Pistolerismo

In 1888 the first national trade union was founded with the name of Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), helping to transform strikes in an conscious strategy for collective claims.

[10] At the turn of the century the spread of strikes and trade unionism produced a sense of fear in Spanish authorities, which started to consider them as real challenges to the established order.

However, it soon became clear that police and gendarmerie forces were not enough for preventing and repressing social disorders, spread throughout the country and sometimes difficult to reach due to lack of modern railways or streets.

The first consequence for Spain was the loss of her last colonies in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean, resulting from the emancipation of Cuba and Philippines and the acquisition of Puerto Rico and Guam island by U.S.A.[13] This defeat had significant impacts on the internal social order.

From that moment, several social actors started to promote different strategies in order to improve or modify state institutions, including the use of political attacks (anarchists) or a military solution (sectors of the Church and parts of the bourgeoisie).

This situation led to a big development of Spanish industrial production, due to the increased needs of raw materials and military equipment by the countries participating in the war.

Simultaneously, the difficult situation faced by many workers, and their concentration in places where left political ideas were highly developed, facilitated the growth of labor organizations and the radicalization of trade union struggle.

[16] From the beginning of 1916 the new government led by Álvaro Figueroa y Torres tried to minimize the impact of the war by proposing economic reforms in order to reduce the military budget and other state expenses.

In July, the Lliga Regionalista, an organization composed by members of the Catalan bourgeoisie, created a regional assembly in order to start a process of constitutional reform in opposition to the Madrid's parliament.

In August, the first general strike in Spanish history was organized by UGT, with the support of Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a confederation of anarchist trade unions founded in 1910.

[19] Until that moment the main strategy adopted by CNT, promoted by Salvador Seguí and the union's most moderate wing, consisted of long strikes which aimed to press authorities to accept the workers' requests.

The period between the end of WWI and 1921 is generally known as trienio bolchevique, because the number of strikes and union struggles reached their apex and levels of social clashes increased in an exponential way.

[21] This period was inaugurated by the deal between the two main trade unions, CNT and UGT, which during 1918 created sindicatos únicos, unified industrial local sections of the two syndicates, in order to improve the quality of strike actions.

As a result, Seguí's moderate approach was definitely replaced by targeted killing operations and in few weeks several anarchist action groups were born and adopted violence and murders as political tools.

[24] In general, the lack of police forces and governments' weakness in preserving public order pushed an increasing number of private actors to defend their personal interests by the use of arms and violence.

A central role was played by the Federación Patronal de Barcelona, an organization mainly composed by business leaders enriched during the war, who strongly funded the birth of paramilitary groups.

At the beginning of the new century Somatén had become a mass movement (44.000 members in 1909) and started to play an important role in the social control of population and in the limitation of socialist and anarchist ideas.

However, in January 1919 sectors of the Catalan bourgeoisie, which were the main funders of the armed group, decided to create a local section of Somatén also in the city center, in order to face the union trade movement.

[30] In the same months the counter-revolutionary front became bigger after Federación Patronal de Barcelona decided to create a private police force, Banda Negra (Black Band), with the purpose of increase the military pressure against the syndicate movement.

Black Band was materially organized and led by Manuel Bravo Portillo and in a few time it became an important actor in CNT's repression, thanks to generous funding from industrial men.

In general, Black Band strongly showed the lack of will of Barcelona's industrial world to adopt strategies in order to reduce social clashes and to find a compromise with trade unions.

Secondly, from mid-1921 to October 1922 Libres became a real mass movement (175.000 members in 1922[36]) and virtually the only representatives of Catalan organized labor, because CNT was outlawed by political authorities and a big number of left activists was imprisoned or murdered.

Thirdly, from the end of 1922 to the Primo de Rivera's coup in September 1923 Libres lost official protections and they were persecuted by the last Liberal governments, headed by José Sánchez Guerra and Manuel Garcia Prieto.

In this period levels of violence reached their apex and for defeating CNT and anarchist action groups the counter-revolutionary front adopted some brutal strategies, such as mass deportations, depredations, indiscriminate body searches in streets, arbitrary arrests and forced closures of trade union's sections and newspapers.

[40] Overall, the brutal repression implemented by Anido with the support of different armed groups managed to strongly reduced CNT's ability to defend workers' rights and to organize an efficient union struggle.

The prime minister Sanchez Guerra decided to re-establish constitutional guarantees and to promote different strategies in order to solve social conflicts, which have had reached terrible consequences not only in industrial areas but also in rural ones, as in Andalusia region.

[44] This context facilitated the rise of the new captain general of Catalonia Miguel Primo de Rivera, who in the summer 1923 decided to militarize again the public space by sending troops in the streets.

In front of this initiative Alfonso XIII decided to support the coup and the 15th September he appointed de Rivera as the new prime minister, sharing with him the goal to deprived all Spanish political establishment.

Indeed, the radicalization of labor conflicts prevented the birth of moderate alternatives to CNT, which for this reason could easily rebuilt its leadership in the union trade world after the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in 1930.

A lot of important people died in this period: notable figures of the labor movement as Pau Sabater, Evelio Boal, Salvador Seguí and the lawyer and left-wing politician Francesc Layret.