The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 Steven Henry Martin A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Steven Henry Martin 2014 History M.A. Graduate Program May 2014 The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 ABSTRACT The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 Steven Henry Martin Carlism and anarchism were revolutionary social movements that acquired significant popular support during the most intensive period of modernization in Spain (mid 19th to mid 20th centuries). It was noted but not well explored by contemporaries and historians that these enemies were similar in their hostility towards modernization and in their intense idealism. This thesis compares the two movements in order to determine the nature of their commonality and what this suggests about ideological enemies. A range of sources were consulted, including scholarship on modern Spain, biographical information on individuals who converted from Carlism to anarchism and contemporary print media. It was concluded that they were produced by the same destabilizing processes of disentailment and industrialization, which drew the working classes towards proposals that would have otherwise seemed implausibly utopian. The thesis further suggests that they were uniquely idealistic, in that they put moral integrity before the success of their cause. Keywords: Modern Spain; Carlism; anarchism; social movements; populism; modernization; land reform; enemy other; ideology; utopianism. Steven Henry Martin ii The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez for agreeing to supervise this dissertation and for holding me to a high standard of scholarship and precision throughout the process. It has been a privilege to work with him and I think it shows in the pages that follow. I would also like to thank Professors Olga Andriewsky and Carolyn Kay for agreeing to be part of my thesis committee and for offering excellent advice and analysis. Thanks as well to Professor Adrian Shubert of York University for doing me the honor of acting as an external reviewer, whose texts happened to be an essential guide for me in my efforts to understand the development of modern Spain. I would like to thank the Department of History at Trent University for the opportunity to write this dissertation and to be part of an institution which I greatly admire. Thanks to all the faculty and colleagues who have given time and effort to help increase the small amount of historical knowledge that I have. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Jenn Cole, for her love, support and endurance while I wrote this thesis, as well as my dog, Leadbelly, who nurtures an infinite yet unjustifiable faith in my abilities. Steven Henry Martin iii The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 Contents 1 Introduction: The commonality of enemies 1 1.1 Context 7 1.2 Social Movements 13 1.3 Historiography 15 1.4 Sources 20 1.5 Summary 21 2 Carlism and anarchism in the age of modernity 23 2.1 An overview of Carlism 26 2.2 An overview of anarchism 32 2.3 The mass production of revolutionaries: industrialization and land reform 40 2.4 The structure of revolutionary social movements 47 2.4.1 Carlist organization 48 2.4.2 Anarchist organization 52 2.5 The role of religion 56 3 Heroic movements 62 3.1 Utopianism 64 3.2 Anti-politics and the purity of violence 73 3.3 Political autonomy 80 3.4 The role of populism 89 4 The dynamics between Carlism and anarchism 95 4.1 The perception of the enemy other 95 4.2 Individuals who bridged the divide 106 4.2.1 Tomás González Morago 108 4.2.2 Santiago Salvador 109 4.2.3 Ramón del Valle-Inclán 111 4.2.4 Pedro Luis de Gálvez 113 4.2.5 Isaac Puente Amestoy 115 4.2.6 Juan Ferrer i Farriol 117 4.2.7 Carles Fontserè Carrió 118 4.2.8 Summary of individual cases 119 4.3 Interactions between Carlists and anarchists 120 4.3.1 Barcelona 1917-1923: the Sindicatos Libres & the CNT 123 4.3.2 The Second Republic and the Civil War 127 5 Conclusion 131 6 Bibliography 137 Steven Henry Martin iv The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 “It scared me to kill anyone. I hated it, because we were all Spaniards. We fired at our brothers, and brother was killing brother. I could kill someone without knowing if it was my brother I was killing. I was being fired at, and I didn’t know if it was my brother who was shooting.” -Juan Moreno (an Andalusian anarchist) on the Spanish civil war, in Jerome R. Mintz’ The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (p.300) Steven Henry Martin v The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 1 Introduction: The commonality of enemies Historians of modern Spain have long noted a commonality between the contemporary revolutionary social movements of Carlism and anarchism. It is a surprising observation because it would be difficult to find in Europe two social movements more antagonistic to one another. Carlism was originally an insurrectionary, mainly volunteer army who fought in support of their namesake Carlos V against the monarchy of Isabel II during the First Carlist War (1833-1840). Over time it accumulated the qualities of a modern social movement: Carlists idealized a Catholic monarchy and the return to a way of life based on a pre-modern moral code, conceived of as an “igualitarismo jerárquico,” according to historian Javier Ugarte Tellería.1 Anarchism was introduced to Spain in 1868, a form of libertarian socialism that sought the eradication of the institution of the state and opposed the authoritarianism of the Marxists in the First International. Anarchists believed that the destruction of all political and social hierarchies was a prerequisite to the construction of a secular culture based on reason and science, and a nuevo mundo based on radical interpretations of liberty and equality. “The Idea” (as it was known) was embraced by a growing number of Spaniards already engaged in labor battles and political uprisings. Revolutionary social movements like these were an important development in 19th and 20th century European life; they offered discontented working class populations an entirely new kind of society based on their particular ideological principles. They tended 1 “hierarchic egalitarianism.” Javier Ugarte Tellería, La nueva Covadonga Insurgente (Madrid: Bibloteca Nueva, 1998), 12. Steven Henry Martin 1 The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 to be left wing, radical democratic or socialist visions, although on occasion they could be conservative. A growing proportion of working class populations especially were attracted to increasingly radical solutions as the capitalist regimes of Europe largely abandoned them to exploitation within the new industrialized economies. In Spain, failed attempts at reform of the liberal order in the mid-19th century gave way to the popularity of revolutionary ideas among the working masses. But while the masses may have been uprooted and exploited by the industrial enterprise, their labor was essential for its continued development. This made them a powerful and volatile force. The upheavals and uncertainties of the modern age in Spain produced a number of acute social and political crises: historian Jordi Canal defined the 19th and early 20th centuries as a “low-intensity civil war.”2 The “war” was between the dominant powers of Spanish society and the working classes, between large landowners (such as the latifundistas in the south) and landless peasants, between urban workers and their capitalist employers, between Catholics and secularists, and between the centralized state in Madrid and regional forces that demanded political autonomy. From 1868 until 1937 Carlists and anarchists worked to overthrow the state while paying little attention to each other, except on some occasions to point out the lunacy and 2 Jordi Canal, Banderas Blancas, Boinas Rojas: Una Historia Politica Del Carlismo, 1876-1939 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2006), 26. Elsewhere, Canal elaborates, “Spain lived and suffered, for the greater part of the 19th century, the effects of a long civil war, discontinuous but persistent, in which alternated periods of open combat, attempted insurrections, exiles and phases of tranquility more apparent than real.” “España vivió y sufrió, durante la mayor parte del siglo XIX, los efectos de una larga guerra civil, discontinua pero persistante, en la que se alternaban periodos de combate abierto, conatos insurrectionales, exilios y etapas de tranquilidad más aparentes que reales.” Jordi Canal, “La Guerra Civil en el Siglo XIX (España, Portugal, Francia e Italia),” in “Violencias Fratricidas,” Carlistas y Liberales en el siglo XIX, Jornadas del Estudio del Carlismo Actas 24-25 septiembre 2008 (Estella: Gobinero de Navarra 2009), 193. Steven Henry Martin 2 The Commonality of Enemies: Carlism and anarchism in modern Spain, 1868-1937 immorality of the other’s beliefs. As civil strife increased in intensity after the First World War, anarchists and Carlists, (among socialists and republicans and conservatives and others) engaged in violent battles against each other. After almost seventy years of mutual condemnation and antagonism, Carlists and anarchists found themselves on opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The one appeared in the accounts of the other most often as vague, faceless combatants, full of malice and lacking in common decency. The other was beyond redemption, so committed to serving an evil cause that they had become caricatures of human beings, an intrinsic threat to a happy future.