¹ Cf. Azaña's government statement of 17 Dec.1931 to the Cortes, in Azaña Díaz, Manuel, Memorias políticas y de guerra, vol. 1: año 1931 (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1976), 589–92.Google Scholar Regarding the Republican forces at the beginning of the new regime see Farré, Juan Avilés, La izquierda burguesaen la II República (Madrid: Espasa Calpe,1985), 63–86Google Scholar; Suárez Cortina, Manuel, El refonnismo en España (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1986), 293–316Google Scholar; Juliá, Santos, ‘La experiencia del poder: la izquierda republicana, 1931–1933’, in Townson, Nigel(ed.), El republicanismo en España (1830–1977) (Madrid: Alianza, 1994), 165–92Google Scholar; about the Socialist Party: Contreras, Manuel, El PSOE en la II República. Organización e ideología (Madrid: Centro deInvestigaciones Sociológicas, 1981)Google Scholar; Heywood, Paul, Marxism and the Failure of Organized Socialism in Spain, 1879–1936 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990), 110–145.Google Scholar

² For the province of Badajoz during the Second Republic see the corresponding chapters in: Alfageme, Gonzalo Barrientos et al. , Historia de Extremadura, vol. 4 (Badajoz: Universitas,1985)Google Scholar and Albarrán, Manuel Terrón (ed.), Historia de la Baja Extremadura, vol. 2 (Badajoz: Real Academia de las Letras y las Artes, 1986)Google Scholar; I was not able to consult Rees, Timothy,Agrarian Society and Politicsin the Province of Badajoz under the Second Spanish Republic, 1931–1936, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar

³ Still along these lines, Malefakis, Edward, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain. Origins of the Civil War (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1970), 310–1Google Scholar, who refersto the news reports in El Sol and El Debate of 2–5 Jan. 1932 and considers Castilblanco as ‘the first greatcause célèbre of the peasant war’ that shook Spain during the 1930s. Castilblanco is also dealt with in other important works on the second republic: Jackson, Gabriel, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 69–70Google Scholar; Preston, Paul, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War. Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1994), 94–5Google Scholar; Payne, Stanley G., Spain's First Democracy. The Second Republic, 1931–1936 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 75–6.Google Scholar

⁴ In rural Spain, the most famous – and best studied – of these ‘incidents’ were the bloody repercussions of a revolutionary strike called by the anarchists in the Andalusian village of Casas Viejas just one year after Castilblanco, on 8 Jan. 1932; see Mintz, Jerome, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar Rightist historians pointed to the breakdown of ‘public order’ as a proof of the failure of the Republic; see for example Arrarás, Joaquín; Historia de la Segunda República Española, 4 vols. (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1956–1968).Google Scholar

⁵ The best historical study still is Garrido, Diego López, La Guardia Civil y los orígines del estado centralista (Barcelona: Crítica, 1982).Google Scholar

⁶ For Azaña's first reaction to the events see Azaña, Memorias políticas, vol. 1, 619: diary entries for 29 Dec. 1931 to 4 Jan. 1932.

⁷ Payne, , Spain's First Democracy, 52–7.Google ScholarMaura, Gabriel, Interior Minister of the provisional government, tells the events strictly from a position of law and order: Así cayó Alfonso XII …, 2nd edn. (Barcelona: Ediciones Ariel, 1968), 277–91.Google Scholar

⁸ See Malefakis, , Agrarian Reform; Jacques Maurice,Lareforma agraria en España en el siglo XX (1900–1936), 2nd edn. (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1978)Google Scholar; Robledo, Ricardo, ‘Política y reforma agraria: de la Restauración a la II República (1868/1974–1939)’ in: Sanz, Angel García and Fernández, Jesús Sanz (eds.), Reformas y políticas agrarias en la historia de España (Madrid: Ministeriode Agricultura, 1996), 247–349Google Scholar; for Badajoz see Francisca Rosique Navarro, La reforma agraria en la provincia de Badajoz durante la II^a República (Badajoz: Diputación provincial, 1988).

⁹ Cf. Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes Constituyentes de la República Española (DSCC) 5 Jan. 1932, 2989–91; López, Elsa, et al. , Diego Hidalgo. Memoria de un tiempo dificil (Madrid: Alianza, 1986), 130–3.Google Scholar

¹⁰ ‘A una vaharada de instinto primitivo, a un impulso popular’ DSCC, 5 Jan. 1932, 2991.

¹¹ DSCC, 5 Jan. 1931, 2995–7.

¹² Text of the act in DSCC, Apéndice 2, al núm. 60 21 Oct. 1931. Cf. Ballbé, Manuel, Orden público y militarismo en la España constitucional (1812–1983) (Madrid: Alianza, 1983), 324–35.Google Scholar The quotation from Azaña, Ibid., 326. The act was inspiredby the analogous German ‘Gesetz zum Schutz der Republik’ ofJuly 1922, although, contrary to the generally held opinion, there were considerable differences in the texts of the two laws. On the Weimar Republic see Gusy, Cristoph, Weimar – die wehrlose Republik? Verfassungsschutzrecht und Verfassungsschutz in der Weimarer Republik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1991), 128–91.Google Scholar

¹³ On the widespread continued jurisdiction of military justice in the Second Republic cf. Ballbé, Orden público, 347–59. In the draft of the relevant Art. 95 of the constitution, military jurisdiction in peacetime was explicitly confined to the purely military sphere. By the amendment, however, which went through unnoticed by the Socialists and other left-wing deputies, its former scope was restored by the formula ‘delitos militares’. Cf. Vidarte, Juan Simeón, Las Cortes Constituyentes de 1931–1933. Testimonio del Primer Secretario del Congreso de Diputados (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1976), 298–300.Google Scholar On the range of military justice during the restoration period: Martin Baumeister, ‘Kleine Diebe vor dem Kriegsgericht. Militärjustiz, Polizeigewalt und Alltagskriminalität im Spanien der Restaurationszeit’, in Scholz, Johannes-Michael (ed.), Fallstudien zur spanischen und portugiesischen Justiz 15. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Frankfurta. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 159–76.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The speech is printed in DSCC, 5 Jan. 1932, 3003–5, and Azańa, Memorias políticas, vol. 1, 3–19; Ibid., 10–13, the notes on the cabinet meeting of 5 Jan. 1932.

¹⁵ Cf. Azaña, , Memorias políticas, vol. 2, 19Google Scholar; Payne, , Spain's First Republic, 76.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The debate on Arnedo in DSCC, 6 Jan. 1932, 3015–28; the most violent attacks on the Guardia Civil came from Radical Socialist deputy Balbontín, who had leanings towards the Communist Party, Ibid., 3024–5; Azana's speech Ibid., 3026–8 and id., Memorias políticas, vol. 2, 22–7; 20–2 give his notes on 6 Jan. 1932.

¹⁷ Baumeister, , ‘Klein Diebe’, 162–6.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Cf. Asúa, Jiménez de et al. ,Castilblanco (Madrid: Ed. España, 1933), 7Google Scholar and passim. Of the four defence counsellors appointed by the Socialists, two belonged to the party leadership: the famous professor of penal law at Madrid Central University and chairman of the advisory committee on the draft constitution, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, and the young deputy for the province of Badajoz and Secretary of the Chamber of Deputies, Juan Simeón Vidarte.

¹⁹ Jiménez de Asúa et al., Castilblanco, 19; Ibid., 19–47 for the verbatim accusation as presented at the trial.

²⁰ Thus one of the defence counsellors in his defence paper and in a feuilleton-like ‘picture’ of Castilblanco which was printed with the speeches by the public prosecutor and the defence team instead of an introduction (Ibid., 50–4, 13–7).

²¹ Ibid., 82, 100–6, 182–6.

²² Ibid., 127–31, 167–9, 173–6, 207–13.

²³ Ibid., 64, 96, 106, 221–2.

²⁴ Cf. Art. 8, no. 1 of the Código penal, 1931 version. In his defence speech Jiménez delivered a lecture on the ‘psychology of the masses’, referring to French and Italian literature from the turn of the century, including its role in Italian penal law. From this he was able to find mitigating circumstances for the Castilblanco crowd that should exclude, or at least reduce the punishment (Jiménez de Asúa et al., Castilblanco, 222–55). On the ‘psychology of the masses’ as studied by social scientists at the time, cf. Robert Nye, A., The Origins of Crowd Psychology. Gustave le Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1975), 59–81Google Scholar; and Moscovici, Serge, L'âge des foules. Un traité historique de psychologie des masses (Paris: Fayard, 1981)Google Scholar, which is based on the theory's three most famous representatives, Le Bon, Tarde and Freud.

²⁵ de Asúa, Jiménez et al. , Castilblanco, 7.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., 279–80.

²⁷ Ibid., 139–40, 82–3, 265, the quotations 139, 82.

²⁸ When judgement was passed, however, it was recommendedthat the punishments be reduced to life or twenty years' imprisonment ‘due to exceptional circumstances’. What then happened tothe accused reflects the political vicissitudes of the Republic. The defence made use of the opportunity, only available since the change of regime, to appeal against the verdict of a military court. But they suffered a severe setback: not only did the sixth sala in the Supreme Court of Justice confirm the verdict, but its (civilian!) judges declared that the more lenient sentence was unjustified. After a long delay the verdict was delivered shortly after the October Revolution of 1934. It was only after an appeal to the President that, at his discretion, the death sentences were commuted to thirty years' imprisonment. Shortly after the victory by the popular front an amnesty for those imprisoned for political and social crimes gave the men of Castilblanco their freedom, along with hundreds imprisoned after the October Revolution. See Asúa, Jiménez de et al. , Castilblanco, 289–90Google Scholar; Vicente Chamorro, Jesús, Año nuevo, año viejo en Castilblanco (Madrid: Ediciones Albia, 1985), 259–70.Google Scholar This latter account of the events, in the form of a documentary novel bya high-ranking civil servant and based on published source material and interviews with eyewitnesses, gives some interesting details, but is also full of inaccuracies.

²⁹ Thus in ] Asúa, Jiménez de et al. , Castilblanco,7.Google Scholar

³⁰ This is the assessment of Vidarte, the defence counsel, Cortes Constituyentes, 308.

³¹ See Malefakis, Agrarian Refonn, 311, for a compilation of six pueblos in which, between 31 Dec. 1931 and 5 Jan. 1932, the Guardia Civil was called in because of strikes and demonstrations and where death and injuries occurred amongst the local population.

³² On the social unrest in 1931/2 see Payne, Spain's First Democracy, 52–7, 73–80; on Azaña'sattitude see Juliá, Santos, Manuel Azaña, una biografia política. Del Ateneo al Palacio National, 2nd edn. (Madrid: Alianza, 1991), 164–70Google Scholar; the quotation, dated 20 Sep. 1931, is in Azaña, Memorias políticas, vol. 1, 300.

³³ See de Lara, Manuel Tuñón, Medio siglo de cultura española (1885–1936), 3rd revised edn. (Madrid: Tecnos, 1984), 276 –Google Scholar; the quotation is from a speech of April 1934. Tuñón stresses the ambiguity in Azaña's perception of ‘mob’and ‘people’.

³⁴ See Marichal, Juan, La vocación de Manuel Azaña (Madrid: Alianza, 1982), 171 –Google Scholar image and quotation from a speech of September 1932.

³⁵ Vidarte, Cortes Constituyentes, 308.

³⁶ Ibid., 293; Arrarás, Joaquín, Historia, vol. 1 (1956), 249.Google Scholar

³⁷ Cf. Corbin, Alain, Le village des cannibales (Paris: Aubier, 1990), esp. 121–39Google Scholar, who examines the significance and psychological preconditions of one of the last ritualistic acts of a «pre-modern» brutality in French history, from the year 1870. In the case of Castilblanco, however, this kind of ‘archaic’ violence only existed in anti-republican imagination and rhetoric.

³⁸ Cf. for example Bernecker, Walther L., Sozialgeschichte Spaniens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Vom Ancien Régime zur Parlamentarischen Monarchie (Frankfurta. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990),263–77Google Scholar, who characterises the Second Spanish Republic as essentially a ‘modernising’ regime.

³⁹ ‘un delito cruel, sin justificación y vergonzosamente anacrónico’ – to quote one of the leading republican intellectuals, Gregorio Marañón, in one of the most-often cited commentaries on the events in Castilblanco (in: ElSol, 5 Jan. 1932); Marañón elevated the case, as a collective act, to the status of a second Fuenteovejuna. In this Andalusianvillage a cruel feudal lord had been murdered in 1476; the Catholic Kings pardoned the accused when the villagers all claimed to be responsible.Through a play by Lope de Vega of 1614 of the same name, this historicalevent entered the canon of classical Spanish education.

⁴⁰ Asúa, Jiménez de et al. , Castilblanco, 215.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Although students of contemporary Spanish history for a long time paid special attention to conflict and rebellion in rural society, the challenges of historical research about social protest and collective violence so far have not been taken seriously enough. The seminal work was already written in 1923 and was published in 1929 by del Moral, Juan Díaz, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas – Córdoba (Antecedentes para una reforma agraria), 3rd edn. (Madrid: Alianza, 1979)Google Scholar; in the 1970s there followed a series of studies about ‘conflictividad social’, mainly regarding Andalusian latifundia regionsup to the Civil War, using a concept of politics and action that seems too narrow, for example Pérez Yruela, Manual, La conflictividad campesina en la provincia de Córdoba, 1931–1936 (Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1979).Google Scholar Today's advances and shortcomings of the Spanish research about ‘conflictividad social’ in the rural world are represented in the special issue ‘Estudios sobre conflictividad social en el mundo rural’, Noticiario de Historia Agraria 13, January–June 1997. I myself have studied the persistence and meanings of traditional collective protest in the province of Badajoz during the Restoration Monarchy: Baumeister, Martin, Campesinos sin tierra. Supervivencia y resistencia en Extremadura (1880–1923) (Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1997, German edn. 1994), 227–368.Google Scholar Important results have been brought about in studies of urban popular protest: see Beth Radcliff, Pamela, From Mobilization to Civil War. The Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijón (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

⁴² Cf. the records of the trial in the Archivo General Militar in Segovia, Sección 9a, leg. A-147: ‘Plaza de Badajoz […] Causa instruída contra los procesados Nicolás Amado Bravo [a] ácido sulfúrico […] por el delito de insulto y agresión a fuerza armada en Valencia del Ventoso (Badajoz)’ (AGM A-147).

⁴³ See Rees, Timothy, ‘Agrarian Power and Crisis in Southern Spain: the Province of Badajoz, 1875–1936», in Gibson, Ralph and Blinkhorn, Martin(eds.), Land Ownership and Power in Modern Europe (London: Harper Collins,1991), 235–53Google Scholar; Baumeister, , Campesinos sin tierra, 31–139.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Correo de la Mañana, 8 Oct. 1918; AGM A-147, fos. 2, 33, 39–116.

⁴⁵ The verdict is in AGM-147, fos. 317–18. Three months before the verdict was delivered, the highest military authority dropped the charges regarding the deaths of the civilians, on the grounds that the police force ‘in suppressing the uprising’ had acted legitimately, according to the rules, in its own defence (AGM A-147, fos. 381–2).

⁴⁶ Twenty-five years before, in September 1893, there hadbeen street protests, endemic in nineteenth- and early twentieth-centurySpain, against the imposition of consumer taxes (consumos), linked with limited and at the same time symbolic acts of violence quite common in this sort of protest (see Servicio Histórico Militar, Madrid, Sección Orden Público, legajo 174, dated 5 Sep. 1893; for the consumos and the resistance they provoked, using the case of Badajoz 1880–1923 see Baumeister, , Campesinos sin tierra,246–78.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Correo de la Mañana, 2, 4 June 1918.

⁴⁸ Correo de la Mañana, 5 July 1918; El Socialista,8 Nov. 1918 (with a commentary on the situation after the June strike).

⁴⁹ On the course of the proceedings see the statement by the Guardia lieutenant in AGM A-147, fos. 2–4.

⁵⁰ Ibid., fos. 51–2, 74.

⁵¹ Ibid., fos. 13, 171–83.

⁵² Ibid., fos. 12, 11, 64.

⁵³ Ibid., fos. 8–12, 17, 23, 61–65, quoted f. 9.

⁵⁴ There is not yet much evidence about the participation of women in social protest in contemporary Spanish history – for urban areas see Kaplan, Temma, Red City, Blue Period. Social Movements in Picasso's Barcelona (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Radcliff, , From Mobilization to Civil War, 51–56Google Scholar; for Badajoz see Baumeister, , Campesinos sin tierra, 211–20.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ AGM A-147, fos. 18, 15.

⁵⁶ Ibid., fos. 144–46. The letters are in fos. 138–40; they were written by two cousins, agricultural workers of about twenty years of age. One of them was amongthose arrested in the provincial capital, the other was in the group arrested at the station.

⁵⁷ The quotations: Ibid., fos. 140, 139.

⁵⁸ The father of the President of the ‘Fraternidad,«an elderly farm worker, had worked for twenty-five years in the large mining area of Río Tinto in a neighbouring province to Badajoz. There he had been a member of a workers’ association – of which no further details are known (Ibid., f. 14–15). On the labour disputes and workers' movements in Río Tinto see Luis Gil Varón, «Las luchas obreras en Río Tinto (1888–1920)’, in Seis estudios sobre el proletariado andaluz(1868–1939) (Córdoba: Ayuntamiento de Córdoba, 1984), 131–73; for the early period see María Dolores Ferrero Blanco, , Capitalismo minero y resistencia rural en el suroeste andaluz: Río Tinto, 1873–1900 (Huelva: Diputación Províncial, 1994).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Cf. the association's statutes of 1906, the only remaining evidence, which show that it did not belong to any supraregional organisation:Estatutos de la Sociedad obrera denominada La Unión de Fuente de Cantos (Provincia de Badajoz) (Badajoz: La Minerva Extremeña, 1906). In the summer of 1918 the farm workers in Fuente de Cantos also went on strike, at the same time as those in Valencia. During the strike in October one farm worker from Fuente de Cantos, a member of the union, had given a speech at the ‘Fraternidad’ headquarters. When they heard of the violent death of the two demonstrators in Valencia, the Union organised a march with a black flag, as a sign of mourning (AGM A-147, fos. 911, 100–2).

⁶⁰ The 18-year-old electrician, born in the province of León, had turned up in this remote region on his own, apparently in search of work (cf. AGM A-147, fos. 224–5, 244). He was not arrested until two months after the demonstration and it was to him that oneof the letters confiscated by the Guardia Civil was addressed (see note 53).

⁶¹ For the period of serious political and socio-economicdisturbances between 1918 and 1920, in which there were marked regional differences, the not unproblematic term ‘trienio bolchevique’ is commonly used in historical literature. Research has concentrated particularly on the Andalusian latifundia regions; see for example the influential study by Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitacionescampesinas andaluzas, 265–376; cf. also Manuel Tuñón de Lara, , Luchas obreras y campesinas en la Andalucía del siglo XX. Jaén (1917–1920), Sevilla (1930–1932) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1978), 7–121Google Scholar; Maurice, Jacques, ‘A propósito del trienio bolchevique’, in García Delgado, José Luis (ed.), La crisis de la Restauración. España entre la primera guerra mundial y la II República (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1986), 337–47.Google Scholar The most important study of labour is Meaker, Gerald H., The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914–1923 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar Regarding the economic situation see García Delgado, José Luis/Roldán, Santiago, La fonnación de la sociedad capitalista en España (1914–1920), 2 vols. (Madrid: Conferencia Española de Cajas de Ahorro, 1973).Google Scholar On the development of foodcosts and wages, and on workers' organisations and struggles in Badajoz during the ‘trienio’, see Baumeister, , Campesinos sin tierro, 93–113,335–68.Google Scholar

⁶² In one of the letters quoted it says, undoubtedly withreference to Valencia, ‘when the suppressed people want to live and are begging for bread they are given lead’ (Ibid., f. 139).

⁶³ Cf. Biglino, Paloma, El socialismo y la cuestión agraria (1890–1936) (Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, 1986), 179–215, 313ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ This view is also put forward in recent works, for example Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, 78, 87.

⁶⁵ In her study of Gijón Pamela Radcliff also points to the significance and consequences of the paternalism of Spanish Republicanism and its emphasis on law and order: From Mobilization to Civil War, passim.

⁶⁶ For the best account, using the capital, see Juli á, Santos, Madrid, 1931–1934. De la fiesta popular a la lucha de clases (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1984).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Cf. also Louise, Charles, and Tilly, Richard, The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930 (London: J. M. Dent, 1975).Google Scholar One central result of their various analyses of ‘collective actions’ is that violence often only comes into play as ‘elite reactions to the claims of ordinary people’ (288 and passim).