Social and Labor Transformations in 19th Century Spain
Social Change
Population Growth
A constant observed in Spanish society since the late 18th century is the demographic shift from the center to the periphery. This movement can be attributed to the economic disparity between these zones. While the peripheral areas, especially in the north, experienced stronger economic growth, the central regions faced increasing economic stagnation.
Several factors contributed to this demographic phenomenon:
- Economic growth in coastal areas.
- Depopulation of the central peninsula, with the exception of Madrid and Zaragoza.
- Stable supplies and basic food prices, minimizing the impact of subsistence crises on the population.
- Lower mortality rates in peripheral areas, leading to higher biological growth.
- Internal migration from the center to the periphery, particularly towards northern industrial regions.
Population growth accelerated from the 18th century onwards. Prior to this period, the population fluctuated between 6 and 8 million inhabitants. The 18th century saw a 3 million increase, followed by a 7 million increase in the 19th century, and over 20 million in the 20th century. The demographic transition wasn’t fully realized until the late 20th century. The preceding centuries reflect a transition from the ancien régime, becoming more pronounced as we approach the modern era.
This population growth was sustained by consistently high birth rates throughout the 19th century and a general decline in mortality. Exceptions to this decline were mortality spikes due to epidemics characteristic of the ancien régime, such as cholera and famines resulting from agrarian crises, which occurred approximately every two decades. Despite these setbacks, the Spanish population grew from 16 to 18 million in the last third of the 19th century. This slow growth, marked by high birth and mortality rates, coupled with major epidemics like cholera, resulted in a very low life expectancy, not exceeding 35 years by 1900. This indicates a significantly delayed demographic transition.
Migration
Migrations were of two types: external and internal. External migration in the 19th century saw surplus populations from the maritime periphery migrating overseas, primarily to America and North Africa.
In the early 19th century, three main destinations for emigration emerged:
- Algeria: Migration to this North African region originated from the Mediterranean provinces of Alicante, Murcia, and Almería. Initially seasonal, this migration increased throughout the 19th century.
- America: While weak during the 18th century, emigration to America increased in the 19th century, particularly to Cuba and Puerto Rico, colonies retained until the end of the century. Most emigrants originated from Galicia, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, and the Canary Islands.
- France: Emigration to France remained substantial and constant throughout the 19th century.
Internal migration, characterized by movement from rural areas to cities, became evident from 1830 and intensified after 1850. Most migrants came from medium-sized cities, regional capitals, or declining areas seeking economic opportunities in expanding urban centers. Migration from small towns remained insignificant in the 19th century, with displacements generally confined within the same county. Madrid stands as an exception, attracting migrants from across the country throughout the 19th century. Large-scale migratory movements to other Spanish cities did not occur until the 20th century.
While urbanization was a clear trend, its scale was considerably smaller compared to the rest of Europe. This can be attributed to Spain’s slower industrialization. Existing cities had to adapt their urban planning to accommodate new residents. Visible changes included the emergence of new neighborhoods and taller buildings. Construction expanded into orchards, disentailed convents and monasteries, and eventually led to city extensions and long-term growth plans.
From Estates to Class Society
The notion that Spanish society experienced little change in the 19th century is anachronistic. It stems from a desire to find changes similar to those of the 20th century or those experienced by neighboring countries in the same period, overlooking their different development levels.
Analysis of census data from 1797 to 1877 reveals both change and continuity. The changes laid the groundwork for 20th-century transformations, while the continuities explain Spain’s relative stagnation compared to other nations.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, approximately 86% of Spaniards lived in towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. This figure remained similar in 1860 at 85.5%. For populations under 5,000, the percentage was 76% in both periods. While urban development occurred, the urban population remained a small percentage of the total. The rural population decreased from 70% to 62% during this period, representing over 1 million people. Despite the initial weakness of the middle classes in the early 19th century, various groups began to emerge and grow.
Illiteracy was prevalent, especially among women, in the south (below the Tajo-Segura line), and in rural areas. At the beginning of the century, the illiteracy rate was 94%, decreasing to 80% by the 1850s and slightly over 75% in 1877. This considerable decrease, particularly in the first half of the century, occurred despite population growth.
Land seizures led to an increase in laborers. As agriculture couldn’t absorb the growing labor force, emigration increased. The first half of the 19th century witnessed a rural-to-urban population shift, impacting rural areas more significantly due to their larger population share. Urbanization accelerated in the last third of the 19th century, albeit unevenly. Cities like Bilbao, Barcelona, and Valencia grew rapidly due to industrialization and the rise of the industrial proletariat, while others like Madrid and Zaragoza lagged. The small size of cities necessitated expansion to accommodate new inhabitants from the countryside. These expansions posed challenges for architects, leading to creative solutions like Arturo Soria’s Ciudad Lineal in Madrid. Cerdà’s expansion of Barcelona served as a model for integrating working-class neighborhoods, factories, and utilities into the city’s infrastructure, contrasting with other districts promoted by the industrial bourgeoisie, showcasing Catalan modernist architecture.
The transformation from an estate-based society to a class-based one occurred during the 19th century. The liberal revolution contributed to this, not by drastically altering the composition or influence of social groups, but by changing their legal status. The nobility declined, primarily for economic reasons, but their complete disappearance, as in France, did not occur. In Spain and southern Italy, the titled nobility adapted to the new era. Many embraced liberal conservatism, maintaining their status quo. Some exploited land seizures to become new landowners under advantageous, if not illegal, conditions, like the House of Alba, which acquired land without auctions or proper valuations. The nobility thus weathered the liberal revolution, offsetting lost revenues from feudal rights with debt securities used to purchase disentailed land. Families like Alba and Medinaceli experienced asset growth, not only in land but also in industrial and service companies, although their holdings remained predominantly rural.
Some nobles lost their lands, particularly in Valencia and Alicante, due to ground rent issues, failing to convert their lordships into liberal property. Their tenants eventually became rightful owners. Others, ill-suited to the new economic realities, accumulated debt and sold their assets, like the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and Osuna. However, generalization is misleading. Many nobles retained their social, economic, and political positions. The continued granting of noble titles as royal rewards demonstrates the nobility’s enduring social significance.
Spain had a unique noble group: the gentry. These lower-ranking nobles, owners of small farms, enjoyed noble privileges. Liberalism led to their disappearance, as the removal of privileges transformed them into ordinary landowners who maintained their lifestyle.
The Church experienced a sharp decline, losing a third of its regular clergy during the 19th century. Considering population growth, this represents approximately half. The secular clergy, however, did not diminish. The nobility declined across all groups due to the removal of privileges, though their power remained significant.
The bourgeoisie, often confused with the middle class, primarily engaged in business. While small in number, this group grew. The 1860 census, though difficult to interpret, shows a small but growing bourgeois population. Within the bourgeoisie, distinct groups existed. The upper middle class, comprising industrialists, bankers, and large landowners, enjoyed a lifestyle comparable to the nobility. The petty bourgeoisie, engaged in smaller-scale business activities, earned less. This group, including merchants, small business owners, and medium landowners, is often categorized within the middle classes due to their lifestyle. While the bourgeoisie grew during the 19th century, Spain’s slow economic growth hindered their rise to dominance.
The middle classes occupied a lower rung. Lacking political expression around 1835, they represented a sociological group aspiring to upward mobility. This group consolidated and expanded after 1850, absorbing those who failed to establish themselves within the bourgeoisie but progressed economically and socially, as well as those rising from the lower classes, such as farmers, professionals, civil servants, and military officers.
The army and navy, burdened by successive wars, accumulated excessive numbers of chiefs and officers. The army totaled 150,000 troops, with 50,000 professionals and 100,000 conscripts. Many, especially officers, engaged in political activities. High-ranking engineers performed technical work that would have been civilian roles in a more advanced society. The civil service tripled during the 19th century, and the number of liberal professionals also doubled due to increased activity.
Spanish society remained pre-industrial, with inherent inertia in its social evolution. A broad base of lower classes resided in rural areas.
In 1877, Spain remained largely agricultural. The countryside generated most of the national income and employed a large percentage of the population. The liberal land reform, completed at the beginning of the Restoration, resulted in greater land privatization concentrated in the hands of small groups (the agrarian oligarchy) and some farmers who benefited from civil confiscations. The prevailing liberal economic system failed to protect small landowners, leading to their displacement and subsequent emigration.
During the Restoration, distinct social groups emerged in rural areas:
- Wealthy agrarian oligarchy: Predominant in Castile, Extremadura, and Andalusia, this group comprised the aristocracy, financial bourgeoisie, and rural bourgeoisie. The aristocracy retained old titles and acquired new ones, benefiting from land market opportunities. The financial bourgeoisie, owning major companies, acquired large estates. Criticized by the petty bourgeoisie for their perceived role in the agrarian situation and lack of initiative, they invested in land for both economic gain and social prestige, acquiring it through confiscations or during economic downturns.
- Lower middle class: This group consisted of medium landowners, tenants, and sharecroppers.
- Landless laborers (braceros): Experiencing intermittent unemployment and low wages, they often merged with impoverished smallholders. This large group suffered from malnutrition, poor health and hygiene, and high illiteracy rates.
This social structure explains the periodic social unrest, often violently repressed by authorities. Slow mining and industrial development led to the gradual modernization of certain regions.
The Basque Country, with its steel industry and banking sector, and Catalonia, with its cotton textile industry (accounting for 90% of Spanish industrial supply), saw the rise of a bourgeoisie whose economic success stemmed from aggressive business practices and government protectionism, shielding them from foreign competition. Alongside this industrial and financial bourgeoisie, a complex social structure emerged in cities:
- Heterogeneous middle class: This group included advocates of democratic and republican positions, alongside a large apolitical mass attached to traditional habits, fearful of change, and heavily influenced by the Church.
- Working classes: This group comprised a majority of tradespeople linked to traditional jobs and a growing number of industrial workers who gradually joined political and union organizations.
Genesis and Development of the Labor Movement in Spain
According to José María Jover, the early labor movement can be understood by distinguishing between spontaneous attitudes arising within the emerging Spanish proletariat and the influence of external theories and doctrines.
Spontaneous Attitudes:
- A tendency, inherited from guilds, towards local or regional social organization. Early associations emerged in Catalonia, showing continuity with ancient guilds. In 1840, the Mutual Association of Cotton Industry Workers, with its mutual and beneficial character, supported a non-tolerated Laborers Society. Barcelona workers aimed for mutualism, recognition of association rights from authorities, and better wages from employers. Social conflicts resembled the English Luddite movement, opposing mechanization. Machine destruction occurred in Barcelona in 1824 and Alcoy in 1821. In 1835, workers burned down Bonaplata’s mechanized factory. Spain’s first general strike (summer 1854) aimed to prevent the introduction of new looms (Shubert).
- Sympathy for political parties (liberal, democrat, and republican) that supported worker claims and benefited from the working class’s impact force in cities. The September Revolution led to the recognition of assembly and association rights, with the restriction of independence from foreign influence.
- The agricultural proletariat often resorted to riots, expressing sporadic discontent in isolated groups of southern laborers or in some urban and rural areas of Castile.
External Influences:
- The introduction of utopian socialist doctrines from Fourier and Cabet through Cadiz and Barcelona. Fourierism spread from Andalusia to Madrid, with Fernando Garrido as its spokesperson.
- The six-year democratic revolution marked a decisive phase for the Spanish labor movement, establishing contact with the International Workers Association (IWA). Marsal Anglora, a Barcelona driver using the pseudonym Magallán Saro, attended the IWA Congress in Brussels in 1868. The 1868 Revolution facilitated workers’ associations. José Fanelli founded the first Spanish IWA section with 22 workers in Madrid. By May 1869, another section was established in Barcelona, with an estimated 195 sections and 25,000 members. This growth was fueled by worker disillusionment with the Republican and Federalist Revolution. Conferences in Barcelona (1870), Córdoba (1872), and Zaragoza (1873) revealed radicalization and divisions. Anselmo Lorenzo, a delegate to the London Conference (1871), expressed disappointment. These divisions impacted the Spanish labor movement, which became dominated by Bakunin’s anarchism. Repression following the Paris Commune forced the movement underground, and the 1874 coup led to severe punishments.
In 1879, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was founded in Madrid, with Pablo Iglesias as its leading figure. In 1888, the PSOE held its first congress and founded the General Union of Workers (UGT), the socialist trade union. Opposed to anarchists, socialists held a collectivist, anti-clerical, and anti-bourgeois ideology, albeit more moderate. Supporting political struggle, Pablo Iglesias was elected to parliament in 1910.
In 1881, the Federation of the Spanish Region emerged, with Anselmo Lorenzo as a key leader of the early anarchist movement. From 1901, various groups organized around the publication “Solidaridad Obrera.” The National Confederation of Labour (CNT), the largest Spanish trade union with significant influence among Andalusian agricultural workers and Catalan industrial workers, was founded at the 1910 Barcelona Congress. Anarchists advocated a collectivist, libertarian, apolitical, anti-clerical, and revolutionary ideology.