Spanish Labor Movements: Socialists and Anarchists in the 19th Century
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE)
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) officially entered the political scene. In Madrid, 900 activists called for a strike of printers. As a consequence, Pablo Iglesias was arrested, and many printers were fired. The PSOE slowly grew from this setback, usually attributed to two factors: the rigidity of discipline and the hierarchy of the party, and the desire to participate in the existing political system through legal procedures to achieve its objectives.
During the Barcelona Universal Exposition, the PSOE held its first congress in the city. In the 1890s, Spanish socialism began to organize the so-called “Houses of the People,” meeting centers with cultural, educational, and doctrinal purposes. They also advocated for the 8-hour workday, a demand that arose in the concentrations convened on the first of May each year.
Although Sagasta’s law had allowed workers to vote by establishing universal male suffrage, it was not until 1910 that the Congress of Deputies had a socialist deputy, Pablo Iglesias.
The Anarchist Movement
Unlike the socialists, anarchist ideas were remarkably successful in the labor movement of Catalonia. These ideas were focused on two principles: absolute freedom and the goodness of a free society. These direct and simple ideas aroused great enthusiasm.
The nature of the anarchist movement, without a fixed or bureaucratic organization, makes it impossible to know with certainty the number of members. However, everything indicates that it had numerous followers. The propagator of anarchism in Spain was a typesetter, Anselmo Lorenzo. The lack of organization of the anarchists was their Achilles’ heel. Both the congress in Seville and the one in Valencia showed discrepancies on ways to act, nearly leading to the dissolution of the movement.
The disappearance of the organization and the influence of new ideas, or propaganda through direct action by European anarchists, led some sectors to embrace the ideology of terrorism. In the 1890s, the anarchist movement in Barcelona opted to act through direct action to advance the emancipation of the working class. The result was numerous terrorist attacks.
Anarchist Attacks
- On September 24, 1893, an anarchist attack on the Captain General of Catalonia, Martínez Campos, left him injured. The bomber was arrested and shot.
- Another major attack took place in Barcelona, where a French anarchist threw a bomb during the Corpus Christi procession, resulting in 12 deaths and 44 injuries. Police arrested more than 400 workers, and 87 of those were processed and imprisoned in Montjuïc Castle. This episode became known as the “Montjuïc Trial.”
As a consequence of these events, Spanish legislation against anarchism hardened. Special police forces under military command were created. The victim of anarchist terrorism was Cánovas del Castillo, who was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in revenge for those executed in Montjuïc.
From this point, terrorist activity began to diminish. In the Andalusian countryside, because of the reigning misery, revolutionary anarchism spread. In 1883, the “Black Hand,” a secret anarchist society, emerged, although it was not strongly rooted in the working class of Andalusia.