Policing the recession : unemployment, social protest and law-and-order in Republican Barcelona, 1930-1936
What follows is a social and cultural study of the Barcelona proletariat during the Spanish Second Republic (193 1-1936). Unlike many historical and organisational studies of working class groups and labour organisations, this study looks beyond the formal aspects of politics to locate praxis firmly within the wider socio-economic fabric of everyday life. In doing so, the emphasis moves away from an explanation of the opposition of the CNT-FAI to the Republic in terms of a fixed set of ideological shibboleths and the traditional anarchist opposition to authority. Instead, this study assesses the attitude of the CNT towards the Republic in terms of the failure of the authorities to eradicate the traditional patterns of social exclusion and their inability to satisfy the predominantly unskilled and unemployed supporters of the CNT-FAI in Barcelona. Particular emphasis is placed on patterns of social and urban exclusion and working class culture. I have set out to retrieve the historic experience of a specific sector of the Barcelona working class: the much-maligned unskilled, itinerant and immigrant labourers who, quite literally, built modern Catalonia. International economic collapse and internal political
Ealham, Christopher
History
Policing the recession : unemployment, social protest and law-and-order in Republican Barcelona, 1930-1936. What follows is a social and cultural study of the Barcelona proletariat during the Spanish Second Republic (193 1-1936). Unlike many historical and organisational studies of working class groups and labour organisations, this study looks beyond the formal aspects of politics to locate praxis firmly within the wider socio-economic fabric of everyday life. In doing so, the emphasis moves away from an explanation of the opposition of the CNT-FAI to the Republic in terms of a fixed set of ideological shibboleths and the traditional anarchist opposition to authority. Instead, this study assesses the attitude of the CNT towards the Republic in terms of the failure of the authorities to eradicate the traditional patterns of social exclusion and their inability to satisfy the predominantly unskilled and unemployed supporters of the CNT-FAI in Barcelona. Particular emphasis is placed on patterns of social and urban exclusion and working class culture. I have set out to retrieve the historic experience of a specific sector of the Barcelona working class: the much-maligned unskilled, itinerant and immigrant labourers who, quite literally, built modern Catalonia. International economic collapse and internal political
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