| Native name | Congreso de Sevilla |
|---|---|
| Date | September 24–26, 1882 |
| Location | Seville, Andalusia, Spain |
| Also known as | 2nd Congress of the FTRE |
| Type | Congress |
| Organised by | Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region |
| Outcome |
|
The Seville Congress was the Second Congress of the newly created Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region held in Seville in September 1882.
The Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region had been founded in the Barcelona Workers' Congress of 1881 after the Liberal government of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta recognized the right of association thus ending the period of forced secrecy of its predecessor, the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA. The following year the FTRE already had about 60,000 members, which, as Clara Lida has highlighted, is still surprising since after almost ten years of persecution and in hiding the Spanish anarchist movement, far from disappearing, had re-emerged with such force, going from 30,000 members in 1873, with the FRE-AIT, to 60,000 in 1882, with the FTRE. Lida also highlighted that the "profile" of the new FTRE was very different from that of the FRE-AIT eight years earlier. "Unlike in 1873, when the manufacturing, industrial and urban areas of Barcelona, Valencia (including Alicante) and Madrid predominated, the profile of the new militants in 1882 was strongly Andalusian, with great weight of the agrarian organizations that for a decade they had united in the Union of Rural Workers (UTC), specifically aimed at organizing the agricultural proletariat within the Spanish Federation.” [1]
The Congress was held between September 24 and 26, 1882 at the Cervantes Theater in Seville. 251 delegates attended representing 8 ex officio Unions - the most important being that of Rural Workers, which had 20,915 members, followed by Manufacturers, with 10,000 - and 218 local Federations, more than half of Andalusia - 130 that group to 38,000 affiliates, which represented almost two-thirds of the total - followed by Catalonia with 53 Federations that grouped 13,000 affiliates. [2]
In Congress, the anarcho-collectivists and the "legalists", led by the Catalan Josep Llunas - who was elected a member of the Federal Commission - and the Galician Ricardo Mella, and the anarcho-communists and insurrectionalists, led by the Andalusian Miguel Rubio, faced each other for the first time. [3] Llunas affirmed that to achieve the revolution it was necessary to fight "with the weapons of reason and intelligence, instructing and enlightening ourselves, in a word, by means of the scientific revolution, not in riots and revolts.” [4] In direct relation to this issue, the legality or illegality of the movement was discussed. “While some, especially the Catalan trade unionists, wanted a public movement that would structure a labor movement as massive as possible and legal, others, especially in Andalusia, wanted it to maintain its secret and revolutionary character, and be willing to practice propaganda of the deed. The conflict in the Andalusian countryside would put the tensions and differences between the two models to the test.” [5]
In the manifesto approved in Congress, the moderate anarcho-collectivist and legalist theses triumphed - it was proclaimed, for example, that strikes "when we cannot necessarily avoid them, we will do them regulation and solidarity" - which was applauded by the liberal press, such as the influential Madrid newspaper El Imparcial which highlighted that "the anarchist workers of Spain" - unlike what was happening in France where "the supporters of anarchy and of collectivism present themselves at their meetings as furious madmen demanding blood and extermination" - "they have just celebrated their annual congress with such correctness in the procedures, so much temperance in the forms and such unanimity in the agreements, that it could well serve as a lesson to many political assemblies of doctors in parliamentary customs". [6]
However, "unanimity" within the FTRE was not such, as demonstrated by the fact that the illegalists shortly after the Seville Congress constituted a new federation under the name of Los Desinheredados . In their press organ The Social Revolution they denounced years later that the Federal Commission had not published the agreement of the London Congress of 1881 on "propaganda of the deed". [7]
And on the other hand, it was not clear that the authorities and employers were going to tolerate the existence of an anarchist organization that advocated the social revolution. Thus, at the end of 1882, the FTRE newspaper The Social Magazine reported that in some places members of the organization were not hired or forced to leave if they wanted to be hired, and many others had lost their job for that reason. The newspaper also denounced that "to the demonstrations that mass workers make in front of the municipalities asking for 'bread and work'", especially in Andalusia, which was going through a serious agrarian crisis, they responded "by arresting the most determined and sending forces of the Army to maintain order”, or by sending the Civil Guard to investigate the affiliates' meetings. For this reason, the newspaper demanded that the "public powers" not resort to "reprobate and illegal means" to repress the workers - "take us to the courts of justice, and they, that they acquit us or condemn us; but do not inhibit the workers' spirits, do not outrage them, do not threaten them, do not raid their homes, do not apprehend them, do not take them to jail like common criminals." [8]
The Anarchist International of St. Imier was an international workers' organization formed in 1872 after the split in the First International between the anarchists and the Marxists. This followed the 'expulsions' of Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume from the First International at the Hague Congress. It attracted some affiliates of the First International, repudiated the Hague resolutions, and adopted a Bakuninist programme, and lasted until 1877.
The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy was an organisation founded by Mikhail Bakunin along with 79 other members on October 28, 1868, as an organisation within the International Workingmen's Association (IWA). The establishment of the Alliance as a section of the IWA was not accepted by the general council of the IWA because, according to the IWA statutes, international organisations were not allowed to join, since the IWA already fulfilled the role of an international organisation. The Alliance dissolved shortly afterwards and the former members instead joined their respective national sections of the IWA.
The Petroleum Revolution was a libertarian and syndicalist leaning workers' revolution that took place in Alcoy, Alicante, Spain in 1873. The event is called the Petroleum Revolution since the workers, desperate due to living conditions, carried as their standard petroleum-soaked torches. During those days, according to chroniclers, the city stank of petroleum.
Antoni Pellicer i Paraire (1851–1916) was a Catalan writer, typographer and anarchist activist.
Rafael Farga i Pellicer was a Catalan anarcho-syndicalist who led the establishment of the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA (FRE-AIT). As a print worker, he became involved in the Barcelona workers' movement following the Glorious Revolution of 1868, when he was first introduced to anarchism by the Italian anarchist Giuseppe Fanelli. He then set about organising the Catalan workers' movement along anarchist lines, emphasising decentralisation and federalism, eventually affiliating the FRE-AIT with Mikhail Bakunin's Anti-Authoritarian International. He then came to uphold the precepts of anarcho-syndicalism, overseeing the establishment of the FRE-AIT's successor, the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE). Later in life, he lost interest in syndicalist organising and turned to journalism, penning a series of studies of political figures and movements of the 19th century.
Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production. In their place, it envisions both the collective ownership of the means of production and the entitlement of workers to the fruits of their own labour, which would be ensured by a societal pact between individuals and collectives. Collectivists considered trade unions to be the means through which to bring about collectivism through a social revolution, where they would form the nucleus for a post-capitalist society.
The Black Hand was a presumed secret, anarchist organization based in the Andalusian region of Spain and best known as the perpetrators of murders, arson, and crop fires in the early 1880s. The events associated with the Black Hand took place in 1882 and 1883 amidst class struggle in the Andalusian countryside, the spread of anarcho-communism distinct from collectivist anarchism, and differences between legalists and illegalists in the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española.
The Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association, known by its Spanish abbreviation FRE-AIT, was the Spanish chapter of the socialist working class organization commonly known today as the First International. The FRE-AIT was active between 1870 and 1881 and was influential not only in the labour movement of Spain, but also in the emerging global anarchist school of thought.
The Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region was an anarchist organization founded in 1888 during the last congress of the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE), held in Valencia. It had an ephemeral life as it disappeared the following year.
The Union and Solidarity Pact was a Spanish labor organization founded in 1888, which succeeded the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region. It was valid until 1896.
The 1870 Barcelona Workers' Congress was a congress that brought together, from 18 to 26 June 1870, 89 delegates from workers' societies in Barcelona and in which the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) was founded. It is considered the founding act of anarchism in Spain.
The Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region was a Spanish anarchist organization founded in the Barcelona Workers' Congress of 1881 by the initiative of a group of Catalan anarcho-syndicalists headed Josep Llunas i Pujals, Rafael Farga Pellicer and Antoni Pellicer, after the dissolution of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association founded in the Barcelona Workers' Congress of 1870. It only had seven years of life since it was dissolved in 1888. Its failure, in which the episode of La Mano Negra was key, opened a new stage in the history of anarchism in Spain dominated by propaganda of the deed.
The 1881 Barcelona Workers' Congress was a congress of the workers' societies of Spain held in Barcelona in September 1881, during the reign of Alfonso XII, from which the new Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region emerged, with an anarcho-collectivist tendency, which replaced the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) founded eleven years earlier in a labor congress also held in Barcelona.
The Disinherited was a Spanish clandestine anarchist group that defended the use of violence framed in the doctrine of propaganda of the deed.
The Valencia Conference was a secret meeting of the delegates of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) held in Valencia in September 1871, during the reign of Amadeo I. It was held in secret due to the persecution it suffered and organized as a consequence of the panic caused by the Paris Commune among the European governments and ruling classes.
Francesc Tomàs Oliver (1850–1903) was a Spanish anarchist, a bricklayer by profession, who said that the labor movement had to be led by "workers with calluses on their hands." A member of the Federal Commission of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (1870–1881) and of its successor the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (1881–1888), he was the author of the first history of the beginnings of anarchism in Spain in the form of 16 articles that appeared in La Revista Social between December 27, 1883, and January 15, 1885, with the title Del nacimiento de las ideas anárquico-colectivista en España.
The Zaragoza Congress was the Second Congress of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT). It was held in Zaragoza in September 1872, at the end of the reign of Amadeo I. To prevent it from being suspended by the government, as it ended up happening, the delegates met secretly a few days before the scheduled date. Previously, the Valencia Conference, had also been held in semi-underground conditions. The Congress, among other matters, dealt with the conflict that arose in the Madrid Federation between the anarchists, the majority, and the Marxists, the minority.
The Córdoba Congress was the Third Congress of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT). It was held in Córdoba between December 25, 1872 and January 3, 1873, just one month before King Amadeo I abdicated and the First Spanish Republic was subsequently proclaimed. Like what happened in the Hague Congress of 1872, the definitive rupture between anarchists, the majority, and Marxists, the minority, who no longer attended the Congress, was confirmed.
José García Viñas was an Andalusian anarchist physician, member of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association and of Mikhail Bakunin's International Alliance of Socialist Democracy (1869–1872).
The Madrid Congress was the Fourth Congress of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) that was held in Madrid in June 1874.