Bizkaia Miners’ Demands and the Rise of Socialism in 1890s Spain
**Location**
This text, according to its form, is a journalistic and informative article with political and social content. Its origin is historical. In addition, it is a primary source because it was written at that historical moment, in 1896.
The text aims to make known the demands of the miners of Bizkaia and expresses the position of the workers. Its author is the publisher of the newspaper where it is published: *La Lucha de Clases*, which was founded at that time to spread the ideas of socialist workers.
It is a public text, addressed to everyone, although directed mainly to the miners of Bizkaia who had been the basis of the industrial development of Bizkaia at the end of the 19th century.
**Analysis**
The miners were the vanguard of the Bizkaia workers’ movement. This had emerged and gained importance during industrialization and was soon dominated by socialist ideology, since from 1891 there were socialist councilors in some mining towns. These socialists had Facundo Perezagua, a metalworker, as their first leader.
The miners’ struggle was manifested in the frequent general strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The causes of these conflicts were the harsh working conditions (long hours, low wages) and living conditions, as well as the demand for recognition of trade union rights.
The main idea of the text is the exposition, in the form of a complaint, of the living conditions of the Biscayan miners.
Next, there are a series of secondary ideas that explain these conditions and indicate the guidelines for action to improve them:
- The denunciation of the barracks (housing) and shops that the companies offered their workers under a monopolistic regime. This is the most prominent complaint, as it was detrimental to the workers, who had to live in unhealthy barracks and buy at expensive prices.
- The request for the elimination of these obligations (this is a consequence of the previous complaint).
- The call to the authorities to act and the recourse to a strike if they did not do so.
**Historical Context**
The Biscayan miners were the precursors of industrialization and the labor movement in Bizkaia. At the end of the 19th century, Bilbao’s industrialization led to the emergence of a proletariat, aligning with Thompson’s concept of class as shared interests against opposing groups. Thousands of immigrants, primarily from rural Araba, Gipuzkoa, and other provinces like Burgos, Santander, and León, settled along the Nervión river’s left bank. They faced very hard conditions, including 12-hour workdays, high incidences of alcoholism, and rampant diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox. The shock of this transformation, in both an occupational and a social sense, was tremendous. Yet even though the vast majority of newcomers were illiterate peasants, already during the first wave of non-Basque immigrants there was some initiative toward the development of class consciousness through group organization.
In 1888, Spain’s Socialist Party, which had been operating clandestinely since 1879, gained legal status as the *Partido Socialista Obrero Español* (PSOE) along with its union, the *Unión General de Trabajadores* (UGT). In 1890, the UGT held its second congress in Bilbao, drawing 5,000 participants, and socialist councilmen were elected for the first time in Bilbao and San Salvador de El Valle. Socialism spread along the Cantabrian coast, particularly after the 1890 general strike, sparked by the firing of mine leaders in La Arboleda for organizing a May Day protest. Between 1890 and 1911, there were five general strikes and 169 smaller protests in Bizkaia. These strikes were often suppressed by the army, culminating in the violent 1917 strike, which resulted in many deaths and injuries, especially in Bilbao.
Socialists in the Basque region established their own newspaper, *La Lucha de Clases* (1894), and a youth movement founded by Tomás Meabe in 1903. Early leaders like Facundo Perezagua Suárez, who founded the Socialist group of Bilbao in 1886, and his more moderate successor Indalecio Prieto, rejected any idea of Basque national or regional identity. In 1911, Prieto openly declared himself “anticlerical and a non-Catholic” upon being elected as a provincial deputy.
In 1921, Facundo Perezagua lost influence within his party and joined the splinter group that eventually formed the Communist Party (1917), where he worked alongside Dolores Ibarruri, “La Pasionaria,” a key figure in Basque communism. Some workers joined the Communist Party, which advocated for Euskadi’s secession and social revolution, but most aligned with the Socialist Party and the UGT, seeking trade union rights and government representation for workers. Meanwhile, the nationalist bourgeoisie sought to form an interclass alliance, with Arana proposing a Basque trade union. This project would be realized in the trade union of Catholic inspiration *Solidaridad de Trabajadores Vascos*, which gained some influence in industries owned by the nationalist bourgeoisie such as the shipyards of the Sota company. but never rivaled the UGT’s dominance in the working-class movement.
**Conclusion**
The text shows the demands of the workers’ sector, that of the miners, which was of great importance in the Basque labor movement. Their capacity to fight had been strengthened after the success of the strike in 1890, and this document focuses on aspects of improving the quality of life of the miners and denotes the power and maturity of those involved. At the same time, the harshness of the conditions in which the workers worked is also evident, whose exploitation included wages and hours through the abuses mentioned here.