Spain - Andrew Lipscombe
Economic
and Social Divisions
In the twentieth century, Spain was a backward nation compared
to the rest of Europe. In 1930, forty six per cent of the nation still
worked in agriculture. A further ten percent worked in agricultural
industry. In Northern Spain, the peasants had very little land of
their own and suffered from debt, high rent for the land and the owner
of the land could get rid of them at any time. However, the people in
the south were worse of than they were. Huge landowners who called the
land ‘latifundia’ owned Land. In Cordoba, three percent of
landowners owned fifty seven percent of the land. There were millions
of landless day labourers in the south, they earned half the national
average wage and could only work between 150 – 180 days a year. They
worked if the landowner wanted them to. This rather large dependence
upon the landowners forced the peasants into having a bitter
resentment for them. The huge landowners were protected by the
‘Guardia Civil,’ which was the civil guard.
There were only three largely
industrial areas in the hole of Spain. There was a textile manufacture
in Catalonia. Iron, steel and shipbuilding in the Basque North. There
was coalmining in the northern Asturias. This did not constitute of
much of the population
Political Divisions
The left wing, otherwise known as the working class, are from
the industrial areas of Spain. They were the key members of the PSOE (Partido
Socialista Obrero Espanol) and the UGT (Union General de Trabajadores).
The PSOE were not strong in traditions as they had only elected the
first representative in 1910 and were still unsure weather they should
take part in the Bourgeois democracy. They also had left wing
opposition from the Anarchists. They had a firm root and had arrived
in Spain before Marxism. Some of them believed in violent action and
thought that ‘One assassination is worth a thousand pamphlets.’
In 1917 700,000 workers had joined the anarcho – syndicalist
trade union, named the CNT (Confederacion Nacional Del Trabajo). They
hoped that they could revolutionise Spain through strikes and through
extremist’s views, assassinations.
The Right wing party was the conservative party of Spain up
until the 1930’s. They were the great institutions of the army and
the monarchy.
The Spanish army had too many officers. The ratio was one
officer to every 10 men. In other European countries, this was
normally between seventeen and twenty four to one. In 1898, the
Spanish suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the USA in a
naval battle in the Caribbean and Pacific. This defeat lead to even
more humiliation at the lose of the remainder of its empire. They lost
Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. This was
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