[2] The first issue that embraces them all today is the reconstitution of our homeland, which must be born from the system of government that the nation accepts as the most advantageous ...
This must be the fundamental basis of the deliberations of the congress, to determine which is the form of government that can best protect the interests of the working class, in order to support it with the efforts of all, voting in the elections for deputies who undertake to defend within the national representation the approach of the system of government that has seemed most advantageous.61 Catalan workers' associations were represented at the congress, 34 from Barcelona and the remaining, of the 45 that have been identified, from Roda, Tiana, Mataró, Igualada, Sallent, Moyá, Manlleu, Sabadell, Estany, Martorell and Tarragona.
Cooperativism was also supported as a way to achieve social emancipation, as well as the formation of mixed commissions of employers and workers in which they would discuss their demands.
[7] In January 1869, the "Central Directorate of the Barcelona Workers' Societies" asked the workers to vote for the candidacies of the Federal Democratic Republican Party "because [political] indifference among you would be a crime ...; because we would give place to that despotism and other plagues attached to it were once again enthroned in our poor country.
Two days earlier the "Central Directorate" had issued a manifesto "To the workers of all countries" in response to the message sent by the Geneva section of the IWA "to the Spanish workers" dated December 26, 1868, and in which it opposed their supporting the Republic, and to the one sent by the German section in which it set out the opposite position.
And to the Germans: "Today, that for freedom the Republic goes to the realization of the greatest social problems ... See [the working people] organize hundreds of COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES, well convinced that for them, and only for them, it must be well redeemed soon from the miserable condition of wage slavery ... See them ... compact ... go to the elections with the holy desire of the Republic.