Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

‘Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum’: The Catalan Employers’ Dirty War, 1919–23

  • Chapter
The Agony of Spanish Liberalism

Abstract

In the early hours of 13 September 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera, Captain General of Barcelona, staged a military coup that marked the death of the liberal regime which had ruled Spain since December 1874. In a manifesto addressed to the country and to the armed forces, he claimed the mantle of ‘iron surgeon’ prepared to undertake radical surgery to save the motherland. Significantly, the code to inform his allies in Madrid that the rebellion had begun was ‘the patient has been operated upon’.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Angel Ossorio, Barcelona (Madrid: Ricardo Rojas, 1910), pp. 13–14.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Ignacio Bernis, Consecuencias económicas de la guerra (Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1923), pp. 95–6.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Pedro Gual Villalbi, Memorias de un industrial de nuestro tiempo (Barcelona: Sociedad General de Publicaciones, 1923), pp. 104–21;

    Google Scholar 

  4. Joaquín M. Nadal, Memóries, 2nd edn (Barcelona: Aedos, 1965), pp. 256–7;

    Google Scholar 

  5. Antoni Jutglar, Historia crítica de la burguesía en Cataluña (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1984), pp. 365–82.

    Google Scholar 

  6. The average annual immigration for 1900–10, of 3,400 people, increased during the following decade to 20,000 per annum. Albert Balcells, El Sindicalisme a Barcelona, 1916–23 (Barcelona: Nova Terra, 1965), p. 11;

    Google Scholar 

  7. José Luis Martín Ramos, ‘Anàlisi del movement vaguístic a Barcelona, 1914–23’, Recerques, 20 (1988), pp. 94–7;

    Google Scholar 

  8. Chris Ealham, ‘Class and the City: Spatial Memories of Pleasure and Danger in Barcelona, 1914–23’, Oral History, 29/1 (Spring 2001), pp. 39–40.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Pere Gabriel, ‘Red Barcelona in the Europe of War and Revolution’, in Angel Smith (ed.), Red Barcelona: Social Protest and Labour Mobilization in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 46–53; Ealham, ‘Class and the City’, pp. 41–2.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Confederación Regional del Trabajo, Memoria del Congreso celebrado en Barcelona los días 28, 29, 30 de Junio y el 1 de Julio de 1918 (Barcelona: CRT, 1918), pp. 17–20, 77–9. The Anarcho-Syndicalist mouthpiece, Solidaridad Obrera (2 July 1918), noted that the proletariat now possessed the instrument to succeed in the class struggle.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Contemporary authors noted that the first organized atentado, that is, one that was not the product of random or sporadic violence, was the killing of the foreman Lorenzo Casas on 3 August 1916. See Jose María Farré Moregó, Los atentados sociales en España (Madrid: Artes Gráficas, 1922), p. 111;

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ramón Rucabado, Entorn del sindicalisme (Barcelona: Políglota, 1925), p. 181;

    Google Scholar 

  13. and works by Angel Pestaña, Lo que aprendí en la vida, 2 vols. (Murcia: Zero, 1971), 1, p. 75 and 2, p. 64 and Terrorismo en Barcelona (Memorias Inéditas), in Javier Tusell and Genoveva Queipo de Llano (eds) (Barcelona: Planeta, 1979), p. 100.

    Google Scholar 

  14. For recent analyses of terrorism see Eduardo González Calleja, El Máuser y el sufragio: Orden público, subversion y violencia política en la crisis de la Restauración, 1917–1931 (Madrid: CSIC, 1999), pp. 116–22, 227–8;

    Google Scholar 

  15. Angel Smith, Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labour and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1898–1923 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), 250–3;

    Google Scholar 

  16. Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Foundations of Civil War: Revolution, Social Conflict and Reaction in Liberal Spain, 1916–1923 (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 139–43;

    Google Scholar 

  17. Eduardo González Calleja and Fernando del Rey, ‘Violència política i pistolerisme a la Catalunya de la primera postguerra mundial. Propostes d’anàlisi’, L’Avenç, 192 (May 1995), pp. 34–41;

    Google Scholar 

  18. Albert Balcells, ‘Violencia y terrorismo en la lucha de clases en Barcelona de 1913 a 1923’, Estudios de Historia Social, 42–3 (July–December 1987), pp. 37–79.

    Google Scholar 

  19. See, for instance, the attacks on enterprises partially or totally owned by French businesses in Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (hereafter AMAE), H 2789. The collusion between Anarchists and the German spy network is recognized in Pestaña, Terrorismo, pp. 84–96; Emili Salut, Vivers de Revolucionaris (Barcelona: Catalònia, 1938), p. 149.

    Google Scholar 

  20. For further discussion of the subject see Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Spain 1914–18: Between War and Revolution (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 166–7.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Archivo del Foment del Treball Nacional (hereafter AFTN), Memoria de la Junta Directiva del Foment del Treball Nacional correspondiente a 1919–1920 (Barcelona: Hijos de Domingo Casanova, 1920), p. 19.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Soledad Bengoechea, El Locautde Barcelona (Barcelona: Curial, 1998), pp. 40–1, 65. On sindicación forzosa see Smith, ‘The Catalan Counter-Revolutionary’, pp. 15–16;

    Google Scholar 

  23. Fidel Gómez Ochoa, ‘El partido conservador y el problema social durante la crisis final de la Restauración: la sindicación profesional y obligatoria’, in Javier Tusell, Julio Gil Pecharromán and Feliciano Montero (eds), Estudios sobre la derecha española (Madrid: UNED, 1993), pp. 274–5.

    Google Scholar 

  24. For the registry of the statutes of the Sindicato Libre in the Civil Government see AGCB, Asociaciones, no. 380, Exp. 10,323 (11 December 1919). For the military input in the creation of the Libres see Bengoechea, El Locaut, pp. 47–8; and

    Google Scholar 

  25. Soledad Bengoechea and Fernando del Rey, ‘Militars, patrons i Sindicalistes Lliures’, L’Avenç, 166 (January 1993), p. 12.

    Google Scholar 

  26. See also Feliciano Baratech Alfaro, Los Sindicatos Libres de España (Barcelona: Cortel, 1927), pp. 65–73;

    Google Scholar 

  27. Antonio Elorza, ‘Los Sindicatos Libres en España: teorías y programas’, Revista de Trabajo, 35–6 (1971), pp. 154–8;

    Google Scholar 

  28. Colin M. Winston, Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900–1936 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 111–12.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Antonio Gramsci, ‘On Fascism, 1921’, in David Beetham (ed.), Marxists in the Face of Fascism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 82–3.

    Google Scholar 

  30. According to Fernando Soldevilla, El año político 1919 (Madrid: Julio Cosano, 1920), p. 96,

    Google Scholar 

  31. there were 11 workers held by the military. See also Conde Romanones, Notas de una vida, 1912–1931 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1999 [1947]), p. 434.

    Google Scholar 

  32. AFTN, Actas, 13 (1 April 1919), pp. 278–9.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Bernardo Pla y Armengol, Impresiones de la Huelga General de Barcelona del 24 marzo-7 abril 1919 (Barcelona: n.p., 1930), pp. 13–96.

    Google Scholar 

  34. AFTN, Actas, 13 (9 April 1919), pp. 293–5.

    Google Scholar 

  35. AFTN, Boletín de la Federación Patronal de Barcelona (23 and 29 December 1919).

    Google Scholar 

  36. AFTN, Memoria de la junta directiva del Foment del Treball Nacional correspondiente al ejercicio de 1922 (Barcelona: Tipografía Hijos Domingo Casanova, 1923), pp. 9–13; Rey, Propietarios, p. 245; Sellés, El Foment, pp. 174–8.

    Google Scholar 

  37. For the failure of Fascism to take off in Spain see Javier Tusell, La política y los politicos en los tiempos de Alfonso XIII (Barcelona: Planeta, 1976), pp. 93–4;

    Google Scholar 

  38. Stanley Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), pp. 19–23. For the Libres, see Winston, Workers, pp. 157–61.

    Google Scholar 

  39. AFTN, Actas,. 15 (22 June 1923), pp. 187–8.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Javier Tusell, Radiografía de un golpe de estado: El ascenso al poder del General Primo de Rivera (Madrid: Alianza, 1987), pp. 80–1.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Francisco J. Romero Salvadó
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Bristol, UK

    Francisco J. Romero Salvadó (Senior Lecturer) (Senior Lecturer)

  2. Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Leeds, UK

    Angel Smith (Reader in Modern Spanish History) (Reader in Modern Spanish History)

Copyright information

© 2010 Francisco J. Romero Salvadó

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Salvadó, F.J.R. (2010). ‘Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum’: The Catalan Employers’ Dirty War, 1919–23. In: Salvadó, F.J.R., Smith, A. (eds) The Agony of Spanish Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274648_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274648_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36383-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27464-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation