Pistolerismo

Pistolerismo
Date	1917 - 1923
Location	Industrial centres of Spain, mainly Barcelona
Methods	Assassination
Parties to the civil conflict
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo Unión General de Trabajadores Catalan employers Civil Governation of Barcelona Sindicatos Libres
Lead figures
Units involved
Number
Casualties and losses
200 workers and 20 employers' gunmen
Deaths

File:1921-01-26, Mundo Gráfico, Entierro del inspector de policía Antonio Espejo, Badosa.jpg

Funeral of the policeman Antonio Espejo (1921).

Pistolerismo refers to the practice used by Spanish employers during the late Restoration of hiring thugs to face and often kill trade unionists and notable workers – and vice versa, most notably present in Barcelona.

Background

Pistolerismo originated in the developing industrial zones of Barcelona, where Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) started growing rapidly during the start of the 20th century. The power of CNT growing in workplaces, resulted in several conflicts between employers and workers regarding the improvement of labor conditions. A particular accomplishment of the labor movement of the time was the Canadenca strike (1919) which forced the Spanish government to issue the Decreto de la jornada de ocho horas de trabajo, limiting the working day to eight hours.

The conflict

Employers responded to the workers' actions by initiating lockouts, discharging workers of their activities and creating company unions to divide the labor movement. Finally, employers started hiring thugs to kill notable syndicalists and the anarchists replied by attacks against employers, employers' gunmen, politicians, members of the clergy and police officers. Employers and their gunmen acted with the support or the tolerance of the government, which protected the employers' terrorism while prosecuting the anarchists. The employers' terrorism against anarchists was later supplemented by the campaign of State-terrorism enacted by civil and military governor of Barcelona Severiano Martínez Anido and by the attacks of the so-called Sindicatos Libres. For example, the Ley de Fugas (Law for the Fugitives), which allowed the police to shoot fugitives, was used as a form of extrajudicial execution of syndicalists by security forces. The executions were carried out by announcing to arrested syndicalists that they are free, only to execute them moments afterwards for "trying to escape prison".

Notable figures of the labor movement assassinated include the anarchsyndicalists Pau Sabater, Evelio Boal, Salvador Seguí and the lawyer and left-wing politician Francesc Layret. On the other side, anarchists' killings included noteworthy politicians such as Eduardo Dato, who at the time was the prime minister of Spain.