ATTEMPTS TO CREATE AN IBERIAN LABOUR CONFEDERATION

Contributed by João Freire

The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Spain was founded in 1910, when in Portugal, in transition from a liberal monarchy to a republic, the labour movement was taking its first steps towards organic unification, with an initial Executive Committee of the Trade Union Congress (1911), followed by a National Workers' Union (1914) and finally, in 1919, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). There was a clear influence of French revolutionary syndicalism, much more pronounced than in the Spanish CNT, where its federalist and regional base denoted a greater presence of anarchist militancy. However, capitalist concentration and the struggles then waged for better wages and shorter working hours (the 8-hour day was still the main objective) led to the concept of a ‘single industry union’ voted at the Sans congress of the CRT of Catalonia in 1918 being quickly adopted by the Portuguese CGT, which thus exerted significant offensive pressure against employers and the republican government in the following years. The 8-hour day was adopted in Portugal by law in 1919, with a socialist labour minister; but in reality it took longer to implement.

It was against this backdrop that, in late 1923, already under the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera, Portuguese trade unionists Manuel Joaquim de Sousa and Manuel da Silva Campos were arrested in Seville on charges of preparing an organic agreement between the CGT and the CNT. In fact, there were several attempts to create an Iberian Labour Confederation, the last of which was at the CNT congress in Zaragoza in May 1936, attended by the Portuguese Emídio Santana, where a proposal to this effect was voted by acclamation, although this gesture was little more than symbolic.