textil, Fábrica Estebanell. * The table includes companies which again belonged to their owners. Between 1940 and 1945, there were changes in the names of some companies: some were ‘political’, for instance the S.A. Cooperativa de Ter (1899) became S.A. Textil del Ter in 1942 (José M. Maristany was the manager); other changes were made due to generational changes, for instance in 1942 the Fábrica de Ramón Martí became ‘Hijos de [sons of] Ramón Martí s.a.’. In addition, companies were established with very little capital, most likely in order to take advantage of the quotas; this is the case of Manlleu Textil s.a., which was established on 21 February 1941 with a nominal capital of 500,000 pesetas. The

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company manager was Mateo Maqueda Zambrano and its head office was in 342 Diputación Street, Barcelona.

In the industrial towns established on the banks of the River Ter, a trade union movement slowly developed with certain links to the old fourth district of the Tres Clases del Vapor. Some socialist groups were set up (in Manlleu, Roda de Ter, Torelló, Montesquiu) with quite considerable levels of participation. However, their growth was severely limited by the introduction of the Anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Effectively, during the years of hardship after the First World War, during the Republic and during the first years of the Civil War, the CNT united the bases of the working-class movement of the Ter Basin in an all-embracing manner. It would thus be impossible to understand the struggle of the working-class movement in the Ter Basin until the end of the Civil War without considering the evolution of the CNT’s proposals. In addition, there were no major agricultural associations that could effectively stand up to the exploitation of the ultraconservative landowners of the area, in spite of the long struggles which took place before and after the Ley de Contratos de Cultivo (Law of Farming Contracts) of 1934 and the extremely harsh repression endured by sharecroppers and peasants during Franco’s regime for that reason. On the other hand, a significant number of workers’ shopping cooperatives did work very efficiently and had a considerable impact on the domestic economy of industrial workers. Franco’s authorities reacted viciously to these cooperatives: they were broken up, seized or reorganised so as to get control of the goods and the funds that they had managed to accrue with so much effort. The building that housed the workers’ cooperative in Manlleu, which the Franco authorities turned into the town hall, became a symbol of this oppressive robbery for more than forty years. With regard to the political attitudes of the workers of the region, they supported what was referred to as left-wing Catalanism, which was able to unite the existing popular nationalist catalanism that was even present among local organisations linked to the CNT and the Socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). From May 1937 until the fascist occupation, the region’s working-class organisations were in dispute and were unable to fully join forces. Thus, local municipal power – the only one with any importance in the area – remained in the hands of these organisations, but it was clearly influenced by the orders that came from the government of the Catalonian region (Generalitat), which at no time relinquished control of the main authorities of public order. Only at the very end of the wartime period did the municipal authorities and the municipal councils act independently in a situation of utter confusion.

Fascist Occupation of the Ter Basin and the ‘New’ Power Structure During the Civil War, the Ter region remained in the rearguard until January 1939. The industrial region was not occupied by fascist troops until late January and early February 1939. The limited resistance put up by the

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contingent of the republican army stationed in the area was thwarted by the rapid advance of the fascist troops. This led to the rapid appearance of a large number of ambushers and fifth columnists and meant that the denunciations and acts of vengeance began earlier. On 1 February Vic was occupied by General Garcia Valiño’s column which came from the heights of Moià. On 4 February Torelló was bombed incessantly by the Maestrazgo Corps and finally surrendered. On 5 February the national soldiers moved into Roda de Ter and on 7 February Bisaura de Ter, Montesquiu and Ripoll surrendered. This last town, which had an 8 km line of defence with almost one thousand men and four batteries, was regarded as well defended and yet was immediately defeated.5 The troops of the Army of Occupation then moved with a certain degree of calm towards Ribes de Freser and by around 10 February the Catalonia campaign had practically finished. In the northern region of the Ter Basin Franco’s army captured a good number of columns of refugees who, in their desperate flight, had got lost on the roads that led to Vidrà and Vallfogona, mistakenly believing that these would take them to the border with France. Thus, the area of the Ter Basin was a rearguard area for thirty-one months, during which time its social and productive structure was changed temporarily but advantageously, without by any means affecting its unity. It was during Franco’s long regime that this sense of unity was irreparably broken. The War Audit of the Army of Occupation set about arbitrarily naming the administrators of the municipal councils: ‘until the work aimed at providing the New Totalitarian State with a suitable administrative system comes to an end’.6 Old conservatives, old members of the Patriotic Union (General Primo de Rivera’s short-lived single party of the 1920s), council members of the ‘black biennium’ (1934–1935, the two years of conservative rule during the Republic), Carlists and wealthy people in general were scrutinised, put on oath and shaven by the Falangist companies which entered every town. Initially, the purging of municipal posts and of civil servants was intended to be systematic and efficient without any kind of tolerance, but corruption, and total ignorance of the area and the people meant that it was arbitrary and had appalling immediate repercussions. The army officers who handed over possession to the administrators were surprisingly oblivious to those they were putting in charge of the institutions and they let themselves be guided by a great many pompous, inane and biased reports. Despite this, the ineffectiveness of the local administrators and their total subordination to the orders of the provincial authorities rectified this initial misjudgement to a large extent. The first years of Franco’s regime were marked at this local level by disputes between the municipal authorities and the Falangist leaders who wanted total subordination. As well as resulting in resignations,7 it led the wealthy members of society to make a series of requests to the Civil Governor to stand up to the local leaders of Falange Española Tradicionalista and Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET-JONS). In many cases, the control of supplies was the reason for irreconcilable disagreements. On the arrival of the fascist troops, the industrialists of the region who – either directly or through their old representatives – followed the army from

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Barcelona (some were already present around Burgos, such as the Lacambra and Juncadella families, for instance)8 quickly recovered the possessions that had been collectivised or confiscated in 1936 under the war decrees. The first reaction, which was driven by ideological reasons and systematically used in Franco’s propaganda, was to blame the ‘red hordes’ for the destruction of buildings, industrial premises, machinery, tools and equipment. Yet the actual documentary evidence clearly shows that such destruction did not exist to the extent described and that the factories were soon able to start work again,9 insofar as it was possible in the precarious postwar situation of the Spanish economy. One report from Industrias Riva, a textile company in the Ter Basin with some 290 workers and an open colony, described the damage caused in 1939 and how the industry was fully up and running in a short period of time: To aid their escape and as a final reprisal against everything that they have to leave behind, the members of the brigade put some charges of TNT at the bottom of the stairs and these destroyed a great many walls, in addition to the gluing and carpentry departments, offices etc. Due to the terrible damage caused, in addition to the great many looms which had been taken apart, the factory will not be able to operate until the month of August of the same year.10

It should also be added that part of the time taken to get the companies functioning again was used to seek out and eradicate certain workers. This was carried out – systematically and with hate and revenge – by the employers’ most trusted men. Claims that the factories were unable to function because of the damage caused by ‘Bolshevik fury’ are therefore unacceptable. On the contrary, in some companies in the Ter Basin there was enough material – due to the fact that the factories had been converted to provide supplies for the war effort – to restart production in a short period of time. During these years, the textile industry of the Montaña catalana and also that of the industrial canal of the Ter found it difficult to overcome the adverse conditions caused by the lack of raw material (the ghostly Cotton Regulatory Subcommittee never worked very well), the lack of energy and also the considerable involvement of the new order. Maluquer Sostres himself, General Secretary of the Commercial Service of the Cotton Textile Industry, described the period as being marked by ‘the lack of supplies of both raw materials and energy, in addition to a lack of tools, which meant that it was practically impossible to replace them for many years’.11 The electricity supply was provided by various companies which had been established in the basin for many years.12 With the exploitation of the cascades of the industrial canal, which showed few signs of damage in 1939 (the floods in 1940 rendered them partially useless), there was a minimum level of supply which led to lower performance of the companies, a great deal of bureaucratic corruption in the distribution of the quotas and the return to maximising the use of the old turbines in the factories. Some companies, such as: Cia. Fabra y Coats, Textil Tomás, Industrias Riva, Hilaturas Marquet, Saphil and Almeda Alemany, managed to maintain a certain level of output during the period between 1939–1945 by using the turbines which had been partially

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dismantled during the years before the war. Despite this situation, some industrialists managed to get extraordinarily rich by taking advantage of the privileges that their position conferred to them, becoming involved in the black market of the electricity quotas and even speculating on the inefficiency of their own companies. Such fraudulent practices were of crucial importance during those times of extreme shortages.13 In fact, it was during these years that the line was drawn between those companies that would survive after the future crises and those that were merely a front and would disappear or face serious difficulties on their first contact with market reality. The income of companies in the Ter Basin was affected by the postwar crisis and only the companies with foreign capital and the ones with the best connections with the institutions of the new regime managed to stay afloat long enough to successfully revive their business. In the list of the top two hundred Spanish companies in 1948, there was only the Compañia Anónima de Hilaturas Fabra y Coats, which still had important installations in the Ter Basin (a linen factory and the Borgonyà colony) and which occupied place number 104 on the list and was still potentially competitive.14 The huge demographic losses due to the war and above all because of repression and exile had a devastating effect on the whole of Catalonia. In order to get a realistic view we cannot use the ‘inflated’ figures of the 1940 census, in which the number of births was exaggerated and the number of deaths was concealed.15 Thus for example, according to the Municipal Register of Sant Quirze de Besora the real population was 1,918 inhabitants in 1940, whereas in the state census it was given to be 2,306, a difference of 388 people who did not exist. The deliberate destruction, to a large extent due to brutal, methodical and systematic repression, of the traditional flow of workers to Catalonian industrial companies changed the demographic composition. This is a situation worth paying special attention to in the industrial basins of Llobregat and Ter because of the amount of restructuring that it represented. Moreover, moving around the area required permits which were particularly difficult to obtain. During the first decade of the postwar period there had to be substantial changes in the working-class population in order to keep the companies of the Ter Basin in business. The workers in the textile industries of the Ter Basin had to go through ‘purity’ checks, provide references (one from the village priest) and pay with penance. Those workers who were unable to get their jobs back in the factories were forced to work in the countryside or simply leave the area and the women were obliged to go into domestic service earning paltry wages which only just kept them above the poverty line. This was the generation which, hit by interminable hunger and the poverty of the postwar years, had little chance of leading a normal life. Another element that was required to continue industrial production in the basin came as a result of new migratory movements which in the medium term would lead to a certain rural exodus in one part of the Montaña catalana. Thus, for instance, the population of Les Llosses went from 1,057 inhabitants in 1940 to 606 in 1970, most of them in the industrial colony of Bebié. The supply of labour from other areas could be clearly seen from the second half of the 1940s onwards, although

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the most important period came after 1950. According to the registers of Fabra y Coats, of the 861 workers in the factory in the Ter Basin in 1950, 13.35 percent of them were from other parts of Catalonia and 19.4 percent from the rest of the country.16 In addition to these factors, reference must also be made to the disasters caused by the floods in 1940. On 17 and 18 October 1940 there was catastrophic flooding which affected the towns and villages along the banks of the River Ter and which caused an appalling number of deaths and terrible panic. The town of Torelló was especially badly affected by the floods: sixty-one people died and another fifty-two were seriously injured. The material damage was also devastating: 118 buildings were totally destroyed and 132 buildings were so badly damaged that they were practically unusable. A total of 2,153 workers were either fully or partially unemployed due to the damage caused to the factories.17 The ‘official’ consequence of this human drama was the creation of the Municipal Charity Association of Torelló and the Charity Union of Torelló, both of which were closely controlled by the ‘local powers’, which were also responsible for maintaining discipline.18 In the neighbouring town of Manlleu, ten people died and sixteen were injured. Of the 525 buildings affected, a total of 103 were completely destroyed (Manlleu had 932 buildings in 1940). The bridges over the River Ter were either destroyed or damaged by the floods and the industrial canal was very badly damaged. Other towns were also badly affected (such as Roda de Ter) and suffered considerable losses. The reaction of the local administrators, who had no real decision-making power, was exasperating. The effects of the devastating floods were thus felt until the mid 1950s and official delays in starting reconstruction work left a major part of the public work in private hands. Furthermore, when there was an attempt – in December 1940 – to produce a statistical report of the quantity of goods lost (mainly foodstuffs), the amount of goods concealed led to substantial increases in speculation, corruption and above all the black market.

Food Supplies and Their Control One of the most clearly visible characteristics of the period directly after the occupation of the Montaña catalana and more specifically the region of the Ter Basin by fascist troops were the serious and lengthy shortages suffered by all the inhabitants. Over time, these shortages became partial shortages for the victors and total, absolute shortages for the defeated. Despite their shortcomings, the supply mechanisms set up by the republican authorities during the war ensured an indisputable connection between production and consumption. Yet after the war, all the connections were determined by other parameters: those set by the law of survival, those advocated by the extraordinary greed of the occupying forces and the ‘truly patriotic’ wealthy people and finally, those of the disciplinary measures which were to be applied to the people in need. During the Civil War, controlling supplies had been the prerogative of the Generalitat and later of the state with the active involvement of the municipal

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councillors. As of February 1939, control of the supply mechanisms – ‘the provision of supplies for the subsistence of the population’ – was incorporated into the framework of the complex and uncoordinated provincial administration system, which depended on entities of highly questionable efficiency. The following entities were involved in the distribution of supplies: the military command of Vic, the provincial Civil Government, the council administrators, the provincial and local administrations, the National Wheat Service and, in particular, the General Commission of Supplies and Transport (Comisión General de Abastecimiento y Transporte – CAT).19 Each entity was given certain responsibilities and their work was only partial and generally poor. This factor contributed significantly to the expansion of the black market and the most audacious speculation. In 1940, for instance, a trainload of 257 lambs arrived by mistake at the station of Sant Quirze de Besora, but before they could be distributed among the starving population they had to be sent back to Barcelona. The compulsory product declarations did not manage to establish reliable statistics. The CAT’s bureaucratic insistence on gathering sworn declaration from the suppliers of each municipality of the Ter Basin did not bring any realistic results in the whole of 1939. Neither were there any results from the ‘Declaration of Wine Stocks and Harvests’ (October 1939) or from the request for information presented by the ‘Bakery Committee of the province of Barcelona’ (November 1939). The producers skilfully evaded these measures while selling their products at outrageous prices in the markets of Vic, Manlleu, Torelló and Ripoll. A circular from the ‘Livestock Committee’ sent to all the mayors of the Ter Basin in 1939 did not get any tangible results: ‘It is advisable to make the owners of livestock aware of how advantageous it is to those involved in production when the statistics used by State organisations reflect the true situation’. However, the farm owners and producers repeatedly managed to avoid all types of official control and sold their produce on the lucrative black market, which made certain wholesalers and retailers who supported the New Totalitarian State even richer. At that time, these distributors embodied the image of opulence amidst appalling misery and transformed basic products into luxury items. The distribution of certain products in the region, such as sugar and rice, was carried out directly from the provincial offices in an arbitrary fashion without any knowledge of the real needs. The political tendencies of the wholesalers and the retailers was a basic factor when receiving goods, to the extent that some towns had practically no supplies whereas others had so much stock that at times the situation even appeared quite normal (how those provisions were distributed among the population is another totally different matter, however). This situation of political affiliation also happened within the towns and villages, ensuring that some shopkeepers ‘of renowned moral and political standing’ got rich, to the detriment of others whom the authorities considered to be less reliable. The fines issued by the governing authorities (Tax Department) or any sanctions issued by the military command of Vic for the sale of products ‘at outrageous prices’ were lost or even quashed with evident audacity when it came to people who were members of the organisations belonging to the new regime.

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Table 13.3 Wholesalers in the region of Osona, 1939–1945 Product

Distributors

Location

Oil

Vda. R. Baucells Francisco Riera Felío Vilaró Pedro Puigsesllosas Juan Casany

Taradell. C. Calvo Sotelo, 26 Roda de Ter. Pl. Caudillo, 2-bis Vic. C. Verdaguer, 10 Tona. Av. Figueras, 2 Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà. C. Palmerota, 74 Vic. C. Manlleu, 39 Vic. Pla de Balenyà, 2 Manlleu. Pl. Mártires, 7 Vic Vic Vic Manlleu Vic Manlleu Torelló Vic Sant Quirze de Besora. C. Pont La Gleva (Les Masies de Voltregà) Manlleu. Orilla del Ter, 73

Soap

Soup-pasta

Flour

Domingo Macià Vda. De J. Gros Ramón Espadamala Industrias Ausentanas, s.a.* Pedro M. Nualart Miguel Cunill Hijo de J. Jaumandreu Lorenzo Vila Miguel Ausió Vda. R. Quintana José Rafús Pilar Vilademunt Vda. de Francisco Dilmer Vda. de Luis Viñas, ‘A La Manlleuense’ Alfonso Vilageliu, ‘La Sanquirsense’ Luis M. Vergés, ‘Malianta’ Jaime Illa Aliberch, ‘Teresita’ Industrias Ausetanas, s.a. ‘La concepción’ José Costa Roca, ‘San Ramón’ Estaban Costa Roca, ‘San Jorge’ Isidro Viñas Teixidor, ‘San Antonio’

Saint Quirze de Besora, Ctra. Ribes, 16 Torelló. C. Balmes, 12 Vic, C. Manlleu, 85 Vic, C. Manlleu, 31 Vic, Rbla. Del Carme, 25 Vic, C. Morgades, 16 Vic, Ctra. Barcelona, s/n

* Industrias Ausetanas S.A., a company from Vic which was established in 1922, had a nominal capital of 505,000 pesetas in 1945 and notably extended its premises. At that time it was the largest of the ten industrial bakeries of the region (nine in Osona and one in Ripoll). Source: Ministry of Industry and Commerce. General Commission of Supplies and Transport. Provincial Delegation of Barcelona, Memoria de la Caja de Compensación de Almacenistas de la Provincia de Barcelona. Junta Provincial de precios. Ejercicio de 1945, Barcelona, 1945.

The old cooperatives, which were now under state control, were unable to overcome the crisis because they were not given enough supplies by the new controllers, who instead sent the supplies to the shops owned by ‘law-abiding people’. With such fixed rules, the majority of the cooperatives either disappeared or struggled to survive. Of the twenty-six cooperatives which had existed in the Osona region prior to February 1939, only six were able to fully recover their assets that had been expropriated by the Confiscation Court.20

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Bread was one of the important basic items that cooperatives had produced at reasonable prices with modern equipment during the years of the Republic, but the lack of raw materials made this impossible and left production in the hands of bakers who were ‘true patriots’ who supplied the entities created by the new state. In Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà the two cooperatives La Esperanza and La Unión de Cooperadores disappeared, whilst ‘law-abiding’ bakers supplied the Social Services and had a clear monopoly. Neither did the company stores, which came under strict control, ease the problem. Thus, the retail cooperatives, one of the symbols of the working-class movement in the Ter Basin, practically disappeared and left the working class in an even more precarious situation. The National Wheat Service (Servicio Nacional del Trigo – SNT) placed representatives in certain towns and villages in the Ter Basin. These government agents or warehouse managers were responsible for the control of cereal supplies. These trigueros (‘wheat producers’) as they were popularly known, were in many cases able to make a fortune from obligatory sales21 and the subsequent declarations, being able to authorise or prohibit the diversion of a considerable quantity of the harvest to the black market. This was clearly an unashamed failure to comply with their obligation to ‘maintain the stock of wheat and flour in order to meet national supply requirements’ set out in the Regulations of the Service. A closer look at these trigueros (who deserve their own monograph) shows that they were powerful people in the towns and villages, holding other important public posts after 1945. There were some famous trigueros in the Ter region, such as Francisco Paniego Gutiérrez, who in 1957 was the owner of a thriving textile company with fifteen employees and who was named Mayor of Sant Quirze de Besora in 1960.22 If we consider the size of the harvests between 1940 and 1945 according to the reports of the National Wheat Service, it can be seen that either there was an inexplicable fall in the figures or that sand was added in order to increase the weight of the declared or audited products. Meanwhile, the stolen cereals were sold at outrageous prices to bakers in the same towns and villages or sent off to be sold in the larger provincial market. The bakers sold the bread ‘under the counter’ to the wealthy families who could afford to pay for it. The rations for the poor families, however, were drastically reduced and they were forced to eat stale bread and rye or corn bread. Two factors distorted the situation of food provisions in the region even more. The first was the existence of a large colony of war refugees which was forcefully evacuated by the new authorities through the military command of Vic. The number of refugees still remaining in the occupied territory was high in the Ter region because it had been a rearguard area during almost all of the Civil War. During the last year of the war, the number of refugees in some towns meant that their population was 20 percent greater than normal. The fact that they were families in need, made up mainly of women and children, had absolutely no effect on the authorities’ determination to swiftly exile them. Initially, in various towns these refugees were ‘disciplined’ by being shaven, humiliated and given a dose of castor oil to teach them a lesson. Likewise, some ‘Workers’ disciplinary battalions’ were stationed in the region, namely among others the 5th and 44th battalions, with numerous prisoners and a large group of guards. The presence of this group of human beings with absolutely no resources

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of any kind led to an even greater increase in the already widespread poverty. The municipal authorities did not consider that the unwilling recruits, who were reconstructing bridges, cleaning buildings and repairing roads, deserved to be given ration cards. The local suppliers flatly refused to supply these companies. Thus, for example, in early 1941 the 44th Battalion stationed in Sant Quirze de Besora and Montesquiu was forced to get provisions from the remote region of L’Ampurda. More specifically, they got 7,000 kg of corn ‘to feed the soldiers due to the shortage of other edible goods in the area’.23 The corn arrived at its destination with sand added in order to increase its weight. When the corn was ground and the hard bread was baked in the expropriated cooperative, there were no fewer than 1,200 kg missing according to some reports.

Diet, Discipline and Mortality The situation during the early years of Franco’s regime popularised a saying which quickly spread throughout the population: ‘during the war we still had something to eat, not so afterwards!’. Despite the strength of this popular idea, for some years there was a widespread tendency among certain historians to uphold the vision that the problems of famine present in the totalitarian mechanism of the new, postwar state were due to the wartime period. This audacious claim, which was swiftly promoted by Franco’s propaganda machine, breaks down under scruting of the documentation and testimonies. In fact, during the Civil War the solidarity mechanisms on the republican side were well regulated, although not free of errors. On the other hand, only the working classes had experienced solidarity mechanisms in times of rationing, during early resistance to capitalist exploitation.24 However, in the fascist state immediately after the war, such rationing mechanisms too often took second place to repression and revenge. This desire for revenge was perhaps more clearly visible and contained more secular fury in the towns of an industrial basin where the working class mostly supported the values and the institutions of the side that had lost. Thus, access to food was used during these years as a means of disciplining the working-class population and those hostile to a totalitarian state which displayed its poverty with absolutely no modesty and with ‘imperialistic pride’. In the Ter Basin agricultural production fell dramatically during the period 1939–1943 and the constant shortage of seeds made it extraordinarily difficult to reach former production levels. The area of land sown with wheat decreased drastically and the amount of land sown with rye fell throughout the province of Barcelona.25 Potatoes were among those products confiscated by the supply service. This food – which had for years been a necessary dietary substitute for cereals – was in unprecedented short supply, as were seed potatoes.26 The added problem of the potato pest made shortages even worse. The area of land used for growing potatoes was still quite considerable in a region such as the Plains of Vic, but during the period 1939–1945 it was reduced by at least one-third compared to 1931–1936. In August 1939 the Provincial Delegation of Supplies and Transport decided to confiscate the potato harvest from the region of Vic

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‘so that it is correctly administered and so that this Delegation is aware of its destination’.27 To carry out this task, the mayors were commissioned to control the harvesting process and give daily reports on the quantity of potatoes collected and where they were stored. It goes without saying that this order was not carried out and that it helped to give local leaders considerable additional power. In August 1940 there was a widespread shortage of potatoes in the towns of the Ter Basin. And although attempts were made to give the impression that it was only a temporary situation, the truth of the matter is that the worsening of the potato pest meant that the shortages continued for a very long time. Baking flour (the prices of which were set by the provincial Bakery Committees as of 1937) was in free circulation on the black market, destined for the big cities and for wealthy people who could afford to buy it. Disciplinary proceedings were taken against mill owners who fraudulently ground stolen grain or produced flour intended for the black market and action was also taken against bakers for selling their produce at ‘outrageous prices’. Wheat was confiscated, rye and corn were seized in the fields, but the results of these actions were merely symbolic. In some of the towns and villages of the area there were still small establishments which had made a considerable amount of soup-pasta during normal times, but now their production levels were drastically reduced because of the low quotas assigned by the Resource Commissioner of the province. Places such as Torelló and Manlleu went as long as six months without receiving any oil, despite the repeated yet ineffective protests of the local authorities. Fruit such as oranges (in theory with a limited retail price which in practice was not respected) were sold one by one in the Ter Basin, as had happened at the end of the nineteenth century. Fodder for livestock, supplies of which had been delivered on a fairly irregular basis during the war due to the measures adopted by the Department of Agriculture of the Generalitat, was no longer distributed. This led to a standstill in the production and maintenance of livestock in farms outside official control. C. Molinero and P. Ysàs determined that meat consumption, taking consumption between 1931 and 1935 as the base figure of 100, had fallen to 36 in 1942 and between 1939 and 1951 the consumption level never approached that initial base figure.28 The number of sheep, cattle and pigs slaughtered in public abattoirs in the Ter region fell to fewer than half those slaughtered in 1935. Thus, for instance, in a region such as Bisaura with 5,513 inhabitants in 1940, 18,564 kg of lamb was distributed throughout the year, which meant a net maximum weight of 1.87 kg of this meat per person. According to our calculations, in 1935 the figure was around 4.85 kg per person. In the city of Vic, the number of sheep slaughtered in 1956 was still 85.36 percent of the number of sheep slaughtered in 1935 according to unverifiable official figures distributed by Franco’s authorities.29 In Torelló, which had 4,806 inhabitants in 1940, the amount of cattle slaughtered in 1944 was 404 kg in the month of January, whereas in 1932 the figure was 1,149kg.30 Figures for the number of cattle slaughtered show the same proportion or an even greater difference in towns such as Manlleu, Ripoll and Roda de Ter. Any animals slaughtered privately or fraudulently must be added to these figures, but these animals were

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generally destined for the black market or for private consumption. There are no reliable statistics available for pigs, which were able to escape the limited controls more easily, despite the fact that on 10 September 1940 an order was given which prohibited the slaughtering of livestock in any municipal abattoir without authorisation from the Provincial Supplies and Transport Services. Once again, this order was not carried out. The consumption of offal became an alternative which was not always possible, in addition to the fact that it represented more work for the women and cooking it required the use of more resources. As described earlier, widespread corruption in the distribution of supplies continued to affect the poorer classes and, in general, the meagre amounts provided by the rationing system were increasingly deficient. Table 13.4 gives details of the sources and amounts of many items in the working-class diet during the postwar period. Table 13.4 Some Products Included in the Working-Class Diet in the Ter Basin, 1939–1945 Product

Characteristics

Bread

Product controlled by the CAT. Bread consumed by workers was basically made of rye and corn. White bread was prohibitively expensive and was only available on the black market. Chickpeas, lentils, beans. The SNT was involved in their retail. Those collected fresh were for free trade, although tax was applied (1941). Most were distributed by the wholesalers with a lower net weight which the shopkeepers often compensated for by adding stones. In 1941, the distribution of chickpeas became obligatory in the province of Barcelona (CAT). State controlled. The official price of noodles increased by 350 percent. Above all, the working-class consumed pasta made of corn and rye. State controlled. Only a limited amount was available under the rationing system. In the Ter region, there were problems concerning weight and the wholesalers were able to continue their fraudulent activity with impunity. Its price, even in official circles, increased by 380 percent from 1936 to 1945. Baking flour. A basic ingredient of farinetes (a type of porridge): thick semolina which was a basic food during these years and which continued to be until the first half of the 1950s. State controlled. Their price rose by 450 percent between 1936 and 1945. The CAT declared that the provinces of Barcelona and Girona were self-sufficient. Distribution was extremely irregular in the Ter Basin, which led to protests by the mayors since potatoes were taken to the cities (especially to Barcelona) and supplies were short in this region. During the potato harvest, there were a great many robberies which the Civil Guard tried to prevent. In certain, specific rural areas, far away from the factories, potatoes were grown for personal consumption. Their consumption grew extraordinarily during the postwar years. Basically, they were obtained by stealing them from the fields, just like potatoes.

Pulses

Soup-pasta Rice

Corn Potatoes

Turnips

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Vegetables Eggs Meat

Milk

Oil

Sugar Fruit

Preserved food

Fish

289

Always seasonal and in small quantities. Free price and distribution. Their high price made them coveted items. There was a thriving black market in the central area of the Ter Basin. Totally controlled by the CAT, distributed by the rationing system. The prices established in the Law of 31 October 1941 were never achieved. It became almost impossible for members of the working-class to buy meat. Lamb, beef, pork, rabbit, chicken and poultry in general were consumed in much lower quantities than at the beginning of the war. Many sanctions were issued for selling meat at a higher price than the one established, but often the fines were eventually written off if the offender was considered to be a law-abiding person. Fresh milk could be freely traded but had to be sold at set prices, which did not happen in practice. Very little condensed milk was available in the area (with the exception of the city of Vic). Consumption levels were lower than those of 1936, adulteration was frequent, there was production for personal consumption in certain areas and frequent supply shortages which caused an increase in infant mortality and poor growth levels. Green cheese and cured cheese, despite being controlled by the CAT (10 May 1941) were sold at prohibitive prices to the wealthiest families (by 1942 their official price had risen by 300 percent compared with 1936). Regulated by the Law of 10 November 1941. Official prices rose from 1.9 pesetas in 1936 to 9.8 pesetas in 1943. It was only consumed among the working class of the Ter asin when supplies were available, but this was a rare occurrence during the first few postwar years. In general, it had always been supplemented with animal fat, usually lard. Controlled by the CAT (1941). It was virtually impossible to find. It could only be bought through wholesalers and on the black market. Free price and distribution (decree of 13 September 1939). The CAT put the provinces of Barcelona and Girona in ‘group 13’ with higher prices than the other groups. In the Ter region only seasonal fruit was eaten and there was little variety in the working-class diet. There was practically no connection with the state market. Only those distributed in tins or preserved in brine. There was a plentiful supply on the black market but they were prohibitively expensive for the working class. Sardines (either tinned or salted) and mackerel were the only products available in the area. The price of tuna was prohibitively expensive. Herrings became an important part of the extremely poor working-class diet during this period. Inland areas traditionally had problems obtaining fresh fish, which was practically non existent in the working-class diet. Salted fish (basically low quality cod) was one of the normal elements of the working-class diet when it was available.

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Wine

Freely distributed, but the production had to be declared. Traditionally, very low-quality wine was consumed in the area, but during this period there was a dramatic fall in consumption. Spirits Only those supplied by the traditional fassines (distilleries) were available at prohibitively high prices. Spirits were consumed in cafés and taverns. Nuts and dried fruit Free price (1941). Very little quantity was consumed in the working-class diet. Only a minimal amount was produced in the area and distribution was very limited.

The division between those who had direct access to food (authorities, wealthy people, producers and all kinds of distributors) and the rest of the people became wider and wider during the postwar period analysed here. Members of the working class, who saw how their resistance mechanisms were totally destroyed and found themselves in a very precarious situation, were the ones who suffered the hunger and misery to the greatest extent. During this period the working-class diet reached levels which had not been seen since the worst moments of industrialisation and without the option of ‘leaving for the countryside’ which gave at least some hope during those early years. Table 13.5 Weekly Family Budget of a Family Working in the Textile Industry in the Ter Basin, 1943* Item

Food Accommodation Clothing Miscellaneous

Usual Approximate Spending (% of Total budget) 74.3 3.9 9.9 11.9

Range of Potential Spending (% of Total budget) 77.4 / 67.5 5.1 / 2.6 11.5 / 7.9 7.3 / 18.7

* Example for a working-class family from the Ter Basin comprising a married couple (both working in the textile industry as a factory worker and a spinner) with two children between the ages of 1 and 10 years, living in rented accommodation. The budget includes expenses for cooking, heating (stove) and limited electricity consumption. Maximum weekly wages were calculated to be 119.5 pesetas. The data was obtained from official references of existing products, from the limited statistics available from sworn statements and, in particular, from ten surveys of oral history in the municipalities of Sant Quirze de Besora, Montesquiu and Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà.

Such an unhealthy and paltry diet, which above all affected the workingclass (regarded as hostile by the fascist regime), caused an extraordinarily high morbidity rate (which at time reached epidemic levels) and also a horrific mortality rate which marked one of the bloodiest and most miserable episodes of the whole post-war period. In addition, reference must be made to the extreme and constant worsening of working conditions in the industrial companies of the Ter Basin. The humiliations, the lack of hygiene in the factories, the damp steam of the stables, the dust, the long working days, the proliferation once again of night shifts and abuse from all other classes took

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this social group back to the cruel early days of industrialisation. Illnesses which at other times had been considered under control now once again affected the weakened workers of the Ter Basin and without a shadow of a doubt, it can be said that they decimated and irreparably weakened their future prospects. One aspect of this lack of future prospects can be confirmed by examining the demise in the number of entries in the civil registry. Balfour’s statements regarding the central region of the Catalan economy: ‘illness and malnutrition were lurking in the suburbs of Barcelona and the surrounding industrial cities’,31 have been found to apply throughout the whole industrial area of the Ter Basin. The official postwar medical system quickly adhered to the guidelines imposed by the occupying forces, although there was a timid opposition movement which could well be regarded as symbolic and undertaken on a totally private basis.32 The attitudes of the official medical system tended to validate the situation of abject poverty and famine.33 In general and especially in inland areas, the image of the doctor once again changed in the eyes of the working classes, returning to the model of the old class enemy linked to the well-off classes. The medical service in the Ter Basin had always been limited and there had always been considerable movement among the staff. The town councils of the region were obliged to offer privileges or supplementary payments to doctors in order to be able to fill the vacancies. The majority of these vacancies were considered to be third-class positions, with the exception of Vic, Manlleu, Torelló and Ripoll. On the arrival of the fascist troops, the provincial Headquarters of the National Health Service demanded that all medical staff still remaining in the area make a sworn declaration. In addition, in November 1939 the ‘Court of First Instance for the exoneration of Doctors and Nurses of the Judicial Area of Vic’ demanded a new declaration with the signature of two witnesses who were ‘of good moral character and politically trustworthy’. According to data from the Medical Association, in the province of Barcelona in 1941 there were a total of 2,120 doctors, 517 (24.38 percent) of whom worked outside the city of Barcelona. In 1945, the number of doctors working in the city of Barcelona increased by 361, whereas there were only 47 more working in provincial towns and villages. There was a clear drop in the proportion of doctors working in provincial towns to 22.43 percent. Officially, there were seven charitable or public health institutions in the Ter region,34 including those located in the city of Vic: Asilo Hospital de San Jaime (Manlleu), Hospital de la Santa Cruz (Vic), Hospital de San José (Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà), Casa de Misericordia (Vic), Casa de Caridad (Vic), Hospital Municipal (Ripoll) and Clìnica La Alianza (Vic). However, the official statistics included centres which had been inoperative for many years, such as the Hospital de San José in Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà, which had been closed since the early 1890s. Others were only religious old people’s homes which did not offer any effective medical care. In short, in 1940 the area had only four centres which could in any way be considered hospitals, generally staffed by religious or unqualified nurses. There were approximately 185 beds for a population of more than one hundred thousand people. Such health

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care, which was still based on the outdated nineteenth century concept of charity, was clearly insufficient and ineffective in an industrial area in times of increasing diseases. The years after the Spanish Civil War triggered the highest morbidity rates since the flu pandemic in 1918–1919 and the outbreak of typhus fever in 1914. The conditions of the popular classes – being forced to work on a very poor diet, having to endure the hardships of reconstruction, prison and the unbearable health and hygiene conditions – increased the incidence of typhus fever, pellagra, diphtheria (Löffler bacillus)35 and even smallpox (see Tables 13.6 and 13.7). The lack of vitamins meant that pellagra was a common disease and diphtheria – which increased at an alarming rate during the first few years – continued for a terribly long time due to a lack of effective disinfection. Table 13.6 Mortality by Selected Causes in the Province of Barcelona (excluding the city of Barcelona) and in a Typical Town of the Ter Basin, 1941–1950 Cause of Death

Typhoid Exanthematic Typhus Tuberculosis Diphtheria Influenza Smallpox Measles Meningitis Bronchitis Pneumonia Other respiratory diseases Total deaths

Men, 1941–45

Percentage of Total Male Mortalities

Women, 1946–50

Percentage of Total Female Mortalities

782 342 7,146 92 672 5 48 1,116 1,483 6,677 2,155

1.16 0.51 10.63 0.14 1.0 0.01 0.07 1.66 2.21 9.94 3.21

904 164 4,867 108 737 – 41 936 1,039 6,026 1,334

1.59 0.59 8.55 0.19 1.29 – 0.07 1.64 1.82 10.58 2.34

67,201

100

56,956

100

Infectious diseases, which had to be declared, were neglected. The first polio vaccination campaign was in 1962; ‘among adults, immunity attributable to the infection was practically universal before the introduction of the oral vaccine in 1963’. In May 1939 a smallpox vaccination campaign was started with very limited results.36 In addition, during the early postwar period there was a substantial increase in the number of registered cases of typhoid and especially in the resulting mortality rate. The fact that it remained an endemic disease during the following two deades in many areas of the Ter Basin meant that in such conditions of poverty there were fresh outbreaks which could not be controlled by the miserly means available. With only rudimentary health checks on the water supply and without running water, typhoid fever flourished among a population which suffered its worst effects. In the majority of the industrial towns of the Ter Basin, the number of cases of typhoid reached higher levels than at the beginning of the century.37

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Table 13.7 Some Causes of Mortality in a Town of the Ter Basin (Sant Quirze de Besora), 1941–1945 Cause of Death

Men, 1941–45

Typhoid Exanthematic Typhus Tuberculosis Diphtheria Influenza Smallpox Measles Meningitis Bronchitis Pneumonia Other respiratory diseases

2 – 6 2 3 – 1 3 5 6 3

Total deaths

62

Percentage of Total Male Mortalities 3.22 – 9.68 3.22 4.83 – 1.61 4.83 8.06 9.68 4.83 100

Women, 1946–50

2 – 3 1 2 – 1 2 3 3 1 49

Percentage of Total Female Mortalities 4.08 – 6.12 2.04 4.08 – 2.04 4.08 6.12 6.12 2.04 100

Source: INE, Reseña Estadística de la Provincia de Barcelona, 148–9. Civil Registry of Deaths of the town of Sant Quirze de Besora (Barcelona), 1941–1945, Books 22–23 and Archive of the Town Court to correct any errors.

Among the serious illnesses that affected the working-class population of the Ter Basin during this period, it would appear that none can be compared in terms of its extent and intensity with tuberculosis.38 Without doubt, the serious lack of hygiene, the serious deterioration of working-class accommodation (with overcrowded, damp and dirty conditions) and in particular the terrible working conditions in the factories and workshops all led to an unprecedented increase in the number of cases of tuberculosis. Another factor which added to the large-scale epidemic was the poor working-class diet. For the city of Barcelona, Doctor Xalabarder made special reference to the incidence of tuberculosis among workers and domestic staff.39 Between 1939 and 1951, the effects of the tuberculosis epidemic reached exaggerated levels and the morbidity and mortality rates reached levels only seen many years before. The fact that control was taken from the experienced Catalan authorities (Tuberculosis Social Assistance Service, in which the esteemed Lluís Sayé worked) and given to the inefficient institutions of the New State (National Antituberculosis Board), did not exactly help matters improve. Only the limited and extremely slow increases in living standards during the first half of the 1950s brought about a fall in the number of deaths caused by tuberculosis, but the effects of the disease continued to leave a mark which was difficult to eliminate in the short term.40 General infant mortality, traditionally considered to be one of the most reliable indicators of economic development and public health, rose considerably in postwar Spain and the rate remained at alarmingly high levels until the late 1940s.41 There were serious outbreaks of diarrhoea and infant enteritis (caused by the poor diet), meningitis, whooping cough, measles,

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scarlet fever and chicken pox. In 1941, the adjusted infant mortality rate for Spain was 148.55 per thousand births,42 levels not seen since 1918–1919 flu pandemic. For the whole of Catalonia the rate was slightly lower, but a distinction should be made between the relatively rapid improvements in the Barcelona area in terms of macrocephalia, and the still high levels in all the Montaña catalana, which would be worthy of a detailed monographic study. Thus, the overall picture presented by the industrial basin of the Ter during the period between 1939 and 1945 was that of a region with extremely serious supply problems (minimum subsistence levels), systematic repression, and workers which saw that their traditional means of resistance were in tatters, where the mortality rate was very high among the popular classes and where subordination – as a result of harsh, atrocious disciplining – once again acquired all the values imposed by the old, conservative culture. The industrialists and landowners with companies in this area actively participated – with new, harder means at their disposal – in this oppression. Thus, Franco’s regime wanted the inadequate rationing system, which was imposed as a means of disciplining the population by the fascist authorities which had full control over supplies, to be regarded ‘within the economic war as the hardest period of the conflict’, adding: a man may be asked to make many sacrifices: to sacrifice his life, his riches, more hours of intensive work; but to keep discipline at the dining table against the tyranny of the stomach is the privilege of a cultured, patriotic and above all, honourable person (…) We shall win the battle against hunger, an economic victory which will be achieved if everybody does their duty. That is what Spain expects of them.43 For the popular classes opposed to the regime, the battle against hunger ended in the harsh return to old means of subordination and left an extremely long list of dead people in its wake.

Notes 1. Using data provided by A. Manuz (1932), Nadal confirmed that more than half of the 1,954,791 looms that existed in 1931 were found in the regions through which the Llobregat and the Ter rivers passed. J. Nadal, El fracaso de la Revolución Industrial en España (1814–1913), Barcelona, 1975, 200–1 and footnote 43. With regard to the number of workers, see P. Gabriel, ‘La població obrera catalana, ¿una població industrial?’, Estudios de Historia Social, 32–33 (1985), 191–259. 2. On the incentives offered to industry in the river basins of Catalonia, see A. Carreras, ‘El aprovechamiento de la energía hidráulica en Cataluña, 1840–1920. Un ensayo de interpretación’, Revista de Historia Económica, 1: 2, 1983, pp. 31–63. On the industrial exploitation of the catchment area: Manlleu, el Ter i el canal industrial. Materials per a una exposició, Manlleu, 1996. 3. Even during the early 1970s, the number of workers employed in firms with more than twenty-five workers in the whole of the Osona region was 16,883, with 55 percent in the textile sector: see Consejo Sindical Provincial, Estructura y perspectivas de desarrollo de Osona, Barcelona, 1974, 112. In 1987 the 7,275 textile workers in the 125 companies represented 35.29 percent of all the workers in the Osona region: see Cambra de Comerç, Indústria i Navegació de Barcelona, Estudi sòcio economic de la indústria a la comarca d’Osona, Barcelona 1989, pp. 39–40.

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4. The company underwent a period of major expansion from 1939, whereas the general trend among the textile companies of Catalonia was exactly the opposite. When Fernando Fabra y Puig, the Marquis of Alella, died in 1944, the Compañía Fabra y Coats employed approximately five thousand workers in its factories in Sant Andreu, Sant Vicenç de Torelló and Seville. See J. Morera et al., Borgonyà. Una colònia industrial del Ter (1895–1995), Vic, 1996, pp. 61–62. 5. S. Castillo and O. Camps, La Guerra Civil a Ripoll (1936–1939), Ripoll, 1994, 314–15. The operational dispatch, dated 7 February 1939 in Salamanca, informed of the capture of 2,325 prisoners and a large amount of equipment at the front from Olot to Ripoll. 6. ‘[I]t is necessary to exercise close control over the local Spanish Administration, which plays such an active role in citizens’ lives and which must play an active role in promoting the new norms and principles which citizens must now live by, in order that both the Town Halls and the Town Councils be run by people who not only belong to the National Movement, but who also provide the same with whatever elements and intensity it requires’. Order of 30 October 1937 (Governor General), Boletín Oficial del Estado [BOE], 3 November 1937. 7. After various clashes with local Falangists, the Mayor of Sant Quirze de Besora, the veterinary surgeon Miguel Vilallonga Canadell, resigned from his post in September 1939. He was severely scolded by the Civil Governor of the Province of Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros; ‘in the New Spain there are only dismissals or substitutions, and the resignation is therefore not valid unless it is accepted by my Authority’. 8. The Lacambra family, which came from Barcelona and was ennobled in 1927 by Primo de Rivera, owned La Farga Lacambra copper foundry in the municipality of Les Masies de Voltregà. The Juncadella family (which owned Industrias Burés, linked to the Banco Central and La Catalana insurance company), in addition to the rural properties around the castle of Montesquiu, owned the land on which the Carburos del Ter company stood. With regard to the nobility, there was the landowner Despujol, Marquis of Palmerola in the town of Voltregà. A long list of industrialists cited by B. de Riquer and J.B. Culla, Història de Catalunya (VII). El franquisme i la transició democràtica (1939–1988), Barcelona, 1989, p. 62. 9. In another area, Joan Clavera, on analysing the reports of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sabadell and Terrassa, confirmed that it is difficult to attribute the low productivity of the textile industry to the ravages of war because the stocks of raw material were not destroyed. J. Clavera, ’Industrialització i canvi de conjuntura en la Catalunya de la postguerra’, Recerques, 6 (1976), 205–21. This opinion is shared by Borja de Riquer, who estimated the losses in productive equipment suffered by the Catalonian textile industry to be around 35 million pesetas, Riquer and Culla, Història de Catalunya, pp. 109–10. 10. See 50 aniversario de Industrias Riva, s.a., Barcelona, 1975, p. 31. 11. J. Maluquer, La política algodonera (1940–1970), Barcelona, 1973, p. 65. 12. The electricity companies present in the industrial basin were: Energía Eléctrica del Ter (1932), La Eléctrica de Ripoll, s.a. and Sociedad Anónima Fuerzas del Ter. The position of certain companies near the jumps gave them a slight advantage when it came to fully resuming operations. This was the case of the Swiss company Edmundo Bebié, s.a. and S.A. Ymbern. 13. A. Ribas, L’economia catalana sota el franquisme (1939–1953), Barcelona, 1978, p. 109 and pp. 155–80, on the black market and the mockery of the intervention measures. 14. A. Carreras and X. Tafunell, ‘La gran empresa en España (1917–1974). Una primera aproximación’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 3 (1993), pp. 127–43. 15. J. Rebagliato, ‘L’evolució demogràfica entre el 1940 i el 1975’, Història de Catalunya (VI), Barcelona, 1978; and De Riquer and Culla, Història de Catalunya, 19–26 and table at page 23. 16. Morera et al., Borgonyà, 196–97. In another factory of the Ter Basin, Textil Tomás, with 320 workers in 1952, 31 percent of the workers came from towns and villages outside the industrial basin. 17. R. Pujol, Història de la Postguerra. Torellò (1939–1950), Moià, 1991, pp. 103–21; and. L. Thomasa, La Vall de Torelló, Barcelona, 1963, pp. 64–65. On Manlleu see the work of E. Gaja, Historia de Manlleu, Barcelona, 1976, pp. 222–28 and the map on pp. 224–25. On

296

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Joan Serrallonga Roda de Ter, see I. Ollich et al., A banda i banda del Ter. Història de Toda, Vic, 1995, pp. 248–53. ‘The Consultative Committee shall be implacable and it shall consist of the Town Councillors and all the members of the Administrative Committee together with the local leader of the FET and the JONS, representatives of the Local Committee for the Protection of Children, representatives of Catholic Action, the parish priest and the Municipal Judge, chaired by the Mayor, with the secretary of the Town Hall’, Art. VI, Reglamento de la Asociación Municipal de Beneficencia de Torelló, Torelló, 1942. The decree of 16 February 1938 established the Supply and Transport Service; on 28 April 1939 the Commission of Supplies and Transport was organised with provincial delegations and the Law of 24 June 1941 and the Regulations of 11 July 1941 changed the structure of this service. The Ter region depended on the delegations in the provinces of Barcelona and Girona, which did not always have the same directives. J. Casanovas, El cooperativisme a Osona, Vic, 1998, pp. 131–32; Generalitat de Catalunya, Informes sobre els patrimonis confiscats a les cooperatives el 1939, Barcelona, 1984; and P. Solà, Història de l’Associacionisme català contemporani. Barcelona i les comarques de la seva demarcació, Barcelona, 1993, pp. 519–57. ‘It is compulsory to sell to the National Service the amount of wheat it requires to meet the needs of consumption or regulate the domestic market. This obligation will be come before the scales periodically set by zones by the National Wheat Service and the first demands will be made of the producers’. Art. 6, section c) of the Law of 23 August 1937 (BOE, 25 August 1937). The authority of the National Wheat Service was widened by the decrees of 13 February 1938 and 27 October 1939 and by the Orders of 17 September 1940, 22 September 1941 and 13 January 1943. Gracia Durán Muñoz, in a long treatise published in Alimentación Nacional (CAT, 3:21, 1942, p. 3) spoke of divine intervention in the creation of the National Wheat Service. J. Serrallonga, Sant Quirze de Besora (de 1714 a l’actualitat), Vic, 1998, p. 169. Archivo Municipal de Sant Quirze de Besora, Correspondence (1941), Supplies, Workers’ Disciplinary Battalion number 44. From the first decade of the twentieth century, in the Ter Basin it was very common for workers to set up soup kitchens in the village squares to help endure the effects of a strike, during a lockout or during times of frost or low water which paralysed activity in the factories of the industrial canal. The same local authorities, in order to avoid disturbances, tolerated these soup kitchens and even collaborated financially to keep them going. J. Serrallonga and J.L. Martín Ramos, Condicions materials i resposta obrera a la Catalunya contemporània, Barcelona, 1992. In Cámara Oficial de Comercio y Navegación de Barcelona, Memoria Comercial para el año 1942, Barcelona, 1942, ‘official’ figures given for the amount of land sown with rye in the province of Barcelona showed a drop from 1,800 ha in 1935 to 160 ha in 1940. The amount of land sown with wheat decreased by around 45 percent. Seed potatoes were confiscated by the National Seed Potato Service ‘to coordinate activities in order to improve and increase production’, Decree of 6 December 1941. CAT, Barcelona Delegation, ‘Norms to regulate the distribution of the next potato harvest in the region of Vic’, 19 August 1939. Communication sent to all town halls of the region of Osona. These norms made it obligatory to make a sworn declaration ‘of the amount of land sown and the approximate quantity of potatoes to be collected’. C. Molinero and P. Ysàs, ‘Patria, Justicia y Pan’. Nivell de vida y condicions de treball a Catalunya (1939–1951), Barcelona, 1985, p. 180. J. Albareda et al., Història d’Osona, Vic, 1984, 266. The number of cattle slaughtered in public abattoirs in Vic in 1956 was at a level of 88.95 percent in 1935. Pujol, Història de la Postguerra, p. 185. S. Balfour, La dictadura, los trabajadores y la ciudad. El movimiento obrero en el área metropolitana de Barcelona (1939–1988), Valencia, 1989, p. 25. ‘The Catalan medical classes, with a few honourable exceptions, adapted to the conditions imposed by Franco’s regime right from the very beginning […]. The issue of the purges was a rather bizarre affair and affected around ten percent of registered doctors’. J. Raventós et

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33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

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al., Historia de la medicina catalana durante el franquismo y sus consecuencias, Madrid, 1991, pp. 27–28. J.M. Calbet, ‘La Medicina catalana i l’alimentació’, Recerques, 4 (1974), pp. 250–61. As an example of this justificatory validation, Calbet cited the work of Doctor Francisco GarcíaValdecasas Santamaría (b. 1910): ‘La alimentación del hombre sano’ (1947). Instituto Nacional de Estadística [INE], Reseña estadística de la Provincia de Barcelona, Madrid, 1957, pp. 838–44; and INE, Reseña estadística de la Provincia de Gerona, Madrid, 1959. Report from the Quinta de Salud ‘La Alianza’ (Vic). J.M. Sala, Diagnóstico, profilaxis y tratamiento de la difteria, Barcelona, 1942. Sala was a Doctor in the Hospital Municipal de Infecciosos, Barcelona. See also: J.M. Sala, Tratado de las enfermedades infecciosas de la infancia, Barcelona, 1955. Vaccination against diptheria was not widely available until 1965. Edict of the General-in-Chief of the 4th Military Region on the smallpox vaccination campaign in accordance with the Provincial Health Authorities, 16 May 1939. On polio, J.R. Villalbí, ‘La cobertura vacunal de la infancia’, Revisiones en Salud Pública, 2 (1991), pp. 89–105. J. Serrallonga, ‘La vida i la mort a la Catalunya treballadora: Osona, 1880–1920’, in Serrallonga and Martín Ramos, Condicions materials, pp. 40–43. C. García Luquero (ed.), La tuberculosis como problema social-sanitario (estudio aplicado a Barcelona), Barcelona, 1950. The number of deaths caused by tuberculosis in the province of Barcelona went from an annual rate of 112 in 1932 to 129.5 in 1948 (p. 12). INE, Tablas de mortalidad de la población española años 1900 a 1940, Madrid, 1952. E. Xalabarder, ‘Dispensarios blancos de Barcelona’ in García Luquero, La tuberculosis, 50–54. Out of a total of 13,267 ill people between 1944 and 1948, 30.5 percent were industrial workers and 29.62 percent were domestic staff. Xalabarder had experience of working with epidemics. He studied the cholera epidemic in 1911 and was a member of the Hygiene Academy of Catalonia. J. Sánchez Buenaventura and M.L. Mustieles, ‘Estudio epidemiológico comparative de la tuberculosis en España y en Valencia’, Revista de Sanidad e Higiene Pública, 57 (1983), 1175–219; ‘overall, it can be said that from 1940 to 1951 there were two epidemics (in Spain) which led to the greatest number of deaths’ (page 1186). For the Ter Basin there are no uninterrupted statistics about the number of deaths due to tuberculosis in the period immediately after 1939. For the city of Barcelona, see P. de March, ‘La evolución de la tuberculosis en Barcelona. 60 años de observación (1921–1981)’, Revista de Enfermedades del Tórax, 31 (1981), 53–88. A. Serigó, La evolución de la mortalidad infantil en España (bases actuales para la lucha), Madrid, 1964. The Law of Infant and Maternal Health, enacted by the Government Minister Valentín Galarza on 12 July 1941, was clearly a failure. F. Bolumar et al., ‘La mortalidad en España. I. La mortalidad infantil en España, 1900–1976’, Revista de Sanidad e Higiene Pública, 55 (1981), 1205–19. R. Gómez, La mortalidad infantil española en el siglo XX, Madrid, 1992, 34 (Table 2.1). A local example from the industrial basin is in J. Deniel and V. Grenzner, La Sanitat a Roda de Ter, Vic, 1988. Alimentación Nacional, CAT, 2:6, 1942, 1.

CHAPTER 14

A FUNDAMENTAL INSTRUMENT FOR LABOUR-FORCE CONTROL? REFLECTIONS ON THE VERTICAL TRADE UNION ORGANISATION OF THE FRANCO REGIME José Babiano

Aside from official works, the first study on vertical trade unions appeared in 1976, the same year in which the Spanish Trade Union Organisation [Organización Sindical Española – OSE] was dissolved and its administration became part of the short-lived Institutional Administration of Socioprofessional Services [Administración Institucional de Servicios Socioprofesionales – AISS].1 This study is, of course, Manuel Ludevid’s book. Four years later, a new work appeared entitled Vertical Trade Unionism and the Composition of the Francoist State.2 Both books, but especially the latter, can be considered pioneers in the study of vertical trade unions. What is more, they have undoubtedly had an influence, because since their publication they have been quoted over and over again in historiographical works which have dealt, even if only indirectly, with this aspect of Franco’s regime. Although purely anecdotal, neither of these two influential authors were historians. It is certainly less anecdotal that their analyses were based on a fundamentally regulatory approach, following the discourse and, above all, the main laws that determined and defined the workings of the OSE. By taking this approach, they inevitably ended up emphasising the key importance of vertical trade unions as a disciplinary tool for containing, controlling and repressing the labour force.3 The principal objective of this state tool was to control labour relations and as a result it was in charge of a wide range of functions: ensuring that workers were hired at the price set by the government; guaranteeing that the use of the labour force was not disrupted by sociopolitical activities within the companies; maintaining the

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relations of dominance in the production process; ensuring that the government’s labour laws were upheld; and avoiding, at both political and legal levels, that capital and labour established working conditions independently.4 Of course, if we keep to the regulatory and institutional approach, we can easily see the meaning and functions of vertical trade unionism. Even before it was set up,5 the Labour Jurisdiction stipulated that: The National State Trade Union Organisation is based on the principles of Unity, Totality and Hierarchy. All aspects of the economy shall be demarcated by branches of production and services in vertical trade unions […]. The organisation of the trade unions will accordingly be the responsibility of members of the FET and the JONS [Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista]. Vertical trade unions are instruments at the service of the State and will be the main instrument by means of which it will carry out its economic policy. Trade unions are responsible for being aware of any production problems and for recommending solutions in the national interest. Vertical trade unions will be able to intervene through specialised organs in the regulation, surveillance and compliance of working conditions. Vertical trade unions will be able to set up, maintain or oversee organisations involved in research, planning, or analysis or social organisations which are of interest to the factors of production.6

It is clear that the Francoist State would never use the OSE as ‘the main instrument by means of which it would carry out its economic policy’. However, two years after the enactment of the Labour Jurisdiction, the Trade Union Law confirmed the functions of control and regulation of labour relations which had been enunciated in 1938. It was once again made clear that vertical trade unions were to be responsible for maintaining discipline among workers. What is more, they legally represented their members, among whom all ‘producers’ were automatically and compulsorily included after Salvador Merino (the OSE’s first leader)’s initial attempt at voluntary affiliation. They were also responsible for suggesting laws and regulations to the government which were aimed at boosting productivity and improving discipline. Likewise, given that both the collective rights of the parties as well as negotiations and conflicts between them were categorically denied by the Francoist Labour Law, the only remaining possibility was individual resistance. According to the fundamental provisions of the law, vertical trade unions had to act as mediators in this type of conflict prior to the involvement of an industrial tribunal.7 At the same time, they were also responsible for supporting those institutions in charge of planning, job placements, loans and cooperatives, in addition to promoting vocational training.

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Additionally, and once again according to the fundamental provisions of the Labour Law, the OSE was in charge of a variety of benevolent organisations aimed at helping workers.8 These benevolent works also had a clear disciplinary purpose, insofar as this had been the objective of all working-class welfare programmes since the appearance of industrial paternalism.9 In other words, these social works should not be regarded as having a separate function from that of demarcation and discipline, but rather as being the other side of the same coin, an integral part of the control mechanisms placed at the disposal of the OSE.10 On the other hand, in terms of control and regulation, emphasis should be placed on the issue of job placements, to which reference has been made above. It was, in effect, an attempt to control something as basic and fundamentally important as the labour market. This was controlled by means of Placement Offices.11 These offices were set up to administer the supply of workers, but their disciplinary nature became obvious when, in 1940, the government declared that it was compulsory to hold a Cartilla Profesional (Employment Notebook). This was a professional identity card for workers and at the same time could be used as an instrument to control the labour market. The document contained personal details, category and work history of the holder, details of the companies in which he or she had been employed, and a record of professional illnesses, any sanctions received and whether or not the worker was a member of the Falange movement. In short, it was very similar to the libretto di lavoro which existed in fascist Italy.12 Of course, the wide range of functions referred to here were also carried out by the Hermandades de Labradores (Farmers’ Associations), a type of agrarian division of the OSE. The Farmers’ Associations carried out specific functions related to agricultural production, such as performing various community services, making sure that products were not adulterated, purchasing and distributing seeds and farming implements, stimulating production and agricultural cooperation etc. Finally, the Farmers’ Associations had a Rural Police Force at their disposal, a unit intended to supplement the Civil Guard, aimed at keeping the peace and making sure the rights of landowners were respected.13 In short, considering the wide range of powers that the legislation assigned to them and in view of Salvador Merino’s failure to make the OSE an organisation with a greater degree of independence from the state, the logical conclusion is, in effect, that vertical trade unionism was a fundamental instrument for controlling the labour force. And, judging by the works of Ludevid and Aparicio, that has been the most widely held view among historians. Let us take a brief look at a few examples: until the mid 1940s, trade unions were one of the main instruments for the enforced mobilisation of the labour force.14

Their importance, in addition to their high level of efficiency, can be clearly seen if we consider that:

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the strategic role that the victors of the Civil War gave to the trade union movement, which was responsible for controlling the labour force in economic, work and political terms, meant that […] the mass trade union opposition movement did not appear until the mid-1970s.15

Of course, one can be even more emphatic by categorically stating that: current historiography gives top priority to the criterion according to which the consolidation of the regime would not have been possible without the control imposed on the salaried labour force by the new Trade Union Organsation.16

For my part, I do not believe that the consolidation of the regime depended on the Trade Union Organisation. On the contrary, I believe that there should be a review of the notion – which is extremely widespread as demonstrated above – that this instrument played a central role in controlling the labour force. This chapter aims to undertake such a review in three parts. First, there will be a brief, general look at the contradictions represented by the very existence of the OSE within the logic of the labour-relations system of the Franco regime. In this respect, observations shall not go beyond the legal regulations and the major institutional definitions which tend to be taken into consideration when portraying vertical trade unionism. Secondly, certain empirical data, taken from a variety of studies which refers to how the OSE was actually structured during the 1940s and 1950s will be examined. The information comes from much more accurate studies than those of Ludevid and Aparicio, which have had a fundamental role in the historiography of vertical trade unionism. Finally, new empirical data will be added from my own research, with which I shall attempt to provide further information on aspects regarding the introduction and structuring of the OSE, in addition to considering the issue of controlling the labour force. This last point requires an explanation of what such control consisted of; or better still, which areas it affected. This chapter will begin with a general analysis of the existence of the OSE. The institutional position of the trade union within the Francoist system of labour relations was subject to an inexplicable contradiction. It was a fundamental contradiction, given that the problem came from the fact that it was conceived as an organism of collective control dealing with labour relations of an individual nature. Francoist labour regulations, at least until the 1958 Collective Agreement Law, prohibited any kind of collective independence and subsequently, any hint of negotiation between the two parties.17 In addition, during the first years of the postwar period individual contracts were also greatly affected by labour regulations. This was the relationist theory, inspired by the German National Socialist Labour Law, which regarded individual freedom to contract workers as pernicious, given that individual contracts – just like collective contracts – gave rise to a class struggle, were unaware of the personal characteristics of the subject and ignored the fact that workers were not free to be contracted since there was no equality between both parties. Relationism considered labour relations to be a personal relationship based on the association of interests beginning as

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soon as a worker started in a company.18 Bearing in mind that in 1944 a new Labour Contract Law was passed, it can therefore be concluded that in practical terms, relationism failed. However, its influence eliminated the liberal characteristics and risks of individual work contracts and their selfregulating function. Against such a backdrop of individual labour relations, the institutional position of the OSE was inevitably contradictory, if not useless. Given this unusual institutional position, it is understandable that a series of functions for which the OSE was legally responsible were handed over to the Ministry of Labour or other subordinate bodies. Such was the case with overseeing working conditions, a task which, together with any disciplinary action resulting from this, was carried out by the Ministry of Work. The Industrial Tribunal also undertook disciplinary action and acted, like the OSE, as a mediator.19 It is easy to understand that the transfer and/or overlapping of functions limited the importance of vertical trade unions within the specialised institutional framework of labour relations. However, it is not only possible to challenge the fundamental role of the OSE in terms of the institutional contradictions we have just examined. The most recent studies which have carried out a more specific analysis of the development of vertical trade unions have brought to light its serious operational deficiencies. The 1940s were apparently a period of slow institutional establishment for the OSE, during which its real presence was weak in the life of provincial capitals and practically non existent in towns and villages. In small villages, the administration found it impossible to structure the labour force into sectors and was forced to include various professions in a ‘joint local trade union’. Only in the following decade did vertical trade unions improve their organisational and administrative abilities.20 The problem was not only limited to provincial capitals and small towns and villages. It also affected big cities such as Barcelona. In fact, Balfour told of the attempt to attract, by means of the ‘operation red leaders for the Central Nacional Sindicalista [CNS]’, old militants from the Anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo [CNT] to vertical trade unionism to provide it with working-class leaders. As such, the operation clearly illustrated how difficult the structural organisation was proving to be, since it was forced to fall back on the experience of those it considered to be its enemies. However, in light of the resounding failure of the operation, it was still unable to overcome the difficulties caused by the lack of experienced trade union leaders.21 Likewise, in the case of Barcelona, other data fuels doubts over the state bureaucracy’s, the Movement’s, ability to control through the OSE. This is a relevant point considering the fact that the debate is not centred on the anonymous control of the labour force, but rather on the specific control exercised by the State by means of its own specific instrument. What apparently happened in Barcelona after the uncertainties of the populist period under the leadership of Salvador Merino (from September 1939 to July 1941), was that the employers themselves took control of the provincial machinery of the OSE. Even worse, the OSE began to resemble the guild-

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business network of the prewar period. In such circumstances, it seems unlikely that the Falangists who formed the administration of vertical trade unionism had much chance of interfering in the control of the labour force. Since the employers were the ones who had taken control of the organisation (and not the other way round), it is difficult to believe that they spent their time trying to erode their own managerial power in the company. On the contrary, their position in the OSE allowed them to gain access to certain circles of local and provincial power.22 The result was therefore the opposite of the one usually put forward. Difficulties in the establishment and structuring of the organisation went beyond what has been suggested in the studies quoted. Table 14.1 detalils the number of members of the OSE in various provinces and the proportion of each working population that they represented. It should be remembered that the figures refer to 1949; in other words when Salvador Merino’s period of voluntary affiliation was only a memory. The figures, on the other hand, were made public by the OSE itself and considering the general tendency among the Francoist authorities towards autocomplacency, they were probably exaggerated. For that very reason, they are perhaps more significant. In any case, it can be seen that the overall level of affiliation was less than 50 percent of the working population. This is a relatively low level considering the fact that it was compulsory. Only in twenty of the fifty registered regions was the level of affiliation higher than 50 percent of the working population. It is true that these regions included key provinces such as Madrid, Barcelona, Vizcaya, Oviedo and Valencia. However, according to the figures in Table 14.1, as many as nine provinces with significant working populations – more than 200,000 people – had low levels of affiliation of between 17.1 percent and 43 percent. Table 14.1 Affiliation to the OSE and Working population, 1949 Province Álava Albacete Alicante Ávila Badajoz Balearics Barcelona Burgos Cáceres Cádiz Castellón Ciudad Real Cordova Coruña Cuenca Gerona

Nº of Members of OSE (a) 23,841 92,712 180,317 21,173 94,194 61,290 685,382 66,040 87,170 139,637 105,231 120,070 78,497 76,120 63,420 91,131

Working Population (b) 47,709 133,614 209,989 81,203 283,403 170,066 934,058 141,535 180,210 229,445 123,714 187,958 292,325 409,344 119,591 147,492

(a) / (b) 50 69.6 85.8 26 33.2 36 73.3 46.6 48.3 61 85 63.9 26.8 18.6 53 61.7

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Granada Guadalajara Guipúzcoa Huelva Huesca Jaén León Lérida Logroño Lugo Madrid Málaga Morocco Murcia Navarra Orense Oviedo Palencia Las Palmas Pontevedra Salamanca Santander St. C. Tenerife Saragossa Segovia Seville Soria Tarragona Teruel Toledo Valencia Valladolid Vizcaya Zamora Total

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87,716 28,382 61,904 65,371 33,237 177,882 40,842 71,714 47,801 38,748 387,073 116,206 48,599 164,855 46,427 90,194 198,804 34,262 34,503 97,294 38,966 86,325 69,375 56,035 45,091 136,985 15,237 83,329 42,907 74,692 337,786 35,538 120,392 29,786 5,012,485

300,959 82,970 137,388 139,004 91,614 300,077 178,895 138,093 81,158 255,797 647,443 270,385 73,400 256,231 152,852 196,412 291,951 80,226 147,294 291,898 143,662 157,620 167,052 225,327 75,440 381,304 57,134 162,735 84,395 185,425 487,381 123,803 214,880 111,531

29 34.2 45 47 36.3 59.3 22.8 52 58.9 17.1 59.8 43 66.2 57.3 30.4 46 68 42.7 23.4 33.3 27.1 54.8 41.5 24.8 59.8 39.5 26.6 51.2 50.8 40.3 69.3 28.7 56 26.7

10,353,392

48.4

Source: National Trade Union Delegation [Delegación Nacional de Sindicatos DNS], Los sindicatos en España. Líneas generales de su actuación, Madrid, 1949, 333–538, in addition to my own research.

Such were the cases of provinces of the importance of Saragossa and Seville, in addition to Badajoz, Córdoba, Granada and Málaga, which also had important communities of farm labourers at the end of the 1940s and among which there was a particularly high level of trade union affiliation until the Civil War. In circumstances like these, it is difficult to believe that the OSE on its own was able to guarantee the control of the labour force. This was especially true in the case of temporary farm workers who still represented a very large group at that time. Aside from these figures, the National Delegate, Fermín Sanz Orrio, used the following phrases shortly afterwards: ‘[t]hus, when […] the OSE has

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firmly taken root, when all the factors of production are properly represented, classified and disciplined’; and then ‘[i]f we manage to construct a stable trade union movement of our own’.23 Ten years after the Trade Union Law, it is surprising that the task of constructing the union itself had still not been completed, and especially that this fact was acknowledged in an official speech, which would more usually try to cover up the truth.24 Furthermore, the National Delegate also admitted that the trade unions were in financial difficulties, to the point of ‘finding it difficult to pay its members of staff at the beginning of the month’.25 Beyond the difficulties regarding its organisation and set-up however, it is necessary to analyse to what extent the new trade union movement managed to control the labour market, companies and the regeneration of the labour force, since these were the areas that the state regulation reserved for the OSE’s disciplinary action. As discussed above, vertical trade unions had to exercise control of the labour market by means of the Placement Offices and the Professional Notebook. Both mechanisms were considered to be of great importance in disciplinary terms.26 At the end of the 1940s, there was a network of 2,412 placement offices. However, most of them were in rural areas – the 1,411 placement registers of the Farmers’ Associations – where, due to the dispersion of the labour force, there was less chance of controlling which workers were contracted than in urban areas.27 In any case, there is some evidence to suggest that both the Professional Notebook and the Placement Offices were relatively ineffective mechanisms. Thus, six years after proclaiming that the Professional Notebook was obligatory, the vertical trade union bureaucracy declared that it had to become viable in practical terms.28 The fact that the deadline for workers to obtain the identity card in Madrid was extended is another sign of this lack of practical viability, in a general context which was, it should not be forgotten, one of intimidation. In May 1941, an order from the Ministry of Labour obliged these workers to obtain the Professional Notebooks in the Placement Office within a period of three months. However, considering the realities of applying the law, four months later in September, a new order was required which extended the deadline by another nine months as of the publication of this new order.29 In other words, the administration itself admitted that it needed more than a year for the general introduction of the Professional Notebook in Madrid. With regard to the Placement Offices, one of their main tasks was to produce statistics about the employment, activity and mobility of the labour force. These statistics would facilitate, depending on their reliability, a better control of the labour market. However, the quality of these statistics was fairly poor judging by the limited credit that businessmen gave to them.30 In 1949, six years after the Placement Service was set up, the vertical trade unions admitted that since its creation, the service had provided 1,550,330 days’ work, not jobs.31 Although the figure may appear very high, doing a simple calculation illustrates that it is not. In fact, bearing in mind the number of weeks in the year and six working days per week, that number of working

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days was equivalent to the OSE providing stable work (which was the type of work that the Francoist state regulation gave priority to) for just over six hundred workers over a period of six years. This was a very poor result considering the size of the Spanish labour market at that time. Neither can it be said that vertical trade unions had any kind of control over the geographical mobility of the labour force considering that, for example, migration to Madrid and Barcelona remained unaffected by any type of regulation or planning.32 The OSE was also responsible for company discipline or, more specifically, for discipline in the workplace. This was, without doubt, the main place where problems concerning control over workers under the capitalist system were dealt with. This was true to the extent that it can be considered the main centre of analysis of working relations. In effect, it was in the companies (or in the workplace) where the labour process took place and as a result, also where disputes over its control took place. Likewise, in companies there were not only a series of formal norms and regulations, but businessmen and/or managers introduced unofficial strategies to control the workforce. Unofficial norms and customs were an important factor in the relations between capital and labour which were only identifiable in the framework of the workplace.33 However, there is still not enough evidence to confirm that vertical trade unionism played a fundamental role in this area. Instead, it can be said that with regard to the power of company owners, vertical trade unions adopted a very similar attitude to all the other labour institutions. In this respect, the considerable room for manoeuvre that the legislation allowed companies must be taken into account, insofar as only companies could determine how the labour process was organised (this was acknowledged, without exception, in all the National Labour Regulations for all branches of activity), and only they had power to draw up Internal Regulations. The involvement of institutions as important as the Industrial Tribunal and the Work Inspection Committee was determined by this room for manoeuvre and by the scrupulous respect that they showed for employers’ prerogatives.34 Two simple figures can confirm this fact: during the 1940s, rarely were more than 20 percent of all the rulings passed by the Industrial Tribunal in favour of the workers.35 With regard to the Work Inspection Committee, between 1939 and 1958 the number of sanctions was much lower than the number of inspections. In addition, the fines given to companies were usually extremely low: the equivalent of two or three weeks’ wages for a journeyman.36 I do not believe that the OSE behaved any differently or managed to seriously interfere with control in the workplace. Moreover, it did not have the instruments to allow it to do so. In this respect, it is highly significant that during the 1940s, various work regulations stipulated that as a disciplinary measure, workers could be denied the right to represent or become members of a trade union. Only in 1951 was this regulation modified to allow companies to neutralise troublesome workers’ representatives.37 By that time, four years had passed since the enactment of the decree creating work committees. Given the fact that previously, workers’ representatives had had a fairly wide range of functions, the committees could have become the

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instrument by means of which the OSE could wield a certain amount of power within companies. This is what the union administration’s involvement in the selection and establishment of the committees seemed to suggest, in addition to the fact that ‘the formation of the work committees […] will be regulated by the corresponding trade unions’.38 However, it was only an illusion. Without being able to carry out collective negotiations until 1958, the committees were subordinate bodies whose objectives could be summarised as to promote collaboration and increase the productivity of the labour force.39 Despite all this, companies fought against the launch of this new experiment of vertical trade union bureaucracy. Thus, the enactment of the regulation that established the functions of the committees did not take place until 1953. Only then were the first committee members elected and not in all companies.40 Undoubtedly, excessive prudence had been shown, because in 1956, the biggest problem that workers’ representatives caused companies was the fact that they could take up to five days’ paid leave per month to attend various meetings outside the workplace.41 Since it was ineffective in controlling the labour market and not involved in imposing discipline within the company, the areas in which the OSE could carry out its functions of organisation and control were seriously limited. The only area left was workers’ leisure time, life outside the workshop, office or fields. However, not even in this area did it have exclusive powers since the state also allowed companies to undertake social welfare activities. Moreover, trade union activities, including those directly related to welfare, were notably dependent on other authorities of the Francoist administration which were not related to the OSE. Thus, for example, in statuary terms the Trade Union Association for Architecture and the Home worked as a building company and was dependent on the National Housing Institute.42 Despite these limitations, this was perhaps the area in which the OSE was most effective. Data for the end of the 1940s from the vertical trade unions themselves allows an assessment to be made in this respect. At that time, the Trade Union Association for Education and Rest had managed to make a significant impact. It was directly based on the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and on the Nazi organisation Kraft durch Freude, and its mission was the collective organisation of workers’ leisure. On the one hand, it adhered perfectly to the paternalistic tradition of intervening in all aspects of workers’ lives, of not leaving any gaps in the control process. At the same time, it attempted to cover an area which, in Spain until the Civil War and in Italy until the rise of fascism, had been under the control of organisations linked to the working-class movement by means of cultural associations, clubs and village halls.43 Between 1940 and 1948, Education and Rest had developed a wideranging programme of activities (excursions, holidays, theatre, music and dance, sports, exhibitions etc.) and had quite a considerable infrastructure (recreational-cultural centres, residential centres and sports centres). Table 14.2 shows the most important activities according to the level of participation. Above all, the trips and excursions were the most important,

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followed by sports and stays in hostels and holiday residences. During these years, 332 ‘Producers’ Homes’ were constructed in Spain, a kind of leisure clubs with a membership of 1,800,000 people.44 Table 2 Trade Union Association for Education and Rest Most Important Activities and Participation, 1940–1948 1. Hostel and Residence Nº of Nº of Residences Participants 29

108,574

2. Trips and Excursions

3. Sports

Nº of Trips

Nº of Participants

Nº of Teams

Nº of Participants

15,584

1,120,185

11,567

348,887

Source: DNS, Los sindicatos en España, 289–91.

Insofar as its aim was to provide accommodation for the working class, the Trade Union Association for the Home should have played an important role in controlling the labour force. Towards the end of the 1940s, the Trade Union Association for the Home had built and handed over a total of 9,800 homes. This figure represented less than one-third of the 30,029 homes that the state had been involved in constructing between 1943 and 1949. However, it should be added that between 1940 and 1963, 1,167,159 homes were constructed by the Spanish state. Of these, 13.65 percent were provided by the Trade Union Association for the Home. This number is higher than the number built by the National Housing Institute, by town councils and by the provincial councils.45 However, it would be unfair to take stock of the activities of the Trade Union Association for the Home during these years (in the mid-1960s, control over the construction industry passed from the state to the private sector) without mentioning an important detail: a large proportion of the houses constructed by the OSE had been made in accord with companies that carried out social policies and more specifically, policies by means of which they provided housing to their staff. This implied that in the end, the companies established the norms determining which of their workers could gain access to a house. In other words, in this case it was the company and not the OSE that organised such an important control mechanism as the allocation of workers’ housing.46 Thus, the power wielded by vertical trade unions in this area was somewhat less than the above figures may suggest. In any case, the impact of the rest of the trade union welfare associations was markedly less. Thus, the Trade Union Association 18 July, which dealt with the very important issue of medical care, had 1,409,418 members in 1949 and a total of 1,087 hospital beds. These figures are very low considering the fact that according to official figures there were more than ten million workers (see Table 14.1). Moreover, the number of beds provided by this welfare association in the whole of Spain was 14.5 times lower than the number that existed solely in Madrid at that time.47 That more or less summarises all the welfare assistance given by the OSE at the end of the autarchic decade. In fact, it was very limited indeed. However, if we take a closer look at all the possible aspects of control and discipline over the labour force, the OSE had without doubt the greatest

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bearing on welfare issues, although that is not saying very much. It clearly represented the imposition of discipline not on the labour force as such, but rather on society in general. In this wider context, it is clear that the distribution of industrial raw materials, seeds and grain, which was the responsibility of the vertical trade union administration during the autarchic decade, implied a certain degree of control. In any case, in order to further define the area occupied by vertical trade unionism, it is worth establishing certain comparative elements with Italian fascist trade unions. Such a comparison is relevant if we take into account that initially, the Franco regime and indeed Franco himself were fascinated by all fascist regimes, in addition to the presence of some of Mussolini’s high-level civil servants who tried to influence the initial organisation of the Franco regime.48 Just like the OSE, the leaders of Italian fascist trade unions were named by the government and they were people who, just like in Spain, were not great supporters of trade unions. However, unlike Spanish vertical trade unions, their Italian counterparts did not have a system of compulsory affiliation and being a union member was not even a safeguard against being made redundant.49 Despite this, there was a steady increase in the number of members affiliated to Italian trade unions. Moreover, Italian trade unions had a certain degree of bargaining power and were sometimes able to obtain better contracts for the workers.50 Clearly this was not the case with the OSE, for until the 1958 Collective Agreement Law, the government was responsible for setting the price of labour. From the enactment of that law, there was certain scope for collective negotiations in which vertical trade unions were assigned the function of representatives. However, as we shall see now, instead of allowing it to exercise more effective control over workers, this new institutional framework represented the beginning of the process which would lead to the OSE’s eventual collapse. This came about for two types of reasons. The first were related to regulatory mechanisms which were the result of the 1958 law. The second were related to the collective negotiation process under the Franco regime. In effect, collective negotiation, which began in 1958, did not mean that the Franco regime recognised the full autonomy of both parties. Thus, the Ministry of Labour reserved the right to suspend any agreements reached by both parties, to impose compulsory norms when agreements could not be reached and to interpret all the established agreements.51 Clearly, for the OSE these powers amounted to less control over the negotiation of collective agreements. In spite of these restrictions, the OSE still had a quite considerable intermediary role in various areas. In other words, collective negotiations took place at various different levels and therefore the role of the OSE differed depending on how the collective agreement affected the company or a particular sector. Agreements for each branch of economic activity, for their part, were valid at local, provincial and interprovincial level, according to article 4 of the law of 1958. This meant that the OSE had different levels of control over workers. Within the company, control was in the hands of the work committees given that the legislation stipulated that they should

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represent workers in collective agreement negotiations. In this respect, it is worth determining the extent to which collective negotiation allowed the work committees to rid themselves of the dependence they had so far shown on the power of the employer. If this was the case, it could confirm that the negotiation of collective agreements enabled the work committees to take control of the workers in the sphere of the company itself. As a result, the OSE would take over this control given that the committees were their fundamental organs. This issue will be clarified shortly. Before that, these problems concerning collective negotiations can be approached with the method used so far; in other words, by going beyond the strictly regulatory terms and to try to examine which direction collective negotiations took. That is the only way to determine whether the OSE increased its control over the labour force by means of such negotiations. The first thing that can be said with regard to the real process of collective negotiation is that, despite the fact that the Collective Agreement Law dates back to 1958, the first time that it affected more than one million workers was in 1962. That year, it affected exactly 2,419,575 workers. During the following two years, its coverage fell to under two million workers. Once again, in 1965 it increased to 2,488,474 workers, which appears to be a considerable number. However, in relation to the number of employed workers, collective negotiations really affected little more than one-third of all workers: 34.4 percent. During the next three years, the number of workers affected by collective agreements fell once again. Then in 1969, there was a considerable increase to 4,282,854 workers, a figure which increased again in 1970 and 1972. The figure for 1969 represented 56 percent of all employed workers. Therefore collective negotiations did not affect the majority of workers until the end of the 1960s, more than a decade after the enactment of the law of 1958.52 This represented a serious restriction to the amount of control which, by means of the negotiation of collective agreements, vertical trade unions had over workers. A second restriction to the OSE’s chances of controlling the labour force arose from the fact that the government generally blocked and restricted collective negotiations on numerous occasions. It just so happened that the government began to block and restrict negotiations at the end of the 1960s, in other words just when collective negotiations began to affect the majority of the labour force, as has just been demonstrated. Thus, in 1968 negotiations were suspended. The following year, the government declared a maximum negotiable wage increase of 5.9 percent. In 1974 and 1975, the government issued new decrees along the same lines.53 The wage barrier represented a very serious obstacle in determining collective agreements, since salaries were at the very heart of collective negotiations. However, government interference at the expense of the OSE’s ability to control by means of the negotiation of collective agreements did not end here. In addition, there were Compulsory Norms (NOC) and subsequently Compulsory Arbitration Decisions (DAO). Both of these deprived the parties of their independence and considering the fact that these were supposedly represented in the OSE, its role was also diminished.54

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There was a third phenomenon which undermined the power of the OSE. This was the strength of company agreements within collective negotiations. These agreements were more important in the more emblematic sectors of economic growth, in addition to in the most industrialised areas, in which the most militant sector of the labour force also had more power from the 1960s: the industrial working class.55 As stated previously, the section of the OSE in charge of negotiating company agreements was that of the work committees. However, the information available suggests that the work committees of large, industrial companies – the kind of companies in which this type of agreement was most common – were those that had the most left-wing candidates, of the type that congregated in the union Workers’ Commissions [Comisiones Obreras], the communist trade union. What is more, collective negotiation was precisely what facilitated the development of these communist trade unions. Moreover, on many occasions companies negotiated the collective agreement without consulting the work committee. For this to happen, there must have been a movement in the workplace was strong enough to challenge the legitimacy of a work committee that it did not regard as an ally.56 Further evidence of the fact that the OSE’s ability to control was being eroded in the area of the shop stewards and the work committees is that trade union elections took place less often from the second half of the 1960s onwards. What is more, after a two-year delay, only 50 percent of the officials were re-elected in the 1971 elections, even though there had been innumerable purges. Later, the election results of 1975 were an indication that vertical trade unionism would not live on after the death of Franco.57 In fact in the context of the reformist political transition, it was totally unfeasible to reform the OSE, which is what the first government of the Monarchy intended to do, and it had to be dismantled. At this stage, it is unclear whether the arguments put forward here have totally convinced the reader and they have probably caused a certain amount of anger. In that case, I suggest that you bear in mind a few considerations before beginning to criticise. I believe that these considerations may help to clarify the issue of the control of the labour force during the Franco regime and reconsider the role of vertical trade unions within the regime’s framework of labour institutions. The first point concerns the fact that the whole system of Francoist labour relations was based on initially terrorising workers. As Preston has pointed out, such terrorising brought great dividends in the long run in terms of consent and control.58 The OSE did not play a major role in this respect. Secondly, it should not be forgotten that those who had control over the workers in the companies themselves were the company managers. And it was in the companies where problems concerning the control of labour relations were settled. All the actions of the state instruments were based on this premise. Finally, to gauge the role played by vertical trade unions, it is not only necessary to analyse how they developed and what they actually did, which can hardly be clarified from the speeches and the legislation. It is also

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necessary to compare their performance with that of other instruments of the state as decisive as the Ministry of Work, its subordinate organisations and the Industrial Tribunal.59 If in addition to these considerations, the figures and arguments put forward here are taken into account, perhaps the reader will from now on be a little more sceptical when it comes to assigning vertical trade unions a central role in controlling the labour force during this period.

Notes 1. The disappearance of the OSE and the simultaneous appearance of the AISS took place by means of a Decree-Law of 8 October 1976. The AISS was dissolved by a Decree of 2 June 1977 (L.E. de la Villa and C. Palomeque, Introducción a la economía del trabajo, Madrid, 1978, vol. I, 385–87). The most relevant example of an official publication on the structure and functions of the OSE is perhaps that of C. Iglesias, Los sindicatos en España, Madrid, 1965. 2. The exact references are M. Ludevid, Cuarenta años de sindicalismo vertical, Barcelona, 1976; and M.A. Aparicio, El sindicalismo vertical y la formación del estado franquista, Barcelona, 1980. 3. Aparicio, El sindicalismo vertical, 167 ff. 4. Aparicio, El sindicalismo vertical, 106–107. 5. As well as in Aparicio’s work, the process by which the OSE was established can be followed in J.J. Castillo, Propietarios muy pobres. Sobre la subordinación política del pequeño campesino. La Confederación Nacional Católica Agraria (1917–1942), Madrid, 1979, 393–444. In this case, special reference is made to the integration of Catholic trade unions in the new vertical trade unions. With regard to this process, it is known that until 1941, under the leadership of Gerardo Salvador Merino, the OSE tried to follow a populist line which had greater autonomy from the State. The attempt ended in failure, after the departure of Salvador Merino himself. For the interests of this article, it is not worth analysing this initial phase in detail considering the final outcome. 6. ‘Fuero de Trabajo’, Declaración XIII, Boletín Oficial del Estado [BOE], 10 March 1938. 7. At this point the Legal Assistance Service of the OSE would intervene (R. Sánchez and M.E. Nicolás, ‘Sindicalismo vertical franquista: la institucionalización de una antinomia (1939–1977)’, in D. Ruiz (ed.), Historia de Comisiones Obreras (1958–1988), Madrid, 1993, 29), whose lawyers were the only ones permitted to represent those involved until the Law of Labour Proceedings of 1958 (according to J.A. De Mingo, ‘La resistencia individual en el trabajo: Madrid (1940–1975)’, in A. Soto (dir.), Clase obrera, conflicto laboral y representación sindical, Madrid, 1994, 128–29). 8. Refered to as ‘Union Works’, in 1939 the ‘Craftwork, Home and Architecture’ and the ‘Education and Rest’ organisations were set up; the following year, the ‘18 July Organisation’ was set up to provide medical care; in 1941, the ‘Colonisation, Vocational Training and Welfare’ organisations were created; in 1942, the ‘Cooperation’ organisation was started (from Sánchez and Nicolás, ‘Sindicalismo vertical’, 13–16). 9. With regard to this last statement, it should be made clear that reference is being made to welfare policies and not to more or less universally accessible social rights, whose importance shall not be discussed here. With regard to industrial paternalism, to which reference has been made, see J. Sierra, El obrero soñado. Ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (Asturias, 1860–1917), Madrid, 1990. 10. The wide range of powers referred to here can be see in the ‘Trade Union Law’, especially articles 16–18, BOE, 7 December 1940. 11. See Aparicio, El sindicalismo vertical, 122–23; and C. Molinero and P. Ysàs, ‘Productores disciplinados: control y represión laboral durante el franquismo’, Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales, 3 (1993), 36–37.

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12. ‘Decreto que establece la Cartilla Profesional’, BOE, 3 June 1940. References to the libretto di lavoro have been made in E.R. Tannenbaum, La experiencia fascista. Sociedad y cultura en Italia (1922–1945), Madrid, 1975, 142. 13. With regard to the Farmers’ Associations, see M. Ortiz, Las Hermandades de Labradores en el franquismo, Albacete (1943–1977), Albacete, 1992. 14. Molinero and Ysàs, ‘Productores disciplinados’, 35. 15. D. Ruiz, ‘Presentación’, in Ruiz (ed.), Historia de Comisiones, xiv. 16. Ortiz, Las Hermandades de Labradores, 69. 17. In this respect, there was a clear difference with regard to Italian fascist corporatism, which was based on acknowledging the difference between capital and labour (A.V. Sempere, Nacionalsindicalismo y relación de trabajo, Madrid, 1982, 50). 18. Sempere, Nacionalsindicalismo, 174 ff. 19. ‘Ley que organiza la Inspección de Trabajo’, BOE, 29 December 1939; and ‘Decreto de supresión de los Jurados Mixtos y creación de las Magistraturas de Trabajo’, BOE, 3 June 1938, respectively. 20. Sánchez and Nicolás, ‘Sindicalismo vertical’, 2. 21. S. Balfour, La dictadura, los trabajadores y la ciudad. El movimiento obrero en el área metropolitana de Barcelona (1939–1988), Valencia, 1994, 33–37. 22. G. Ramos, ‘El sindicat vertical: mecanismo de control social i instrument de poder’, in F. Barbagallo et al., Franquisme. Sobre resistencia i consens a Catalunya (1938–1959), Barcelona, 1990, 142–50. 23. F. Sanz Orrio, Discurso presentado en el acto de clausura del III Consejo Asesor de Obras Sindicales (Madrid, 1 March 1950), Madrid, 1950, 9–10. 24. Quoting a specific level of the administrative structure of the OSE, Sanz Orrio also acknowledged that several years after ordering that they should be set up, the Welfare Associations had still not come into being (Sanz Orrio, Discurso, 4). 25. Sanz Orrio, Discurso, 6. 26. Molinero and Ysàs, ‘Productores disciplinados’, 36. 27. The data comes from DNS, Los sindicatos en España, 36. 28. DNS, Primer Congreso Nacional de Trabajadores. Conclusiones, Madrid, 1946, 71. 29. BOE, 8 May 1941; and BOE, 28 September 1941. 30. In this respect, Cámara Oficial de Comercio e Industria de Madrid [COCIM], La economía en Madrid en 1950, Madrid, 1951, 415. 31. According to the DNS, Los sindicatos en España. 32. J. Babiano, Emigrantes, cronómetros y huelgas. Un estudio sobre el trabajo y los trabajadores durante el franquismo (Madrid, 1951–1977), Madrid, 1995; and Balfour, La dictadura, los trabajadores. 33. By attributing this role to the company, we are simply referring to a widely held but not always homogeneous theoretical and methodological tradition. A fundamental landmark in this tradition is the work of H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the XXth Century, New York, 1974, although other works can also be quoted, such as R. Hyman, Industrial Relations. A Marxist Introduction, London, 1975; M. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent. Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism, Chicago, 1979; and P.K. Edwards, Conflict at Work. A Materialist Analysis of Workplace Relations, Oxford, 1986. 34. It may be worth pointing out, in the context of the current line of argument, that comprehensive labour legislation does not necessarily imply a corresponding reduction in the power of the company. 35. J. Babiano, ‘Menos rígidas de lo que a menudo se piensa. La dirección de empresa y las relaciones laborales en la España de posguerra’, I Jornadas de Historia Económica de las Relaciones Laborales, Seville, 14 and 15 November 1996. 36. Babiano, ‘Menos rígidas’. 37. ‘Orden que suprime sanción a cargo sindical de las Reglamentaciones de Trabajo’, BOE, 9 July 1951. 38. ‘Decreto de Creación de Jurados de Empresa’, Art. 8, BOE, 9 October 1947. Interventionism in the electoral process can be seen in Art. 4.

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39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

BOE, 9 October 1947, Art. 1. C. Molinero and P. Ysàs, Els industrials catalans durant el franquisme, Vic, 1991, 70–73. According to the COCIM, La economía en Madrid en 1955–1956, Madrid, 1956, 287. According to Sánchez and Nicolás, ‘Sindicalismo vertical’, 16. However, the Dopolavoro was a state-run organisation, whereas the Spanish organisation was linked to the official trade unions. With regard to the Italian case, Tannenbaum, La experiencia fascista. Among the sporting activities, the most important was football, with 3,840 teams and 177,061 participants (according to the DNS, Los sindicatos en España, 290–91). Furthermore, in 1949 there were 15,795 houses under construction which were promoted by the OSE (DNS, Los sindicatos en España). The number of State-subsidised Houses built between 1943 and 1949 is taken from A.M. Díaz, ‘La política de vivienda y la producción del espacio urbano: 1939–1960’, Boletín de la Real Sociedad Geográfica, 120/1–12 (1984), 73–75. Acción Social Patronal [ASP], Las viviendas y la empresa, Madrid 1952. Calculations based on Babiano, Emigrantes, cronómetros, 187. J. Tusell, Franco en la guerra civil. Una biografía política, Barcelona, 1992, 256–64; and P. Preston, Franco. Caudillo de España, Barcelona, 1994, 289–90 ff. This contrasted with the situation in Spain, where in a sector like the construction industry with highly unstable employment, the lowest post in the hierarchy of the OSE – the shop steward – was granted certain privileges: ‘workers […] who hold the post of Trade Union Shop Steward, will be the last ones of their trade and category to finish work on the building, however long they have been working in the company’ (‘Reglamentación Nacional del Trabajo en la Industria de la Construcción y Obras Públicas’, Art. 32, BOE, 26 February 1951). More details on fascist trade unions in Tannenbaum, La experiencia fascista, 148–52. According to what was stipulated in articles 10 and 15 of the Law of 1958 (included in Babiano, Emigrantes, cronómetros, 56). With regard to the Compulsory Norms, they went on to be called Compulsory Arbitration Decisions in Art. 15 of the new Collective Agreement Law of 1973 (A. Martín, F. Rodríguez and J. Rodríguez (eds), Legislación laboral, Seville, 1975, 53). The number of workers affected by collective agreements is taken from the Dirección General de Política Económica y Previsión [DGPEP], Un análisis estructural de los convenios colectivos (1980–1981), Madrid, 1982, 21. In order to calculate the degree of coverage of the collective agreements, we have used the INE, Encuesta de población activa. L. Fina, ‘Política salarial i lluita de clases sota el franquisme’, Materials, 7 (1978), 105–30. This phenomenon can be seen through the proportion of workers affected by the NOC and the DOC out of the total number of workers whose collective agreements were passed each year: in 1964, 20.7 percent; in 1965, 23.4 percent; in 1966, 19.9 percent; in 1967, 23.8 percent; in 1968, 18.5 percent; in 1969, 12.1 percent; in 1970, 7.8 percent; in 1971, 6.9 percent; in 1972, 10.7 percent; and in 1973, 10 percent. (Figures from DGPEP, Un análisis estructural, 29). J. Amsden, Convenios colectivos y lucha de clases en España, Paris, 1974, 142–46. There is general agreement on the penetration of Comisiones Obreras in the work committees and its development by means of collective negotiations, as can be seen in the studies put together by Ruiz, Historia de Comisiones Obreras. During the 1960s, trade union elections were held every three years: 1960, 1963 and 1966. Elections should have been held in 1969, but they were postponed until 1971. The last elections of this type were held in 1975 (see Babiano, Emigrantes, cronómetros). Preston, Franco, 971. This is not to mention the activities of the police and the courts, whose role cannot be ignored within the all-encompassing system that the Franco regime had to control the labour force.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56.

57.

58. 59.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

José Babiano is Lecturer in History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and is head of the Archivo de Historia del Trabajo de la Fundación 1º de Mayo. He is the author of Emigrantes, cronómetros y huelgas: un estudio sobre el trabajo y los trabajadores durante el franquismo (1995) and Paternalismo industrial y disciplina fabril en España (1998). Julián Casanova is Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad de Zaragoza. He is the author of De la calle al frente: el anarcosindicalismo en España (1997), La historia social y los historiadores (1997) and Morir, matar, sobrevivir: la violencia en la dictadura de Franco (2002). Antonio Escudero is Professor of Economic History at the Universidad de Alicante. He is the author of Minería e industrialización de Vizcaya (1998). Carmen Frías Corredor is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the Universidad de Zaragoza. She is the author of Liberalismo y republicanismo en Alto Aragón (1992) and Nuevas tendencias historiográficas e historia local en España (2001). Francesc A. Martínez Gallego is Lecturer in the History of Journalism at the Universidad de Valencia. He has collaborated on El trabajo a través de la Historia (1997) and Solidaridad desde abajo (1994). He is the author of Agricultores solidarios (2000) and Conservar progresando (2001). Javier Paniagua is Lecturer in the History of Thought and Social Movements at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. He is the director of the journal Historia Social. He is the author of Anarquistas y socialistas (1989) and Libertarios y sindicalistas (1992). Pilar Pérez Fuentes is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the Universidad del País Vasco. She is the author of Vivir y morir en las minas (1993) and Ganadores de pan y amas de casa: otra mirada sobre la industrialización vasca (2004). Manuel Pérez Ledesma is Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is the author of El obrero consciente (1987), and co-editor of Cultura y movilización en la España contemporánea (1997).

316

Notes on Contributors

José A. Piqueras is Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad Jaume I. He is the director of the journal Historia Social. He is the author of El taller y la escuela (1988), La revolución democrática (1994) and Persiguiendo el porvenir. La identidad histórica del socialismo valenciano (2005). He is co-editor of En el nombre del oficio (2005). Vicent Sanz Rozalén is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the Universidad Jaume I. He is the author of D’artesans a proletaris (1995) and Propiedad y desposesión campesina (2000). He has collaborated in the coordination of Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo (1999) and En el nombre del oficio (2005). He is secretary of the journal AULA-historia social. Carmen Sarasúa is Lecturer in Economic History at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. She is the author of Criados, nodrizas y amos: el servicio doméstico en la formación del mercado de trabajo madrileño (1994) and ¿Privilegios o eficiencia?: Mujeres y hombres en los mercado de trabajo (2003). Joan Serrallonga is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. He is the author of La lucha de clases: orígenes del movimiento obrero (1993), Condicions materials i resposta obrera a la Catalunya contemporánia (1992) and Refugiats i desplaçats dins la Catalunya en guerra (2004). José Sierra Álvarez is Lecturer in the department of Geography and Town Planning at the Universidad de Cantabria. He is the author of El obrero soñado: ensayo sobre el paternalismo industrial (1991). Jorge Uría is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the Universidad de Oviedo. He is the author of Una historia social del ocio. Asturias, 1898–1914 (1996) and Institucionismo y reforma social en España (2000). He also coordinated La cultura popular en la España contemporánea (2003).

INDEX

NOTE: The abbreviation (n) against a page number is used to refer to a note, and (t) to refer to a table. absenteeism 161–2 for religious festivals 164–5 access to the trade control over transfer of essential skills 140–1 employers’ attempts to gain control 141 accidental deaths, in mines of Linares 186–7 accommodation in mining areas 183, 226 no interest in provision for workers 191 women forced to take in lodgers 228, 230 working class accommodation 293, 308 activity female activity rates in census records 49–50 female activity rates in municipal registers 51–6 Adaro, Luis 156 agricultural depression, crop failures 199, 201–4 agricultural production, overseen by Farmers’ Association 300 Agricultural Workers’ Association 144 agriculture breakdown of traditional farming sector 15 main occupation of Huesca area 198 ‘mixed workers’ 155 postwar production fall in Ter Basin 286–8 see also farming Agulhon, Maurice 11 AISS see Institutional Administration of Socioprofessional Services alcohol and absenteeism 161, 164

and violence among miners in Linares 176–92 Alcoy Federation of Alcoy 113 large number of women in wool textile industry 112 Spain’s most significant ‘proletarian’ uprising 120 Alfonso XIII, King (1902–1931) 248 Alicante, laundresses 67, 71–2 Almagro, Fernandez 255 Almirall, Valentí 25 Alvarez, Melquiades 249 Amadeo de Saboya, King 80 anarchism 10 Anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) 8, 254, 278 anarchists attitudes towards mythical stories 36 objectives and beliefs 252–3 Spanish anarchists’ perceptions of revolution 252–4 anarchosyndicalists 252, 253 Ancien Régime 243–4, 245 anonymity of miners, their background unknown 190 antipoliticism 253 antiradicalism 245 Aparicio, M.A. 298, 300 Aragon and Catalonia canal, protests at halting of project 201 Arenal. Revista de historia de las mujeres 7, 11 Arenas, Nuñez 250 army intervention against consumption tax 204–5

318

interventionist traditions resulting in coup d’Ètat 263–4 Arques, Augusto Comas 92–3 Arranz, L. 251 artisan trades, devaluation 121 The Association of the Art of Printing 30 Association of Espadrille Workers 134, 142 conclusion of strike 146, 147 gratitude for support of colleagues 144 resistance strategies 143–4 Association of Social History 7 Association of Woodworkers 144 Association of Workers of the Espadrille Industry 139 Asturias, popular culture and expectations of mine owners 153–71 Asuá, Jiménez de 247 ‘asymmetric’ forms of friendship, rural communities 24 Atard, Vicente Palacio 259 automatic washing machines 85 Ayer 7 Azaña, Manuel 246, 251 Azañists, followers of Manuel Azaña 243 Babiano, José 10 bakeries, measures to aid the poor 200–1 Barcelona, free public washing places 82 Barea, Arturo 80, 82 Barrio, Vicente 249 Barx Conference of historians (1979) 5–6 Basque Country 255 classification of work in municipal registers 50–1, 51–2 labour history 10 Basque Country, University see University of the Basque Country Basque miners 54–61 living standards, 1876–1913 223–8 living standards, 1913–1936 228–33 behavioural traits, of ‘mixed workers’ 156 Bellido, Vicente, espadrille workers’ dispute 142 Ben-Ami, Shlomo 263 Bengoechea, Soledad 10 Besteiro, Julián 250, 251 black market electricity quotas 281 flour supplies 287 food supplies 283–6 wheat supplies 285 black-market economy, and mining labour market 56–8, 59–61 bleaching clothes 66–7, 84 Bolsheviks, falsely blamed for damage to factories 280 Bordería, Cristina 10 bourgeois, emergence of the term 22–3 bourgeois revolution 245, 246, 247, 249 bourgeoisie

Index

changing view of labour force 154–5 urban bourgeoisie potential key players 266–8 brawls, common among miners 181 bread supplies, in postwar Ter Basin 285 brothels in Linares 179–80 Buylla, Restituto Álvarez 153 Caballero, Largo 250, 251 caciquism, dominance by political bosses 276 cafés de camareras, cafés with waitresses 177–8 Camara, Sixto 244 Canals, silk mill 103 Candela, Paloma 10 cantonalism 246 capital, only limitation to practising a trade 138 capitalism changing view of workers’ performance 154–5 introduction to rural areas of Huesca 198, 206 the new employers 93–4 carbonate of soda, used in bleaching clothes 66–7 Carmona, Soto 45–6 carnivals repressive regulations to suppress 170 traditional peasant culture 167–71 carpenters 32 Casa-Asilo de Lavanderas de Madrid 80–1 Casanova, Julián 10 Castelar, E. 246 Castellon, espadrille industry dispute 134–48 Castells, Luis 10 Catalan Left 245 Catalanism, popular nationalist movement 278 Catalonia 255 industrial colonies 1939–45 274–94 labour history 10 women’s role in textile industry 51, 54 Catalonia regional government (Generalitat) 278 Catholic Church, ‘religion of the status quo’ 269 censuses changes in definition of activity 49 changes to nature of women’s work 45–8, 50 inflated figures in 1940 281 laundry workers in England and Wales 65 population of Ter Basin 275, 275(t) cereal crop losses, effects of drop in production 199–201 Charity Union of Torelló 282 Chartism 26 ‘Chicago martyrs’ 35, 36

Index

child labour, espadrille production 137, 140 childcare, for washerwomen in Madrid 80–1 children in cotton textile industry 275 decision to dismiss Castellon workers 139–40 law improving miners’ conditions 227 working class condition 29–30 christenings 162 church authorities, policy of total subordination 276 Cierva, Ricardo de la 259 citizenship, participatory 247 city laundresses 72–7 Civil Guard, demand for reinforcement 206 Civil War 253, 256 historiography of the conflict 258–71 Ter region 278–80 Civil War (1936–1939) 3 Clark, C. 59 class dichotomised vision of society 23, 33, 37 identity 19–26 loyalties other than 269 use of term 117 class conflict, alliances and mistrust favoured triumph of facism 266–8 class consciousness, enhancement of 108 class societies, makeup of organising groups 117 class solidarity, enlisted in espadrille conflict 144 class struggle 268–71 class see also language of class; working class class-related action, instigated by ‘working class aristocracy’ 21, 30 CNT see Anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo Coats see Compañia Anónima de Hilaturas Fabra y Coats; Compañia Fabra y Coats coexistence craftsmen with capitalist structures 119–20 industry and small-scale production 121–6 collective action, riots against consumption tax 204–5 Collective Agreement Law 1958 310 collective identity formation of Spanish working class 19–26 role of legends, rituals and symbols 34–8 collective negotiations OSE given restricted controls over workers 309–10 OSE’s role blocked by government 310 strength of company agreements undermined OSE 311 collective workshop, to provide work for espadrille workers 145–6 Comellas, J.L. 244

319

Commercial Service of the Cotton Industry 280 Commission for Social Reforms advantages of some workers 21 data on domestic work 48 expenses of a single worker 79 exploitation 27, 32, 33 on miners’ living conditions 79, 226 on mining industry 57–8 ‘mixed workers’ 155 social legislation 227 Sunday rest 160 worker/employer relations 23–5 common identity see collective identity common land, peasant resistance to privatisation 206–18 communists 252 trade union gaining influence 311 community ceremonies, absenteeism 161–2 Compañia Anónima de Hilaturas Fabra y Coats 281 Compañia Fabra y Coats 275 Companys, Macia y 255 compensation system, for disablement due to work accidents 227 Compulsory Arbitration Decisions (DAO), diminished negotiating role of OSE 310 Compulsory Norms (NOC), diminished negotiating role of OSE 310 Confederation of Spanish Regenerators, Organic Statutes 245 Conference of historians ... (Barx, 1979) 5–6 Conflicts cultural and social, in Linares 191 between employers and miners 159–65 over wages and working conditions 122 related to working conditions 191–2 Constitution of 1978 247 Constitution of Cadiz 1812 247 consumption tax, riots provoked by increases 204–5 cooperative movement cooperative workshops 123–4 workers’ shopping cooperatives 278 Corral, Díez del 244 corruption black market electricity quotas 281 black market flour supplies 287 black market food supplies 283–6 black market wheat supplies 285 cost of living Vizcaya miners 223–4, 229, 232(t) weekly family budget in Ter Basin 290, 290(t) cost rises, key phenomenon of conflict 199, 201 cottage industry see small-scale manufacturing cotton textile industry distribution of labour activities 110

320

employing women and children 275 postwar lack of supplies and energy 280 see also textile industry coup d’état, resistance and support 264 craft work, changing practices 9 craftworkers coexisting with capitalist structures 119–20 distribution in labour market 110–13 fostering culture of IWA 127–8 increasingly marginalised 122 instigating the workers’ movement 107–10 predominance in IWA 113–20, 124 resistance undermined 104 role in formation of working class 21, 30 tradition of independence 92–4 see also skilled workers crime in Linares 180–1, 189 prosecution of land-relatedcrimes 215 social background of offenders 212–13 crimes of poverty, robbery and theft 187 criminal acts, peasant behaviour in subsistence crises 206–18 Cuban War 248 cultural and social conflict, in Linares 191 culture see popular culture DAO see Compulsory Arbitration Decisions death rates see mortality rates debts, overwhelming crisis for small landowners 202–4 democracy 246 democratic radicalism, and working class movement 12, 107, 126–8 demographic losses, due to war and repression 281 demonstrations, survival the driving force 199, 200 dependence relations distanced working practices of espadrille makers 137 guild members’ loss of status 138 depression see great depression detergents, laundrywork 84 Diario de Barcelona 27 Dicenta, Joaquín 177, 178, 179, 180 dichotomised vision of society 23, 33, 37 dictatorship see Franco regime diet of miners 184–5 working class diet 288–90, 288–9(t), 290(t) diphtheria 292–3 disamortisation, and land privatisation process 212–13 discipline fascist occupation in Ter Basin 276, 278 ‘mixed workers’ not conforming 155–6 more disciplined mining labour force 154

Index

for new factory workers 96–7 new forms to be ‘learned’ by working class 93 of tobacco workers over productivity 102 work discipline in Valencia 92–104 ‘workers’ disciplinary battalions’ 285–6 disentitlement, law of , 11 May 1855 206–7 dispute, Castellon espadrille industry 134–48 disputes 10 peasant resistance in rural areas of Huesca 197–217 dockers, resistance in Valencia 98–9 Dolz, Joaquín Vincent, dismissal of underage workers 139–40, 142 domestic work contradictory criteria in censuses 47 in family economies 58–61 ‘domestication’ of workers 10 dominos, in Linares cafés 179 Douglas, M. 34 drought in Huesca 199 losses of crops and livestock 201 drunkenness in Linares 177 Duarte, A. 245 economic crises, historiography of social history 2 economy, growing monetisation 44 Education and Rest see Trade Union Association for Education and Rest educational standard, workers affiliated to IWA 125–6 efficiency, of mine workers 155 eight-hour working day 35, 36 El Ferrol, laundrywork 71 electric washing machines 84–5 electricity supplies, in Ter Basin 280–1 Eliade, M. 34 emancipation difficulties faced by aspiring workers 26–30 political, social and economic 26, 29–30 term and its connotations 29 employer/worker relations 23–6 employers different priorities from craftsmen 98 motives and methods in espadrille dispute 142–3 employment at price set by government 298, 300 see also activity Employment Notebook worker’s identity card 300, 305 see also Professional Notebook Engels, Friedrich 36 England, small-scale manufacturing 118 environment, in mining areas 226 equality, civil and political 127 Escudero, Antonio 9 espadrille factories, attempted arson 146

Index

espadrille manufacture agreement reached to end dispute 142, 146–8 fight for control of industry 135–6 introduction of factory machined soles 141–2 issues leading to conflict and strike 135–6 labour intensive and skill dependent 135 negotiations to settle strike 146–8 requiring specialised skills 139 significance of Castellon strike 147–8 in small workshops 136–7 Espartero, Baldomero 245 esparto grass production 136 Esquerra Republicana 255 Estudios de Historia Social 7 exploitation by owners of capital 126 experience of craftsmen 27–8 and exploiters 30–4 home workers 117 of labour force 104 expropriation of properties, by Treasury Department 204 facist regimes, political conditions and class alliances leading to 265–8 factories and industrial colonies, in Ter Basin 277(t) factory sites for new industries 102–3 factory system decisive in composition of work force 117 resisted by craftsmen 95–7 FAI see Federación Anarquista Ibérica Falangists 279 administration of vertical trade unionism 303 family, socioeconomic structure 52–3, 55–6, 57, 58–61 family budgets of miners 187 family model, endangered by modernisation 43 family units, organisation of espadrille production 140 famine and poverty, in Ter Basin 291–4 Farmers’ Associations agrarian division of OSE 300 placement registers 305 The Farming and Livestock Crisis 202 farming contracts law (1934) 278 farming society, ‘family peasantry’ potential key player 266–8 see also agriculture fascist occupation discipline in Ter Basin 276, 278 food supplies and their control 282–6 Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) 254 Federación de la Región Española (FRE) 109–10 reconstruction in 1900 254

321

Second Congress (1872) 121, 124 Federation of Resistance of the Spanish Region, Madrid Congress 1900 253 Federation of the Workers of the Spanish Region, heir to the IWA 252 female population see women festivals see see religious festivals fights, common among miners 181 firewood, peasants theft of 209–10 1 May yearly celebration 35–6 First International (IWA) see International Workers’ Association First Republic 244, 245, 255 ideals and strategies 246 flamenco guitars and singing 179 floods, death and destruction on River Ter 282 floods in Huesca 199 flour, subject to black market 287 food supplies as means of discipline 286 and their control 282–6 La forja de un rebelde, fictional account of Madrid washerwomen 80, 82 France, small-scale manufacturing 118 Franco regime (1939–1977) 3, 4, 6, 255 attitude to workers and to company managers 311 based on a coalition of classes 270 breaking up shopping cooperatives 278 distorted account of Civil War 259 labour regulations 301 reinstatement of factories in Ter Basin 280 repression and revenge 286 and vertical trade unions 298–312 War Audit of the Army of Occupation 279 FRE see Fedración de la Región Española (FRE) freedom of industry, decree of 20 January 1834 137 friendship, ‘asymmetric’ forms in rural communities 25 funds raised to support espadrille workers 144 Fusi, Juan Pablo 5 Galdos, Pérez 249 Gallardo, Bartolomé José 25 Galván, Enrique Tierno 176 gambling in Linares 177, 179 Garrido, Fernando 25, 26, 30, 31, 123 Garza, Enrique Naranjo de la 177, 179, 183, 186 Gascue, Francisco 153, 154, 155 Geertz, C. 34 gender, division of work 44–5, 46, 55 General Committee of Trade and Currency 64 general strike, called for in espadrille dispute 146

322

Generalitat, government of Catalonia region 278 Geographical and Statistical Institute, classification of activities 46–7 Germany small-scale manufacturing 118–19 ‘stability of authoritarianism’ 266 Giddens, Anthony 29 goods and services, cost of living index 224 Grand, Albert 156 great depression 107 affecting peasantry of Huesca 198–9 Griewank, K. 242 Guesde, Jules 248 guild system advancement unattainable 27 craftsmen threatened by change 92–4 diminishing influence 98 loss of ability to regulate production 137–8 retaining positive aspects 93 Gurrea de Gállego, peasants’ access to woodlands 210–11 Gusart, Antonio 31 gypsy girls, café entertainment 179 ‘habituation’ of workers, by capitalist employers 93–4, 95 harvest failures in Huesca 199, 201 hazard of mining 186 HDI see Human Development Index health disease and deaths in Ter basin 291–4 illnesses suffered by laundrywomen 77–8 of laundrywomen 77–8 of miners 186 Hermanas de la Caridad, childcare for Madrid washerwomen 81 Hermanos Congregantes, protests against industrialisation 99–100 hierarchical organisation of work 46 hiring of workers, at price set by government 298, 300 Historia Contemporánea 7 Historia Social 6, 7, 11 historiography, of labour in Spain 1–14 historiography of the Civil War attributing responsibilities 259–60 long-term socioeconomic structures 261 origins and responsibilities 156, 160 oversights and comparisons 265–8 qualitative improvements 257 sociohistorical configuration before outbreak 261–2 Spanish historians studying abroad 260–1 two conceptions of social order 269 victor’s propaganda discourse 258–9, 260 history see social history

Index

Hobsbawm, Eric 5, 34, 107, 242 home workers espadrille production 137, 140 exploitation 117 Horta, Barcelona, laundrywork 71 hospital laundries 76–7 hostility, in some towns 24, 25 ‘housewife’, social construction of the figure 44 housing for workers 308 Huesca, peasant resistance in rural areas of 197–217 Human Development Index (HDI) 221 Ibánez, Blasco 253 identity see collective identity ideological beliefs, and historiography 1, 5 ideological factors, in measurement of living standards 222 Iglesias, Pablo 248, 249 illness, suffered by laundrywomen 77–8 image, of miners as violent and drunken 176 imagery employed, creating collective identity 37 income converting nominal income to real 222 quantifying nominal income 222 income distribution, of mining sector 223, 229–30, 230(t) income per capita, indicator of well-being 221 income see also wages ‘independent’ production independence in relative terms 117–20 see also production individual freedom 255 industrial capitalism, changes in relationships 120–6 industrial companies, postwar repression 281–2 industrial growth, workplaces and labour activities 110–13 industrial paternalism 300 Industrial Revolution, affecting city of Valencia 92 industrial sector, production processes 2, 9 Industrial Tribunal 306 industrialisation adaptation of the working class 92–4 changes to work processes 43–5 interpretations and conclusions 116–20 industries, of Catalonia 1939–45 274–8 industry, changing practices 9 infant mortality, high levels in postwar Spain 294 infectious diseases, in Ter Basin 292–3 inflationary spiral, triggered by First World War 202 inns, accommodating miners 226 insecurity, unstable work situation of miners 186

Index

Institutional Administration of Socioprofessional Services (AISS) 298 The International see International Workers Association (IWA) International Statistics Institute, Nomenclature of Professions 47 International Workers Association (IWA) 3, 7, 8, 36 initial structure 108 social categories of leaders and members 106–29 Spanish Regional Federation 20, 30 internationalist syndicalism 252 iron ore, fall in demand 229 Isabel II, Queen 100 Italy, ‘stability of authoritarianism’ 266 IWA see International Workers Association Izard, Miquel 4 Jackson, Gabriel 255 Jaén, open laundry 73 job placements, OSE control of labour market 298, 300 Jones, Stedman 26 Jovellanos, Gaspar de 64 Jover, José María 3 Juliá, Santos 251 July uprising 259 Junco, Álvarez 6, 253 justice, concept of fair treatment 127 jute, alternative to esparto grass 136, 140 Kakwani, J. 221 kidnappings, desperate situation of peasantry 205–6 knives and sheathknives 180 worn by all miners 180 Krauss, Karl 250 Kropotkin, P. 252 labour emanicipation of 123 emphasis on independent labour 123 ‘integral product of’ 123 two labour markets 56–8, 59–61 labour force control, vertical trade unions 298–312 moves to optimise performance 154–5 performance, perceptions and expections 153–9 see also ‘mixed workers’ labour history historiography of social history 2 revisionist trend in post-Franco Spain 6 labour market a bilateral monopoly 229 expansion of factory system 9 increasing competition 44 structure 110–13, 114–15 labour relations, and social conflict 191–2

323

labour see also work land ownership abolition of seigniorial system 207–8 poor small landowners in Huesca 198 privatisation of common lands 206–18 landowners small landowners facing multiple crises 202–4 tax burden 202, 204 language of class, shaping and defining experiences 22 Larrazábal, Ramón Salas 259 laundresses bare arms and legs a ‘moral spectacle’ 78, 89(n46) city laundresses 72–4 historical transformation of their work 64–85 income fundamental to families 78–80 living and working conditions 77–81 physical work a social handicap 78 professional laundresses 72, 85 rural women serving nearby cities 71–2 laundrywork automatic washing machines 85 industrial laundries 81–3 industrial steam laundries 84 public and private laundries 72–7 sun-bleaching of clothes 68 washhouses 70 washing machines 83–5 washing process and technique 66–9 Law of Farming Contracts 1934 278 lead, instability of the market 185, 186 lead miners, living standards in Vizcaya 221–2 Ledesma, Manuel Pérez 6 legends collective identity of working class 34–8 see also myths legislation, improving miners’ working conditions 227 leisure, collective organisation of workers’ leisure 307 Leon, laundrywork 71 Lerroux, Alejandro 253 Lerrouxists, followers of Alejandro Lerroux 243 liberal democracy 246 liberalism 243, 244, 265 libertan socialists 252 Lida, Clara E. 3 life expectancy, of miners 187, 227, 228, 230 Linares cultural and social conflicts 191 deaths of miners 186–7 emergence of first trade union groups 191 living conditions 191 miners, alcohol and violence 176–92

324

linen, treated in rivers 70 literacy rates, workers affiliated to IWA 125–6 living conditions effects on disputes 9–10 labourers working in Valencia 102 miners 79, 183, 226, 230 overcrowding in Linares 191 living standards of Basque miners, 1876–1913 223–8 of Basque miners, 1913–1936 228–33 cost of living index 223–4 measurment of 221–3 Llorens, Vicente 3 Llunas, José 253 loans, no affordable loans for small landowners 202, 203–4 Loma Agreement 225 Lorenzo, Anselmo 122 loyalties, other than class 269 Ludevid, Manuel 298, 300 Luebbert, Gregory M. 265, 270 macroeconomics, assessment of living standards 223 Madrid Association of Owners and Tennants of Closed Laundries 82–3 inter-class hostility 24 laundries overseen by council 73–7, 82 laundrywork 71, 80 Washhouse and Public Baths for Poor People 82 El Maestrante 162–3 Maluquer Sostres Industry 280 management methods of adapting workers 103–4 tough in dealings with workers 276 Manero, José 103–4 Mann, Michael 19 manufacturing changing practices 9 companies in Catalonia 1939–45 274–8 postwar repression 281–82 sectors, workers and workplaces 110–13 Manufacturing Union 8–9 Margall, F. Pí y 26, 123, 244, 246, 253 María Victoria, Queen 80–1 marriage, best economic strategy for women 44 Martí, Casimir 3, 4 Martí, Cecilio, socialist leader of espadrille workers 144 Marx, Karl 247, 248 masquerades, celebrating winter solstice 165–6 mastercraftsmen directly linked to IWA mobilisation 116 loss of professional status 138 Maura, Joaquín Romero 5 conservative Maura government 259

Index

May 1st yearly celebration 35–6 Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW) 221 meat consumption, postwar fall 287–8 mechanisation increasing level of 112 key element affecting control of industry 139–42 reducing skills to secondary role 148 threat to espadrille workers 141 medical care, trade union involvement 308 medical services, in Ter Basin 291–4 Meliana, tile factory 103 Melucci, A. 23 Merino, Salvador 302, 303 OSE’s first leader 299, 300 methodology, macro-analytical approach to women’s work 45–8 MEW see Measure of Economic Welfare middle classes, regional, linguistic and religious divisions 265 migration, rural exodus due to subsistence crisis 202–4 military intervention coup d’état leading to Civil War 160–1 riots against consumption tax 204–5 miners accidental deaths 186–7 arsenal of weapons carried by 180 drinking 176, 177–8, 183 minimum wage 229 uprooted from their culture of origin 190 working hours and conditions 159, 171, 182–3, 225–6, 228 mines, a recruiting post for criminals 190 minimum wage, trade union action for miners 229 Mining Association, negotiations on minimum wage 229 mining community, disjointed family structure 186 mining industry, women’s role 54–5, 56–8, 59–61 Miralles, Ricardo 10 ‘mixed workers’ 155–6 breakdown of traditional farming sector 158 refusal to earn more money 156–9 Moa, Pío 256 mobilisation of espadrille workers 138–9 urban professions of Castellon 139 Molinero, Carme 10 Moncloa Pacts 2, 15(n2) Montana Catalana, industrial municipalities 1939–45 274–94 Montjuich trials 248 Moore, Barrington 267 Morago, Tomás Gonzalez 31, 122–3 ‘moralisation’ of the working class 95 Morato, Juan José 27, 248 morbidity rates, in Ter Basin 292–4

Index

Moreno, Pérez 153 Moroccan War 249 mortality rates in Ter Basin 291–4 Viscaya 226–8, 227(t), 228(t) 230 ‘multiple sovereignty’ 270 Municipal Charity Association of Torelló 282 municipal registers source of academic research 53 women in local labour markets 50–8 Muñoz, Manuel Morales 11 museums, dedicated to history of laundering 65 myths collective identity of working class 34–8 concept of democracy filled with popular myths 246 general strike a fundamental Syndicalist myth 253 social image of miners 176 that people held key to all changes 244 see also legends Nash, Mary 10 National Assembly of republican groups 248 National Housing Institute 307 nationalism, popular nationalist Catalanism 278 neoconservative moderates 244 Net Economic Welfare (NEW), indicator of well-being 221 NEW see Net Economic Welfare NOC see Compulsory Norms Nordhaus, W. 221 Noval, José 166, 167 occupational illnesses of miners 186 Olarieta, Fernando León de 92–3 Oller, J. Nadal 274 optimistic-pessimistic hypotheses, variables of well-being 221, 223, 228 orange trees, displacing esparto grass 136 OSE see Spanish Trade Union Organisation overcrowding, mining accommodation 226, 228, 230 Oviedo, laundrywork 71 Paniagua, Javier 5, 6 paper workers, International Branch of Paper Workers 113 Paris Commune 35 paternalistic attitudes, rural employers 23, 24 patriarchal system, endangered by modernisation 43 Pau colloquia 260 Pavía, Germán 141 peasant culture see popular culture peasantry facing multiple crises 202–4

325

‘family peasantry’ potential key player 266–8 in framework of subsistence crises 206–11 pellagra 292–3 the people basis for collective identity 19–20, 25–6 defined as productive 25–6 key to all changes 244 ‘the Sovereignty of the People and liberty’ 245 vision of the people 23 Pérez Castroviejo, Pedro M. 9, 226 cost of living index 224, 231(t) Pérez-Fuentes, Pilar 9, 226 performance see labour force performance pessimistic hypothesis see optimisticpessimistic hypotheses piecework abolition demanded by striking miners 226 miners resorted to doing 228 miners in semi-self-employed gangs 186 reduction in 230 ‘pilgrimage of poverty and hunger’ 202 Pinedo, Emiliano Fernández de 9 Piqueras, José A. 6, 243, 244, 245 pistols, in Linares circle of violence 180 Placement Offices poor quality statistics 305–6 set up to control labour market 300, 305 ploughing, few cases of illegal ploughing 215–16 policing, Rural Police Force 300 political affiliation, factor in food distribution 283–6 political dominance, of Catalonian communities 276 political leanings, historiography 1, 5 political rights acquired by defeat of adversaries 26 individual actions against loss of rights 207 popular culture breakdown of traditional farming sector 158 incompatible with capitalist society 169 peasants’ attitude to work 156 peasants’ needs and behaviour 157–8 peasants’ refusal to earn more money 156–8 population losses due to war and repression 281 see also censuses postwar crisis, affecting Ter basin companies 281 potassium, used in bleaching clothes 66–7 potato shortage 286–7 poverty and the dispossessed, creating collective identity 37

326

poverty and famine, in Ter basin 291–4 Prada, Nicanor Muñiz 157, 160 prejudice against laundrywomen 78 Board of Commerce view of working class 94–5 historiography 1, 5 Preston, Paul 254 price increases, key phenomenon of conflict 199, 201 Prieto, Indalecio 250, 251 printers 28–9, 30, 32 printing companies 28 the privileged collective identity 25–6 idle, but in position of power 25–6 production distribution of labour activities 110–13 growth of factory system 117 see also ‘independent’ production production processes changes in organisation 2, 9 dominance by vertical trade unions 298–9 productivity of miners days worked per year 165, 171 evaluation of labour force 153–5 increase over 60 years 159 professional classifications, for population analysis 45–8 Professional Notebook implementation deadlines extended 305 see also Employment Notebook ‘professional risk’, principal introduced into law 227 professional status craftsmen threatened by change 92–4 devaluation of skilled workers 117, 119 profitability, evaluation of mining labour force 153–5 Progressive Party 245 progressivism 244, 245 proletarian emergence of the term 22–3 ‘proletarian heroes’ 37–8 proletarianisation of work force, to meet capitalist development 154–5 prosecution of land-related crimes 215 prostitution in Linares 177, 179 protest, peasant resistance in rural areas of Huesca 197–217 protests 10 PSOE see Socialist Party (PSOE) public works projects demanded to provide employment 200, 201 protests at suspension of 201 renewed demand for 206 Valencia’s attempt to break impasse 101 Pujol, Pérez 127 ‘putting out’ work 97–8

Index

Quejido, García 33, 248 radical political culture, an evolution 126–8 radicalism see democratic radicalism Ramos, Josep Lluis Martín 9 Rawls, John 247 ‘real’ wages, increase in miners’ ‘real’ wages 228 refugees, war refugees in Ter Basin 285 regulations, for new factory workers 96–7 relationism, and labour relations 301–2 religious festivals and absenteeism 164–5 proposal to move all to Sundays 170 social life of peasantry 163–5 repression and manipulation, of workers in Ter Basin 281–2 republican federalism 244 republican and working classes, communion of interests 146, 147, 148 republicanism in Spain break with the Ancien Régime 243–4 Constitution of 1845 244 perceptions of revolution 243–7 relationship with working class movement 8, 128 revolution of 1868 244 revolutionary populism 247 republicans, leading role in support of espadrille workers 145 research, financial resources for historical research 260 resistance, peasant protests in Huesca 197–217 resistance to industrialisation 94–7 construction workers 99–100 dockers 98–9 silk workers 100–2 resistance to moves against guilds 98 Restoration 246, 255 retail prices, cost of living index 224, 229 revisionist trend, labour history in postFranco Spain 6–7 revolution emancipation of working classes 26 Spanish revolutionary movements 242–56 the term and its meanings 241–2 rights see political rights rites of passage, absenteeism 161–2 rituals, collective identity of working class 34–8 Rivera, Primo de 250 coup d’état 251 robberies in Linares 182 Roel, Eiras 245 rope making, from esparto grass 136 Rose, Rev. Hugh James 177, 185 Rule, J. 223, 228 rural areas, worker/employee relations 23–4 rural crimes

Index

peasant behaviour in subsistence crises 206–18 social background of offenders 212–13 rural exodus due to subsistence crisis 202–4 in Montana catalana 281 in Ter Basin in 1970s 275 Rural Police Force 300 rural sector, ‘family peasantry’ potential key player 266–8 rural society, in marked crisis 171 rural washerwomen 69–70 progress to industrial laundries 81 serving nearby cities 71–2 Russian thistle, ingredient of soap 67 Sabio, Alberto 209, 214 Samuelson, P.A. 221 San Ginés de Agudells de Horta, laundrywork 71 sanitary conditions, working class slums 226, 228, 230 Santa Marina de Sillobre, laundrywork 71 Santander, laundrywork 71 Saras˙a, Carmen 10 satire, popular theatre 166–71 Scott, James 10 Scott, J.W. 43, 56 seasonal workers, mining and agricultural workforces 184 Second Republic 1931–1939 failure of liberalism 266 revolution and republicanism 243, 245, 246, 250, 255 sociopolitical context 262 Sen, A.K. 221 September Revolution 109 Serrallonga, Joan 9 service sector, laundrywork an early element 65 Settier, Baltasar 97, 102 Sewell, W.H. 107 Siero, popular theatre 166 Sierra, José 10 Silk Association, guild with longest ancestry 100 silk industry, subcontracting to local workshops 95–6, 100–2 silk workers, caught up in industrialisation 94, 97 skilled workers distribution in labour market 110–13 fostering the culture of the IWA 127–8 instigating the workers’ movement 107–10 predominance in IWA 113 see also craftworkers skills control over transfer of essential skills 140–1 employers’ attempts to control skills

327

transfer 141 fundamental element in resistance against capital 139 key element affecting control of industry 139–42 ‘skills of the trade’, allowing workers to apply pressure 148 slaves, workers identified with 29–30 sleeping accommodation see accommodation small-scale manufacturing devaluation of artisan trades 121 ‘external department of the factory 116–17, 118 industrial structure of Castellon 136 smallpox 292–3 Snell, K.D.M. 223 soap, new formulas for washerwomen 67, 84 sociability, of working class 11 social criticism, in carnival vignettes 168 social historiography, of work in Spain 1–14 social history, a more dynamic vision of Spain’s past 261 social improvement, difficulties faced by aspiring workers 26–30 social issues, cultural history of 10–11 social legislation see legislation social mobility, effect of restrictions on 29 social movements, political implications of their study 4 ‘social programme’, labour relations project 154–5 social relationships changed by industrial capitalism 120–6 introduction of capitalism in rural areas 206 social structure of peasant communities, growing influence of capitalism 198 social tension, riots, kidnapping and threats against the wealthy 204–5 social unease, due to poverty, unemployment and price rises 200 socialism in Spain, duality of 252 socialist attitudes, towards mythical stories 36 socialist groups, set up in Ter Basin 278 Socialist Party (PSOE) 7, 248, 249, 250, 251 socialists anarchosyndicalist alliance 250–1, 253 objectives 248 Spanish socialists’ perceptions of revolution 247–52 society dichotomic vision 23, 33, 37 process of Spain’s structural crisis towards war 261–2 traditional social relations 23 Society of Typographers of Madrid 28–9 sociocultural relationships, in Linares

328

community 189–90 Sociologia del Trabajo 7, 11 sociopolitical activities, controlled by vertical trade unions 298 soda, used in bleaching clothes 66–7 Solís, Pérez 250 Soriano, Rodrigo 246, 249 Spain Bourbon dynasty overthrow (1868) 109 Cantonal uprising (1873) 109 coup d’état of 3 January 1874 109 federalist republican rebellion (1869) 109 ‘stability of authoritarianism’ 266 Spanish revolutionary movements, perceptions of revolution 242–56 Spanish Trade Union Organisation (OSE) 298, 299 affiliations to the OSE 303, 303–4(t) collective negotiations role blocked by government 310 control mechanisms 300 extent of its control of labour market 305–7 institutional framework leading to OSE’s collapse 309 institutional position 301–3 no evidence of discipline role 306–7 provincial machinery taken over by employers 302–3 restricted by negotiation structure 309–10 undermined in collective negotiations 311 spending habits, cost of living index 224 steam, industrial steam laundries 84 Stephens, John D. 267 stereotypes, dichotomised vision of society 37 straw hat production, ‘putting out’ work 97–8 strike action Asturian miners 159 a bargaining tool 108 by silk workers on public works programme 101–2 Castellon espadrille industry 134–48 failed general strike of 1917 250 general strike a fundamental Syndicalist myth 253 paper-mill strike in Cocentaina 113 Suárez, José 153, 154, 155 subcontracting, halfway between commercial and industrial structure 95–7 subordination, of Ter region administrators 279 subsistence crises among Huesca peasantry 199 common land vital for peasants 207, 208 crop failure and onset of winter 200–1

Index

Huesca disputes based on struggle for subsistence 216 peasants’ crimes linked to 210 subsistence economies, laundering a vital source of income 65 subversion of October 1934 259 sun-bleaching of clothes 68 Sunday rest 169–70 and the following day 160–1 law authorising 227 survival, driving force of peasant demonstrations 199, 200 symbols, collective identity of working class 34–8 syndicalism 253 ‘tarea’ (the task), piecework in mines 226 taverns ‘multipurpose microcosms’ 185–6 night-time atmosphere in Linares 177–8 taxation burden on small landowners 202, 204, 216–17 consumption tax 204–5, 216–17 Ter Basin, industrial municipalities 274–94 Termes, Josep 3, 4 textile industry, women’s activity 51, 54 textile industry see also cotton textile industry textile sector, distribution of labour activities 110 theatre, popular theatre with contemporary comment 166–71 thefts in Linares 182 Third International 251 ‘thirty thousand martyrs of Progress’ 35 Thompson, E.P. 19, 20, 107 at conference of historians 5, 8 experiences and expectations of workers 223 on skilled workers 107 The Peculiarities of the English 19, 20 Tilly, Charles 11, 270 Tilly, L. 43, 56 tobacco workers, discipline over productivity 102 Tobin, J. 221 Trade Union Association for Architecture and the Home 307, 308, 308(t) Trade Union Association for Education and Rest 307–8 Trade Union Law, control and regulation of labour relations 299 trade union movement, in Ter Basin 278 see also communist trade unions; vertical trade unions tradesmen, role in formation of working class 21, 30 The Tragic Week of 1909 249 training, changing productive processes 9 trigueros (wheat producers), black market

Index

wheat 285 ‘truck’ system 225, 228 tuberculosis 292–3 Tuñón de Lara, Manuel 4, 260, 262 ‘tutelage system’, to mould workers 93, 95 typhus fever 292–3 typographers 28–9, 30, 32 Typographical Federation 30 Typographical Society of Valencia 28 Ugarte, María Eugenia González 226 UGT see Unión General de Trabajadores underage workers, decision to dismiss Castellon workers 139–40 unemployment crisis, silk workers on road building 101 Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) 7, 144, 248, 250, 251 linked to CNT 278 minimum wage achieved by Miners’ section 229 Unión Manufacturera 110, 122 University of the Basque Country, Family Strategies and Family Economics 53 university system, democratisation benefitting historical research 260 urban areas, worker/employee relations 23–4 Uría, Jorge 11 Valdés, Palacio 162–3 Valencia Board of Commerce 94–5 construction industry 99–100 ‘good relations’ 24 resistance of guild of dockers 98–9 working-class conflicts and work discipline 92–104 Valladolid, public laundries 73 values contrasting capitalism and peasantry 157 to be ‘learned’ by working class 93 variables of well-being 221, 223, 228 Vayo, Alvarez del 250 Vega de Valencia, spinning mill 103 vegetable ash, used in bleaching clothes 66–7 vertical trade unions compared with Italian fascist trade unions 309 control over distribution of raw materials 309 limited by transfer/overlapping of functions 302 wide range of functions 298–301 Vila, Francisco M. 141 Vinalesa, spinning mill 103 violence among miners in Linares 176–92 related to organisation of work 188 Vizcaya

329

living standards of lead miners 221–33 mining industry 54–5, 56–8, 59–61 wages action for minimum wage for miners 229 blurring of dividing lines 116 miners earning good money but not saving 185 nominal/real, in cost of living index 224, 228 Vizcaya lead mines 223, 229–30 for women in Basque mines 60 workers in Montana catalana 275 see also income wakes, social life of peasantry 161–2 washerwomen bare arms and legs a ‘moral spectacle’ 78, 89(n46) historical transformation of their work 64–85 income fundamental to families 78–80 living and working conditions 77–81 physical work a social handicap 78 professional laundresses 72, 85 see also laundrywork Washhouse and Public Baths for Poor People 82 washhouses first technological revolution of washing 70 progress to industrial laundries 81 washing machines 83–5 for domestic use 84–5 water supply Madrid’s River Manzanares 75–6 provision of urban supplies 81, 82 washerwomen’s work 69–70, 81 Webb, Beatrice 107 Webb, Sydney 107 weddings, social life of peasantry 162–3 welfare assistance, trade union involvement 308–9 well-being all aspects improved after 1917 230 indicators of 221 non-chrematistic variables 223, 228 wheat, black market 285 wheat farming, effects of lost production 199–201 women activity revealed in municipal registers 50–6 effects of industrialisation 43–5 female activity rates in census records 47–50 in local labour markets 50–8 nature and meaning of work 45–8 role in family economy 58–61 in textile industry 112, 275 two labour markets 56–8, 59–61 washerwomen 64–85

330

women and children demonstrating for public works project 202 law improving miners’ conditions 227 woodlands, key element in peasant family income 207, 208 legal moves over peasants’ access to 210–18 woodworkers 32 work effects of industrialisation 43–5 as only legitimate source of income 127 peasants’ social behaviour and attitudes 156 work conditions, blurring of dividing lines 116 work force see labour force Work Inspection Committee 306 work see also labour ‘worker’, use of term 113, 124 worker/employer relations 23–6 workers’ benevolent organisations, OSE disciplinary role 300 Workers’ Commission, communist trade union gaining influence 311 ‘workers’ disciplinary battalions’, on public works projects 285–6 worker’s identity card, Employment Notebook 300 workers’ leisure, collective organisation of 307 Workers’ Solidarity of Catalonia 252 Workers’ Statute (1980) 2 working class accommodation see accommodation construction a long process 26–30 as a cultural creation 19–38 diet in Ter Basin 293 facing adaptation to change 92–4 historiography of social history 2 independent activities of 108

Index

legends, rituals and symbols 34–8 postwar ‘purity checks’ to get jobs back 281 potential key players 266–8 study of skilled workers’ mobilisation 116–20 suffering hunger and misery 290 true protagonist of social revolution 254 ‘working class aristocracy’, traditional craftsmen 21, 30 working class associations 139 working class condition, and that of children or slaves 29–30 working conditions indicators 225–6 in Ter basin 292 working costs, affected by performance 153 working day eight hour 35, 36 mining industry 171 working hours 102 miners in Linares 182–3 miners in Vizcaya 228, 230 miners’ working conditions 225–6 in Ter Basin 292 working relations, changing productive processes 9 working and republican classes, communion of interests 146, 147, 148 working-class associationism, employers’ moves against 143 workplaces, size related to labour activities 110–13 workshop system, craftsmen threatened by change 92–4 Ysàs, Pere 10 Zagorin, P. 242 Zozaya, Antonio 249