The Labor Movement in 19th-Century Spain: Origins and Evolution
The Labor Movement in 19th-Century Spain
Throughout the nineteenth century, the labor movement developed in Spain. Its appearance was favored by the labor and economic conditions of workers. The first claims focused on the right of association and the maintenance of salary.
Early Workers’ Struggles
One of the most important social changes of the 19th century was the emergence of the industrial working class. The causes of their appearance were the tough work situations to which they were subjected: wages were low, hardly enough to survive. The working day could be up to 15 hours. Working conditions were harmful. Living conditions were also poor, with poor health and infectious diseases.
These difficulties led them to create self-help groups to protect themselves in case of illness or job loss. In the middle of the decade, manifestations worsened, with an outbreak of Luddism and the Bonaplata factory fire in 1835. In 1839, a degree of liberalization was adopted in terms of associations. Later, a group of workers formed the Mutual Protection Association of Cotton Weavers.
There were some advocates of utopian socialism very close to the ideas of Fourier. Between 1842 and 1855, workers were able to create an organization of mutual aid societies, run by the Central Board of Directors of the working class. During the Progressive Biennium, the labor movement reached a major development. There followed widespread protests against the spinning and weaving machinery. Clashes with government troops erupted in July 1855, and the first general strike broke out in Catalonia.
The alarm generated by the authorities led to the ban on workers’ societies.
During the years of the Liberal Union, the labor movement remained sluggish, partly due to economic prosperity but also by government repression.
The Labor Movement During the Six Democratic Years (1868-1874)
Since 1868, the labor movement experienced a major boost following the creation of the AIT (International Workers Association).
The First International was formed in 1864 by a group of workers from different countries with the aim of achieving economic and social emancipation of the working class and overcoming the class divide of liberal society.
These ideas came to Spain by Fanelli’s hand, sent by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. In 1872, the division of the AIT occurred after a clash between the trends represented by Karl Marx and Bakunin as a result of the divergent ideological approaches. One said that the working class had to organize their own party to win power in the state. The other rejected any political participation and recommended the direct destruction of the state and posited a new social organization through a federation of free communes.
Anarchism
The anarchists organized since 1881 with the founding of the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region. Andalusian organizations, pro-violent direct action, acquired enormous influence among representatives of the Catalan associations. It was in this context that secret societies emerged in western Andalusia, like the Black Hand, which were attributed attacks. The disappearance of the organization and the preponderance of new ideas as “the propaganda of the deed” or “direct action” led some anarchist sectors to practice terrorism. The result was a hardening of the Spanish legislation against anarchism. It ended up creating special police under military command.
Socialism
A small group of workers from Madrid, who had been expelled from the Spanish Regional Federation, led by printer Pablo Iglesias, created a Marxist socialist-inspired cell that in 1879 gave rise to the PSOE. Marx, after the dissolution of the International, had advised Marxist parties to act independently in each country.
His first program was based on three fundamental objectives:
- The abolition of classes and the emancipation of workers.
- The transformation of private property into collective property.
- The conquest of political power by the working class.
They participated in the creation of the Second International, led by social democrats, which excluded anarchists and rejected cooperation with bourgeois political parties.
In 1888, the General Workers Union (UGT) was founded in Barcelona, the union of socialist inspiration that drew on skilled and urban workers. The UGT had an independent identity but was subordinate to the PSOE.
The Socialist party won four council members in large cities in the municipal elections of 1891 for the first time. The colonial wars of the century strengthened their position for denouncing the war as imperialist and their disagreement with the cash redemption system of military service.