"[3] Two days earlier, the socialist leader Largo Caballero had written:[4] All of Spain knows that conscientious workers have been demanding measures to mitigate somewhat the irresistible situation created by the rising cost of basic necessities and the job crisis for more than two years.

[5] In the manifesto signed, among others, by the UGT members Julián Besteiro and Francisco Largo Caballero, and the CNT members Salvador Seguí and Ángel Pestaña, among other things, it said:[6] In order to force the ruling classes to make those fundamental changes in the system that guarantee the people a minimum of decent living conditions and the development of their emancipatory activities, it is imposed that the Spanish proletariat employ the general strike, without a defined term of termination, as the most powerful weapon you have to claim your rights.Thus, the new general strike, this time indefinite, was to have a revolutionary character since its objective was no longer limited to the government taking measures to alleviate the subsistence crisis and the "labor crisis", but rather pursued "a complete transformation of the political and economic structure of the country", as explained by Largo Caballero in an article published on 5 May in El Liberal.

[7] This revolutionary character led the Socialists to seek the support of the leaders of the republican parties, like Alejandro Lerroux and Melquiades Álvarez, especially after disgruntled soldiers formed the Defense Councils in June and the Assembly of Parliamentarians was convened in Barcelona in July.

In the negotiations, the company refused to reinstate the 36 workers who had been fired, an inflexible position that had the decided support of the Government—on 21 July, the Captain General of Valencia had declared a state of exception.

[12] In the introduction, the manifesto linked the call for a strike to the appearance of the Defense Councils, which the Socialists believed were defending the reform of the political regime of the Restoration, and the meeting of the Assembly of Parliamentarians in Barcelona.

[13] During the time that has elapsed from this date [March 1917] to the present time, the affirmation made by the proletariat to demand, as a remedy for the ills suffered by Spain, a fundamental change of political regime has been corroborated by the attitude that important national organizations have successively adopted since the energetic affirmation of the existence of the Infantry Weapon Defense Councils in the face of the attempts to dissolve these organizations by the public powers, to the Assembly of Parliamentarians held in Barcelona on 19 July and the adherence to the conclusions of that Assembly of numerous City Councils, which give public testimony of the desire for renewal that exists throughout the country.And the manifesto concluded:[14] We ask for a provisional government that assumes the executive and moderating powers and prepares, prior to the essential modifications in a flawed legislation, the holding of sincere elections of some Constituent Courts.At the time, practically everyone thought that the railroad strike that forced the Socialists to advance their plans over the general strike—and that it would be one of the key factors in its failure—was deliberately caused by the government.

This was believed by "not only all socialists but people as heterogeneous as Francisco Cambó, Alejandro Lerroux, Benito Márquez, president of the Defense Councils, or Julio Mangada, defender after some of those implicated as collaborators of the Strike Committee, to give some examples.

"[10] Despite the hasty call, when the strike began, activities were paralyzed in almost all the large industrial areas (Vizcaya and Barcelona, even some minor ones such as Yecla and Villena), urban centers (Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, A Coruña), and mining companies (Río Tinto, Jaén, Asturias and León); but only for a few days, at most a week.

[16] In Madrid, on the night of Tuesday, 14 August, the Strike Committee was detained by the police and a riot that took place in the model prison was harshly repressed, resulting in the death of several inmates, including seven prominent socialist militants.

On 18 August, the government was able to proclaim that it had restored order, but it still took several more days to reduce the last stronghold of the revolutionary strike, which were the Asturian mining basins, where the army applied a harsh repression through the so-called train of death, among others.

[20] To facilitate the way out of the crisis, the king replaced the conservative Eduardo Dato with the liberal Manuel García Prieto, at the head of a government of national concentration in which Francesc Cambó also entered.