Talk:Anarchism in Spain/From Spanish
This is essentially a translation of the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia. It does not necessarily follow that verbatim, but it sticks reasonably close. I felt that article was a little overwritten in places and had some obscurities, such as flaws in its transitional sentences; I have not attempted to faithfully reproduce these aspects. I also think it has POV issues, which I have generally left intact. I've also tried to leave some kind of notes about the few passages I simply didn't understand. Still, articles drawing on this translation should give credit to that Spanish-language article in their references.
The article focuses on the anarchist workers' movement and include some discussion of other labor unions. It divides that history into three periods, before, during, and after the Franco period; during the Franco period, workers' organizations were heavily suppressed. The article also includes some discussion of business organizations as well as those of workers. It loosely corresponds to the English-language article Anarchism in Spain and is here to be mined for that and for other English-language articles.
Before the Spanish Civil War[edit]
The Spanish Worker's Movement began as a revolutionary movement approximately between 1868, during Spain's bourgeois revolution and the period of the First Spanish Republic (1873–74). The International Workingmen's Association (or First International (1864) organized in Spain by way of the Mikhail Bakunin's International Alliance of Social Democracy; from the outset, the workers' organizations in Spain had a preponderance of anarchists, whereas elsewhere in Europe the movement was dominated by socialists.
The distinguishing characteristic of the Spanish movement would be the defense of the "absence of restriction" and the total liberty of local groups within the movement. Its principles could were summarized in the formula "political anarchy, religious atheism, socialism-collectivism in the economy". The movement was openly anti-electoral; its characteristic mode of operation was "revolutionary direct action". Furthermore, many anarchists defended individual terrorism as a "revolutionary excitant".
In 1870 Spanish Regional Federation of the First International counted its membership at 30,000. The International Alliance of Social Democracy was strong within it, especially in the East and South and to the point of dominating the federation. The federation's 1870 congress in Barcelona endorsed the anarchist program: to abstain from electoral politics (not to create a workers' party and not to vote in elections) and to uphold "direct action". This stood in direct contrast to Marxism which held the necessity of a centralized and organized workers' democracy, to arrive at which would require a workers' political party.
After the 1872 rupture between Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, the Spanish federation was aligned with the latter; the country was without a workers' party, the movement favoring an anti-electoral stance over alliance with Spanish republicans. The Marxist minority within the movement filled this gap, establishing the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) in 1879; they also eventually created a Marxist labor union, the Workers' General Union (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT) in 1888.
The early 20th century saw major growth in the movement, unleashed by the increasing industrialization of Asturias, the Basque Country, and Catalonia. This period also saw divergences within Spanish anarchism. On the one hand there were "purist" anti-syndicalist currents opposed to the creation of labor unions and among them even partisans of individual terrorism; on the other hand there were [[[anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalists]], advocating a revolutionary unionism based on ideas previously elaborated in France.
Despite its French, Spain would be where the ideology of anarcho-syndicalism became a mass movement. In 1907 the anarcho-syndicalism group Solidaridad Obrera ("Workers' Solidarity") was founded in Barcelona, expressing itself through a newspaper of the same name, popularly known as la Soli. With the economic recession of 1908–9, faced with job losses and pay cuts, la Soli raised the possibility of a general strike. A strike was finally triggered by the call-up of military reservists to fight a colonial war in Morocco, leading to the "Tragic Week".
The anarcho-syndicalists with control of the la Soli, convoked an National Congress of Workers in Barcelona in 1910. The congress established the National Confederation of Workers (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, CNT; the name literally means "National Confederation of Work"), which became the largest union among the Spanish working class in the years before the Spanish Civil War, surpassing the UGT. Composed at the beginning of unions banded together "without an ideology", it had little organizational discipline, and intended to avoid the use of the strike as a bargaining tool that tended to head off "direct action". The anarcho-syndicalist or revolutionary syndicalist character of the CNT remained clear.
The CNT, beyond surpassing the size of the UGT, became in Catalonia practically the only congress of unions (especially important because Catalonia had the most industrial workers of any area of Spain). The CNT had an almost exclusively working-class character, with very few middle-class intelectuals. One could say that it was coarse-toned, with a proletarian anti-intellectualism. Nonetheless, the journals and libraries established by its groups contributed decisively to bring cultural awareness to the working class in a period when public education was conspicuous by its absence.
Although, theoretically, the CNT did not support partial and economic strikes, obviously the member unions took part in a great number of these. If the CNT had not, in practice, supported these mobilizations, it would not have been a mass labor union. The class instinct of the militants constituting the organization's base successfully imposed itself, rather than bowing to theory or leadership. Evidently, the character of the organization as a federation and an assembly allowed organizations at each level to make the decisions they considered pertinent.
The industrial strikes extended to the north, along with the campesino strikes of Andalucia at the end of the 1910s. This was the atmosphere at the time news arrived of the Russian Revolution. As elsewhere in the world, the Spanish working class was impressed with the Bolshevik victory. The impact on the PSOE and the UGT is well known, leading to the creation of the first Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista Español, PCE); what is less known it that the great sympathy for the Russian Revolution led to a broad enough sympathy in the Workers' movement that for a time the CNT affiliated with the Third International.
The fact that the Soviet Union was, at the outset, a workers' democracy that functioned through workers' assemblies (soviets), gave the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists good reason to see it as the incarnation of their collectivist ideals.
Catalonia, where the CNT had the greatest influence, Catalonia, had both Spain's most dynamic middle class and its most powerful worker's movement. Bourgeois Catalan nationalism pressed its cause hard, while at the same time fearing the pressure of the Catalan workers.
At the end of the 1910s, the owners of enterprises throughout Spain organized against socialism and revolucionary syndicalism. The police were overwhelmed by the workers' movement. Many workers came to see individual anarchist terrorism as the handiwork of agents provocateurs to justify police repression and persecution. The white terrorism of the pistoleros loyal to the owners only made matters worse.
Spain had generally prospered as a neutral country during the First World War, leading to growth in the working class and the CNT.
The years 1917-18 saw an increasing number of strikes. The government banned la Soli, closed workers' centers and detained their leaders. A 1919 strike at the electrical concern La Canadiense broadened into a general strike of industrial and agricultural workers throughout Catalonia, which, after a hard fight, resulted in a partial victory for the CNT. March 24, 1919 the CNT called for a second general strike demanding the release of the prisoners from the first strike, leading to three weeks of struggle in Barcelona and other cities.
The government reacted with an attempt to find middle ground [Translator's note: the Spanish-language article says instead that they reacted with "panic", but gives no evidence to support that]. On April 3, 1919, Parliament approved the 8-hour workday. They ordered the formation of mixed negotiation commisions. These were triumphs for the working class struggle, but the detention of sindicalists left the direction of the CNT to purist anarchists, who responded to the white terrorism with terrorist actions of their own, despite criticism from many sectors of the organization. Former police of the "politico-social brigade" were placed in charge of the bands of the owner-inspired pistoleros, directing them against the confederationists and against workers' organizations in general.
At the end of 1919, the government wished to cut a deal with the sindicalist sector of the CNT, but the owners' organization, the Federación de Patronos, undertook a "lock-out", reinvigorating the conflict. Further, they backed a so-called Sindicato Libre (an ultra-Catholic and reactionary "Free Union") in a violent struggle against the CNT, leading to a further escalation of assassinations and terror on both sides. La extent of terrorism in 1920, together with the "lock-out" and the general strike called for January 24, created an extremely tense situation.
The terrorism and the social struggle extended throughout Spain. Also in 1920, the government shifted from a reformist policy to a hard line, ceasing to negotiate and, instead, using the police and the army to repress the CNT. They applied the criminal ley de fugas ("fugitive law"), which permitted assasination of detainees alleged to be attempting to flee. The anarcho-syndicalists responded spectacularly, culminating with the assassination in Madrid of prime minister Eduardo Dato at the beginning of 1921 by three anarchist gunmen.
The army reacted brutally against the CNT. In 1922 the violence culminated in a victory for the repressive forces. The working class was ultimately wrecked by its attachment to "direct action". Individual terrorism was ultimately counterproductive, bringing about the opposition fo the middle classes and provoking the antipathy of the working class itself. [Translator's note: it is possible that I have not correctly rendered the sense of the latter portion of the preceding, rather convoluted sentence: "...al conseguir la oposición de las clases medias y provocar la antipatía de la clase obrera.] It led to the augmentation of repression in the form of the rise of Primo de Rivera to power in 1923.
During the first two years of the Second Spanish Republic, the workers' movement experienced a period of relative prosperity, because the authorities were favorable toward the movement (albeit the economic circumstances were unfavorable). It was precisely these economic circumstances that made the workers impatient: they did not receive all of the benefits promised by the republicans, and revolutionary disorder once again erupted in Arnedo, Castilblanco and Casas Viejas, which damaged the workers' movement by provoking the departure of the progressive parties from the governing coalition.
This situation culminated when, after the electoral triumph of CEDA in November 1933, the government began to cut back on the social advances obtained during the previous two years, which in turn led to the revolutionary movement of October 1934, especiallly in Asturias and Catalonia and its harsh repression by the government.
The situation in Europe, with the Nazi regime in Germany and the Fascist regime in Italy, and with other countries trending in similar directions, motivated the decision of the leftist unions to support the Popular Front electoral coalition that brought the parties of the left into government.
From the Civil War to the return of constitutionality[edit]
Undoubtedly, the Spanish Revolution of 1936 is an example of how the working class can change its fortune by ending capitalism and taking direction of its own destiny. If the fight ended in a victory for fascism it was because of the inopportunity of the moment in which it occurred, with energies necessarily redirected to the priority of winning the war and to the internal divisions on the revolutionary side, and by the indecision and even treason of many of the leaders.
After the Civil War and during the Franco era, all workers' movements and political parties were forced into exile or clandestinity.
During this period the franquista social policy nullified, from the outset, the arrangements made under the Republic, above all land reform, but also returning to their previous owners businesses and factories that had been seized in the Republican zone during the war. The sindicalismo vertical ("vertical unionism") of the era gave a clear advantage at all times to the owners, with workers having the chance to defend their interests only in the cargos de elección directa (enlaces sindicales, jurados de empresa desde 1954). [Translator's note: I'm not sure I understand the preceding passage; feel free to kill this comment and provide translation if you can. I believe cargos de elección directa means positions to which people were directly elected. I would guess that enlaces sindicales would be liaisons between unions, but for all I know they might be more like shop stewards. Jurados de empresa would literally be business juries, I don't know what they were. Desde 1954 is the only part of this I'm sure of, "starting in 1954", but it's not clear which parts of the preceding it modifies.] The State regulated, by means of the Ministry of Labor, the conditions to which labor relations had to be adjusted, which the owners adapted to their various industries.
There were, despite all that, some important work conflicts starting in the second half of the 1940s, such as the general strike May 1, 1947 in the Basque provinces of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, encouraged by the Basque government in exile and backed as much by Basque nationalists as by leftists; this general strike was met with harsh repression.
At the beginning of the 1950s, low pay and high prices provoked various labor conflicts: what began as a tram-workers' strike in Barcelona ion 1951, but extended to other sectors; general strikes in April 1951 in Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa; and other conflicts in Vitoria, Pamplona, and Madrid. Further strikes broke out in 1956–58 in various places around the country. Some of these were accompanied by disturbances at the universities, above all in Madrid in 1956.
In the heat of these social changes and mobilizations, together with the rise of a new generation, new groups of worker activists, linked to Catholic base communities, Workers' Brotherhood of Catholic Action (Hermandades Obreras de Acción Católica, HOAC), founded in 1946; Christian Worker Youth (Juventud Obrera Cristiana, JOC).
The 1958 Ley de Convenios Colectivos [Translators note: literally "Law of Collective Pacts"; without citation, I hesitate to translate that as "Collective Bargaining"] favored the labor struggle. This empowered the jurados de empresa and the role of the enlaces sindicales, establishing salaries and working conditions fixed by direct pacts between representantives of businessmen and workers. After this measure, labor conflict increased.
This increase in activity favored the growth of the clandestine Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO. or simply CCOO), especially after 1962. The CCOO developed initially as a committee to negotiate collective pacts on the outside of the officially recognized union structure; its leadership came mainly from among activists linked to the PCE (Communist Party). Also, under the shelter of the new structures for labor relations, other clandestine unions grew, such as the Workers' Trade Unionist Confederation (Unión Sindical Obrera, USO), formed in 1960 in Asturias and the Basque Country starting from the nucleus of the JOC; it was joined in some areas by surviving remnants of the UGT, and of Basque Workers Solidarity (Euzko Langilleen Alkartasuna/Solidaridad de Trabajadores Vascos, ELA-STV) in the Basque Country. From the beginning of the 1970s other union movements arose, such as the Workers' Unitary Trade Union Confederation (Confederacion de Sindicatos Unitarios de Trabajadores, CSUT) or the Galician Workers Syndicate (Sindicato Obreiro Galego, SOC).
Constitutional Era: From Workers' Movement to Union organizations[edit]
April 28, 1977 began a new stage, the democratic period of the union organizations in Spain. Enrique de la Mata Gorostizaga, then minister of Union Relations, opend the door to union pluralism by recognizing the UGT, CCOO, USO, ELA-STV, SOC, and CNT.
A three-or-four year period of confrontation followed, revolving around what were called modelos sindicales (models for unionism), which simultaneously dealt with deep foundational issues and with tactical interests. Comisiones Obreras wanted to prolong, and above all to capitalize upon, patterns that had developed in a clandestine era, while UGT wished to move toward the practices and structures common to unionism throughout the rest of Europe.
UGT upheld a unionist logic, while Comisiones Obreras advocated a movementist logic. In reality, the comunists discovered during the clandestine era that for them a platform, a movement, was much more useful than a union: they had liquidated their union structure, the Union Workers' Opposition (Oposición Sindical Obrera, OSO), making it a part of Comisiones Obreras. Now, in a situation of legality, they again needed a union of their own. This implied a change of mentalitity to take advantage of the new system of moderation: the union elections of 1978.
From then on, the arguments centered on questions such as open or closed lists, a preponderance of candidates from the leadership or from the union rank and file, whether to stress committees or sectoral unions, assemblies or representative democracy, etc. The dominance of a union model (representative structures of sectorial and territorial character, centrality of collective bargaining, primacy of broad program and planning over espontaneity at the base, etc., in short normal unionism in a democracy) created the basis for a new sort of labor relations in Spain, which acquired its legal expression in the Estatuto de los Trabajadores [Translator's note: "Workers' Statute" but note "trabajadores", not "obreros", choosing a word relatively devoid of connotations of class struggle) approved at the beginning of 1980) and the Organic Law of Union Liberty (Ley Orgánica de Libertad Sindical, LOLS) of 1985.
Brief summary of the major contemporary union organizations[edit]
As of 2004, the two largest union orgnanizations in Spain are Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) y la Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT).
Comisiones Obreras grew out of the Asturian miners' strikes of 1962 and 1963; their first antecedents were the factory commissions in the Basque Country in 1956 and the Workers' Commission in 1958 in Gijón, Asturias. Backed by the Communist Party (PCE) they spread rapidly and were characterized by fighting from within against the "vertical unionism" of the Central Nacional de Sindicatos (CNS). Declared illegal in December 1966, they lost some of their influence during the clandestine period, but they returned to being the principal union after being declared legal in 1977.
In the union election of 1978 they won more votes than the UGT; they lost this dominant position in the union elections of 1986, but have since recovered it. In 1987 Antonio Gutiérrez took over the union from their historic leader Marcelino Camacho. He has since been succeeded by José María Fidalgo.
The UGT experienced spectacular growth under the Second Republic, which it defended in the major cities after the uprising of 1936. It was declared illegal during the Franco era, which cost it a great deal of its influence and all of its patrimony. After Franco's death in 1975, it was re-legalized and from 1986 became the largest union organization in Spain. It created a platform of union action along with CCOO in 1988 to protest, what they viewed as the social-liberal politics of the PSOE, with which the UGT had historically been associated. A one-day general strike throughout Spain on December 14, 1988 had massive support throughout the population. In 1992 they called another general strike, this time for a half day, but which had less effect than its predecessor. During the XXXVI Congress of the UGT (1994), Nicolás Redondo, who had been secretary general since 1976, was replaced by Cándido Méndez.
Business organizations: CEOE[edit]
The Spanish Confederation of Enterprise Organizations (Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales, CEOE), was founded in Madrid in 1977 for the defense of business interests and to represent business toward the government, the unions, and international group. Until 1984 it was headed by Carlos Ferrer Salat and, since then, by José María Cuevas. In 1984 it absorbed the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (Confederación Española de la Pequeña y Mediana Empresa, CEPYME). The affiliation of any individual entrepreneur, business, or confederation of businesses with the CEOE is voluntary.