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Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class
Movement in Spain, 1868-1898
Anarchist Ideology
and the Working-
Class Movement
in Spain,
1868-1898

George Richard Esenwein

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • Oxford
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
Oxford, England

Copyright © 1989 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Esenwein, George Richard.
Anarchist ideology and the working-class movement in Spain,
1 8 6 8 - 1 8 9 8 / George Richard Esenwein.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-520-06398-8 (alk. paper)
1. Anarchism—Spain—History—19th century. 2. Labor movement—
Spain—History—19th century. I. Title.
HZ925.E74 1989
320.5'7'0946—dc20 89-4889
CIP

Printed in the United States of America

123456789
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 ®
To the memory ofGussie Roland (1922—1973)
and
August Esenwein (1918-1987)
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1. The Origins of the First International in

Spain 11
2. The Struggle for an Ideology: Federalism
versus Bakuninism 22
3. The International and the Collapse of the
Republic, 1871-1873 35
4. The Spanish Federation in the Period of
Repression, 1874-1881 51
5. Anarchism and the Restoration: The Growth
and Decline of the FTRE 78
6. The Development of a Schism: The Origins
of the Collectivist/Communist Controversy 98
7. The Demise of the FTRE and the Emergence
of Anarchist Associational Life 117
8. Anarquismo sin Adjetivos 134
viii Contents

9. The Haymarket Tragedy, the Origins of May

Day, and Their Impact on the Anarchist
Movement 155
10. Terrorism and the Anarchist Movement,
1892-1894 166
11. The Aftermath of Repression, 1 8 9 4 - 1 8 9 8 189

Epilogue 205
Notes 217
Bibliography 245
Index 265
Acknowledgments

In the course of preparing the dissertation on which this book is based, I

incurred a number of personal and intellectual debts. When I began this
project some years ago, I was given expert guidance by James Joli and
Joaquin Romero Maura. Besides being most helpful in securing finan-
cial aid for my studies and giving me intellectual stimulus, Professor Joll
has been exceedingly patient with me, for which I am very grateful. Dr.
Romero Maura kindly took time away from his full business schedule to
impart to me some of the fundamentals of Spanish history.
While conducting research in Spain, I received valuable assistance
from the following people: Antoni Jutglar, Josep Termes, and José Ma-
ría Jover Zamora. José Alvarez Junco and Carlos Rama read over my
thesis outline and provided useful suggestions. For answering my many
questions about the obscure lives of the Spanish anarchists I am grateful
to J. A. Durán (Madrid), the late Renée Lamberet (Paris), and Vladimiro
Muñoz (Montevideo).
In this country, I have benefited from the help of a number of indi-
viduals. For their encouragement and warm personal generosity shown
over the years, I am especially grateful to Professor Paul Avrich and the
late Burnett Bolloten, both of whom have been particularly inspiring to
me. I want to thank the following people who also freely gave of their
personal time to review all or part of the manuscript: Professor Tony
Judt, Professor Paul Preston, Professor Peter Stansky. Dr. Gary Steenson
deserves special thanks for having checked through the manuscript page
by page, and for having made many useful suggestions.
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X Acknowledgments

Much of my research in Europe was financed by grants awarded by

the Central Research Fund of the University of London. I am also very
grateful to Dr. and Mrs. Wolff, Jane Hustwit, my family, and other
friends who from time to time permitted me to continue my research by
providing me funds.
The knowledgeable staffs of a number of libraries have greatly facili-
tated my research. At the International Institute of Social History in
Amsterdam, I received assistance from Rudolf De Jong and Thea
Duiyker. The late Maria Hunink and Arthur Lehning, also from the
Institute, have been most generous in providing me with indispensable
articles and books. I found the librarians at the Catalán Municipal
library as well as the University of Barcelona to be quite helpful. So were
the staff at the following libraries in England: British Museum (Lon-
don); British Library of Economic and Political Science (LSE); Univer-
sity of London Library, Senate House; London Library; Bodelian Li-
brary (Oxford); and the Public Record Office (London). While working
at the Stanford University and Hoover Institution libraries I have ac-
quired a better understanding of the interdependent relationship be-
tween scholars and academic libraries. I should like to thank the staff at
the Hoover Institution and Green Library for assisting me in many
ways, but not least for their friendship.
The editorial staff at the University of California Press read the manu-
script with exceptional care. I want to thank Scott Mahler, Shirley
Warren, and Nancy Atkinson for having helped me avoid making too
many careless mistakes. Any errors that remain are due to my own
myopia.
Abbreviations

CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo—predominantly

anarchosyndicalist trade union founded in 1910.

FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica—vanguard revolution-

ary body that affiliated itself with the CNT during the
Second Republic and Civil War (1931-1939).

FRC/Pacto Federación de Resistencia al Capital/Pacto de Unión y

Solidaridad—Catalán-based organization that super-
ceded the FTRE.

FRE Federación Regional Española—Spanish branch of First

International established in 1870.

FSORE Federación de Sociedades Obreras de la Región

Española—national anarchist organization formed in
1900.

FTRE Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española

(1881-1888)—anarchist organization that succeeded
the FRE.

IWMA International Working Men's Association, First Inter-

national.

OARE Organización Anarquista de la Región Española—

anarchist organization established in 1888 that at-
xii Abbreviations

tempted to give unions (sociedades de resistencia) revo-

lutionary orientation.
PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español—political party of
Spanish socialists, founded in Madrid in 1879.
TCV Tres Clases de Vapor—reformist union of the textile
industry in Catalonia that rose to prominence in the
late nineteenth century.
UGT Unión General de Trabajadores—trade union branch of
the Spanish socialist movement, founded in Barcelona
in 1888.
Introduction

As a movement long associated with revolution, violence, and rural rebel-

lion, Spanish anarchism rarely fails to attract the attention of the student
of European history. This interest has of course waxed and waned over
the years but it has been fairly steadily sustained since the late 1960s, as
witnessed by the steady output of scholarly works on different aspects of
the history of the anarchist movement in Spain. Because of the over-
whelming interest in the Spanish Civil War, it is scarcely surprising that
most of the historiography on anarchism is focused on the years 1 9 3 6 -
1939. With few exceptions, the earlier stages of its development have
been poorly surveyed, particularly the late nineteenth century. While the
existing historiography on nineteenth-century Spanish anarchism sheds
light on the nature of the movement, there remains considerably more
work to be done before we truly understand this complex historical
phenomenon. 1
For many years, Spanish anarchism was generally regarded as essen-
tially a millenarian doctrine, a prepolitical ideology whose main strength
lay in its emotional appeal to the masses. It was characterized as a type of
secular religion which lacked a systematic framework of political and
economic analysis necessary for developing a cogent and coherent revolu-
tionary strategy. This "millenarian" view was popularized by a notary
named Juan Diaz del Moral, whose scholarly study of the Anadalusian
peasantry in the province of Córdoba, Historia de las agitaciones
campesinas andaluzas (1928), won the respect and admiration of several
generations of historians.
2 Introduction

Gerald Brenan was the first non-Spaniard to echo the main themes of
Diaz del Moral's findings, in his work entitled The Spanish Labyrinth
(1943). Brenan's illuminating study of the social and political back-
ground of the Spanish Civil War went beyond his predecessor in placing
anarchism in the general context of Spanish politics, and in distinguish-
ing the phases of its historical development. In the end, though, his
portrayal of the anarchists is no less romantic than the one first pre-
sented by Diaz del Moral. For Brenan, the popularity of anarchism
among the Spanish proletariat (obreros) and peasantry (campesinos)
can be explained in terms of its moral-religious appeal. Anarchism, in
his eyes, spoke to the downtrodden classes in the language of a genuine
religion. It promised them salvation from the poverty and suffering they
endured at the hands of the ruling classes, and it pictured their redemp-
tion in terms of a millenarian conversion. Viewed in this way, Spanish
anarchism appeared to be a fundamentally irrational or, at best, a naive
political doctrine.
In Primitive Rebels (1959), the noted British historian Eric Hobs-
bawm utilized the millenarian view of Spanish anarchism in developing
his widely influential "primitive rebel" thesis. Grounding his analysis in
an economic framework, Hobsbawm posited a "stages" view of anar-
chism. According to this, anarchist doctrine represented a transitional
phase in the development of Spanish working-class consciousness. It
was characterized as an inchoate or "primitive" political theory, which,
because it was tied to the rhythm of the economy, corresponded to the
level of social-political development of a modernizing country.
Hobsbawm was particularly interested in exploring the major reasons
why anarchism had for so long exercised such a powerful spell on the
Spanish working classes. Briefly, he held that it was Spain's entrenched
economic backwardness, especially in Andalusia, that accounted for the
persistence of a so-called primitive theory such as Bakuninism. Hobs-
bawm explained that anarchism had taken root in a region that was
known for its extreme poverty and that, from 1850 onwards, was also
known for its chronic social revolutionism. For him, what had triggered
the endemic social upheavals of rural Andalusia was the introduction of
capitalistic legal and social relationships in the southern countryside.
The disentailment of church lands in the early part of the nineteenth
century, when vast tracts of ecclesiastical property passed into the hands
of the aristocracy and prosperous middle classes, was a key element in
this process. As a result of disentailment, long-standing economic and
social ties were severed between the Church and the lower classes. This
Introduction 3

forever changed the matrix of social stability in the region. Before, the
Church had usually acted as a protector of and provider for the poor; it
now stood aloof from them, forcing them into a state of economic and
political uncertainty. Given these conditions, Hobsbawm concluded, an-
archism seemed to be tailor-made for the Spanish bracero, or landless
agricultural worker, most of all, he believed, because it "reflected the
spontaneous aspirations of backward peasants more sensitively and accu-
rately in modern times" than any other ideological movement. 2
That the millenarian model has long served as an analytical tool for
historians studying Spanish anarchism is understandable. The cyclical
regularity of rural rebellion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the apostolic fervor with which the workers in the towns and the coun-
tryside embraced the revolutionary doctrine, and the chiliastic vision
many adherents held of a new world order were salient characteristics
of Spanish anarchism that were satisfactorily accounted for by the mil-
lenarian model. In fact, this model has proved itself most convincing
when applied to the landless agricultural laborers of the south, where
anarchism largely existed in remote villages and small towns. Given that
the braceros in the latifundia (large estates) were overwhelmingly illiter-
ate and chronically unemployed, they seemed prone to the kind of
irrational behavior that is consistent with millenarianism. After all, this
is the region where the Mano Negra affair (1882—1883), the Jerez rising
(1892), and many other celebrated episodes in anarchist history had
occurred.
In recent years, the validity of the millenarian explanation has been
increasingly thrown into doubt by a growing number of historians. 3
This trend is exemplified by the social historian Temma Kaplan. In
Anarchists of Andalusia (1977), Kaplan broke decisively with the millen-
arian historical tradition when she sought to explain anarchism as a
rationally based political movement. Marshaling an impressive array of
evidence she gleaned from municipal and national archives, Kaplan
convincingly demonstrated that the millenarian model is too mechanis-
tic to explain the complex pattern of Andalusian anarchist activity of
the late nineteenth century. Many of the rural anarchists in the south,
she argued, were not guided by a quasi-religious understanding of the
nature of social oppression. On the contrary, Kaplan proved, they had a
clear idea of who their enemies were, namely, the absentee landlords
and wine-producing bourgeoisie, who together formed the ruling class
of the region. Furthermore, she pointed out that, for all their revolution-
ary élan, the anarchists developed a rational strategy of revolution,
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