Initially organised as a wildcat strike by miners in Fígols, who were protesting against low wages and poor working conditions, it soon turned into a general revolt and spread throughout the region.

Without the influence of business owners and the Catholic clergy over the new government, many in the working class hoped they would address unemployment and land reform, but neither of these came to fruition.

[3] On 31 December, Casares Quiroga dispatched the Civil Guard to the Extremaduran town of Castilblanco to suppress a strike action by the local peasantry.

[5] In the Aragonese town of Épila, the Civil Guard opened fire on striking workers, killing 2 people and wounding several others.

[5] In the Valencian city of Villena, the novelist Pío Baroja proclaimed that the Republic had killed more people in a few months than the monarchy had in forty years.

[10] The events in Épila, Xeresa and Arnedo provoked a furious response from anarcho-syndicalists in Barcelona, who began to speak of carrying out a revolution against the Republic.

[13] Since June 1931, deteriorating working conditions for potash miners in the Llobregat and Cardener river valleys had caused a rise in social tensions.

[12] Members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarcho-syndicalist union, put together a plan to channel the workers' discontent into an insurrection.

[15] In early January 1932, the anarchist activists Buenaventura Durruti, Vicente Pérez and Arturo Parera embarked on a speaking tour of the region.

[16] They encouraged workers to rise up in revolution against capitalism and the state, and showed them how to manufacture improvised explosive devices from dynamite and tin cans.

[5] In Tierra y Libertad, Felipe Alaiz warned that a dictatorship was being established in Spain by the Socialist and Republican parties, and called for anarchists to take direct action against the government.

[18] On 18 January 1932, miners of the Sant Corneli Colony [ca] in Fígols carried out a wildcat strike, demanding improvements to their living and working conditions.

[19] As they believed the strike would only succeed if they could prevent their employers from repressing it,[20] they disarmed the Civil Guard and the Sometent parapolice force, and they coordinated workers' patrols of the town's streets.

[25] According to an oral history by historian Cristina Borderias, the proclamation of communism was broadly accepted by the insurgent populace, for whom it meant social justice and freedom.

[26] When the Catalan Regional Committee of the CNT received news of the insurrection breaking out in Fígols, they moved to support the workers' movement and expand it throughout Berguedà and Bages.

[11] By 20 January, strike actions had spread to the neighbouring towns of Balsareny, Berga and Sallent, then on to Cardona, Navarcles and Súria,[27] where workers shut down the mines and other local businesses.

[36] According to reports by the anarchist newspaper La Tierra [es], the insurgents secured the region without arbitrary attacks against their political enemies, whether police, judges or priests.

In Aragon, the local branches of the CNT in Binéfar and Belver de Cinca called a general strike, shutting down businesses, cutting telephone lines and blocking the railway into Lleida province;[48] anarchist activists also planted two bombs at a Civil Guard barracks in Alcorisa; and, on 25 January, militants in Castel de Cabra declared the establishment of a council republic.

[49] The latter group of revolutionaries seized the Castel de Cabra town hall, burned the tax register, barricaded the mayor in his house, and stole explosives from the construction company building the Teruel-Alcañiz railway line [es].

[50] Sixteen CNT members were arrested for the Alcorisa bombing and kept in pre-trial detention for 20 months; their trial finally took place in November 1933, with their defense lawyer Gregorio Vilatela [es] securing their acquittal and release.

The Aragonese Regional Committee of the CNT officially denied involvement in the insurrection and claimed it had attempted to stop it, but as government action against them intensified, they began to encourage a violent response.

A few days after publishing a communique calling for action, the Aragonese CNT's periodical Cultura y Acción was shut down; it did not resume publication until the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

[60] Violent clashes broke out between striking workers and the police, with one outburst in Zaragoza leaving 4 dead and 15 wounded, which further instilled feelings of victimisation in members of the CNT.

[54] The treintistas criticised the spontaneity of the insurrection, arguing that the state forces had been able to suppress the rebellion because the anarchists had presented a "dispersed, incoherent and atomised line of battle".

[68] The insurrection also raised the issue of libertarian communism with liberal intellectuals, with Salvador de Madariaga mocking the revolutionaries for the impracticability of their ideas, which he described as Quixotism.

[70] He was succeeded by the revolutionary anarchist Manuel Rivas,[72] who presided over a new National Committee dominated by activists from affinity groups, including Marcos Alcón, José Ramos, Ricardo Sanz and Miguel Terrén.

[74] As a wave of strikes erupted in Catalonia, in late April 1932, a regional plenum of the CNT was held in Sabadell, where up to 300 delegates represented up to 250,000 workers.

By this time, the union rank-and-file had turned decisively against the treintistas, with the plenum electing the faista Alejandro Gilabert as the new regional secretary of the CNT in Catalonia.

He continued to uphold gradualism, going on to establish the Syndicalist Party, while other reformist figures such as Joan Peiró and Juan López Sánchez eventually rejoined the CNT.