During the revolution, workers seized control of the city for several days in July 1873 in the course of a general strike, which eventually became a riot, against the republican mayor Agustí Albors (better known as Pelletes).

During the revolt, Albors gave the order to fire on demonstrators, who defended themselves by assaulting the town hall, executing the mayor, and trapping the rest of the municipal leadership in the building.

The revolt ended with the intervention of the federal army and the military occupation of the city, hefty repression against the revolutionaries, and practically no improvements for the labouring class.

The city was occupied by paper, textile, and metallurgic industries that had engendered a great upswing in population and the implementation of a capitalist system of production, as well as introduced mechanization as a substitute for much formerly manual labour.

This largely explains the extraordinary growth of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT), which at the end of 1872 already had more than 2,000 members, almost a quarter of the city's workers.

[2] After the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic on February 11, 1873, a local assembly of the FRE-AIT held on March 2 discussed the attitude to be adopted after the regime change, which was reflected in the minutes of the Federal Commission:[3] A comrade [possibly Severino Albarracín, according to Avilés Farré] clearly and conclusively demonstrated that the change in the policy of the middle class was only in the name of the institutions, but that deep down they continued to be the same, constant hindrances to the progress of liberty and justice.

On June 15, it asked the workers to "organize and prepare for the revolutionary action of the proletariat in order to destroy all the privileges that authoritarian powers support and promote."

On July 6, Tomás González Morago, member of the Commission, in a letter addressed to the Belgian Federation announced the imminent social revolution that was going to be unleashed in Spain.

"[8] On July 9, the manufacturers, meeting in the town hall,[8] rejected the workers' demands as exaggerated, finding the support of the mayor, the Federal Republican Agustí Albors.

[12] Immediately, different accounts of the "atrocities of the revolutionaries" were disseminated, which forced the Federal Committee to deny them through a manifesto made public on July 14:[11] Beings thrown from the balcony, priests hanged from lanterns, men drenched in oil and shot to death in flight, heads of civilians cut off and paraded through the streets, arson of buildings, burning and destruction of the town hall, rape of innocent girls, all these hoaxes are horrible slander.After the events, a strong repression was unleashed.