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The Rhetoric of Community and the Business of Pleasure: the San Sebastián Waiters' Strike of 1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

John K. Walton  and
Jenny Smith
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Summary

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Health and pleasure resorts constitute a distinctive, numerous and important kind of industrial town. But they, and the service industries which are central to their economies, have hardly been studied from a social conflict and industrial relations perspective. This paper opens out this theme by analysing a strike in the catering trades in San Sebastián, at the time Spain's largest and most prestigious seaside resort, at the height of the holiday season in August. The course of the strike is charted in its economic and political context, and the reasons for its outbreak, and for an ensuing attempt to escalate it into a local general strike, are analysed. Particular attention is paid to the status in the labour market of the camareros or hotel, restaurant and café waiters who withdrew their labour, and to reactions to the strike among local media who were deeply conscious of the importance to San Sebastián's staple industry of sustaining a carefully-constructed image of tranquillity and security. Comparisons are made with British resort experiences in the turbulent years between 1916 and 1921, and further work on this theme is urged, especially for this important period.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1994

References

1 La Época (Madrid), 17 August 1920, 27 August 1920; La Voz de Guipúzcoa (San Sebastián), 17 August 1920, 28 August 1920. These dates are at variance with the detailed chronology of strikes in Guipúzcoa province supplied by Teixidor, F. Luengo, Crecimiento económico y cambio social; Guipúzcoa 1917–1923 (Leoia, 1990), p. 373Google Scholar, but they agree with his dates in La crisis de la Restauración: partidos, elecciones y conflictividad social en Guipuzcoa, 1917–1923 (Bilbao, 1991), p. 128. See also Castells, L., “Una aproximación al conflicto social en Guipúzcoa 1890–1923”, Estudios de Historia Social, 32–33 (1985), p. 289Google Scholar.

2 See especiallyWalton, J. K., The English Seaside Resort: A Social History 1750–1914 (Leicester, 1983)Google Scholar, and references cited therein; Morgan, N., “Perceptions, Patterns and Policies of Tourism” (Ph.D., Exeter University, 1992)Google Scholar; Corbin, A., Le territoire du vide (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar; Désert, G., La vie quotidienne sur les plages normandes du second empire aux années folles (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar; Haug, C., Leisure and Urbanism in Nineteenth-century Nice (Laurence, Kansas, 1982)Google Scholar; Sánchez, M. J. Calvo, Crecimiento y estructura urbana de San Sebastián (San Sebastián, 1983)Google Scholar; de Arriba, C. Gil, Casas para baños de ola y balnearios maríimos en el litoral montañés, 1868–1936 (Santander, 1992)Google Scholar.

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6 Luengo, ibid., passim; Castells, “Una aproximación al conflicto social”.

7 El Cantábrico (Santander), 23 June 1903. The course of this strike is summarized in Barrón, J. I., Historia del socialismo en Cantabria: los orígenes, 1887–1905 (Santander, 1987), pp. 209–211Google Scholar. On p. 217 Barrón suggests a foundation date in 1901 for the Unión Cantábrica de Camareros y Cocineros, which was affiliated to the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores.

8 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 4 July 1912.

9 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 4 July 1920, 7 July 1920; Luengo, La crisb de la Restauración, p. 128.

10 For the best analysis of these processes, see Calvo Sánchez, Crecimiento y cstructura.

11 Walton, J. K. and Smith, J., “The first Spanish seaside resorts: San Sebastián and Santander from the 1840s to the 1930s”, History Today (forthcoming, 1994)Google Scholar.

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15 Archivo General de Gipuzkoa, Tolosa (A.G.G.), JD IT series, files labelled “Impuesto sobre espectáculos” (Entertainment tax). JD IT 3411–8 provide the most important material.

16 Walton and Smith, “First Spanish seaside resorts”.

17 A.M.S.S., B, 10, I, 392, 1.

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19 Nueva Guía de Santander y la Montaña, con arreglo al último censo oficial (Santander, 1892), pp. 27–30; A.M.S.S., B, 10, 1, 392, 12.

20 A.M.S.S., B, 10, 1, 388, 4.

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25 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 7 July 1920.

26 El Pueblo Vasco, 17 August 1920, 28 August 1920.

27 El Pueblo Vasco, 20 August 1920.

28 This sentence takes it that Hobsbawm initiated the debate on the labour aristocracy in its modern form; it does not intend to suggest that he created an orthodoxy. See especiallyHobsbawm, E. J., Worlds of Labour (London, 1984), chs 12–14Google Scholar.

29 A.G.G., JD IT 1672; and for day-wages, A.G.G., SM ISM 25/4.

30 Padrones list people in alphabetical order on the basis of professed attachment to the city, and give a wide range of census-type information on occupations, ages, marital status, birthplaces and addresses. Several can be found in A.M.S.S., from the 1870s to the 1920s.

31 Luengo, Crecimiento económico y cambio social, pp. 361, 363.

32 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 8 July 1920.

33 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 4 July 1920.

34 La Constancia (San Sebastián), 6 July 1920; La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 4 July 1920, 7 July 1920.

35 El Pueblo Vasco, 15 August 1920.

36 de Loyarte, A., La vida de la ciudad de San Sebastián, 7 vols (San Sebastián, 1950), 4, pp. 54–55Google Scholar. He also discusses the other San Sebastián newspapers here.

37 El Pueblo Vasco, 19 August 1920.

38 El Pueblo Vasco, 20 August 1920.

39 El Pueblo Vasco, 17 August 1920.

40 La Constancia, 17 August 1920.

41 La Época, 17 August 1920.

42 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 17 August 1920.

43 El Pueblo Vasco, 19–22 August 1920; La Época, 20 August 1920.

44 La Constancia, 17 August 1920; La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 17 August 1920.

45 La Época, 23 August 1920.

46 El Pueblo Vasco, 12 August 1917.

47 La Constancia, 17 August 1920.

48 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 18 August 1920; El Pueblo Vasco, 17 August 1920.

49 El Pueblo Vasco, 20 August 1920. For useful comment on the Council o f Social Reforms (Junta de Reformes Sociales), see La Voz de Guipúzco 1 July 1920.

50 La Época, 20 August 1920.

51 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 15 August 1920; El Pueblo Vasco, 15 August 1920.

52 El Pueblo Vasco, 21 August 1920, 24 August 1920.

53 Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, pp. 73–132.

54 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 29 July 1920.

55 La Constancia, 17 August 1920; La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 17 August 1920; El Pueblo Vasco, 21 August 1920. The quotation is from La Época, 17 August 1920.

56 Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, p. 102.

57 La Época, 19 August 1920.

58 El Pueblo Vasco, 22 August 1920.

59 El Pueblo Vasco, 20 August 1920, 24 August 1920.

60 El Imparcial (Madrid), 26 August 1920.

61 Castells, “Una aproximación al conflicto social”, p. 289; Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, p. 128.

62 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 8 August 1920, 12 August 1920.

63 La Constancia, 18 August 1920.

64 El Pueblo Vasco, 28 August 1920.

65 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 28 August 1920; La Época, 26 August 1920, which says that there were 31 federated societies but gives figures which add up to 34; Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, p. 128.

66 El Impartial, 27–28 August 1920; El Pueblo Vasco, 28 August 1920.

67 El Pueblo Vasco, 28 August 1920.

68 Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, p. 128; El Pueblo Vasco, 24 August 1920; La Época, 26 August 1920.

69 La Constancia, 18 August 1920.

70 La Época, 26 August 1920.

71 Solidaridad Obrera (Bilbao), 3 September 1920.

72 El Debate (Madrid), 29 May 1920.

73 La Constancia, 17 August 1920.

74 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 8 August 1920.

75 El Pueblo Vasco, 17 August 1920.

76 El Pueblo Vasco, 15 August 1917.

77 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 30 August 1893.

78 El Pueblo Vasco, 24 August 1920.

79 But such language is not entirely absent: El Diario Montañés (Santander) distanced from the strike movement of August 1917 “Santander, that sensible Santander which wants to live in orderly fashion and work and prosper in an honourable and civilised way; the genuine Santander, that of the Montaña, that of Cantabria […]” (15 August 1917).

80 Luengo, Crecimiento económico y cambio social, p. 68 and passim; Calvo Sónchez, Crecimiento y estructura; Flagey, San Sebastión, pp. 156–157, 164–168, for a graphic contemporary account of the problems, and the limits to the authorities' success even here. The situation in San Sebastián contrasts interestingly with the pattern in English seaside resorts, where the earlier development of working-class demand ensured that problems of order and control were perceived in terms of a threat to peace and ay from working-class visitors rather than from the local working-class population: Walton, English seaside resort, pp. 187–215.

81 La Voz de Guipúzcoa, 28–31 August 1893.

82 El Pueblo Vasco, 22 December 1916; Castells, “Una aproximación al conflicto social”, p. 281; El Pueblo Vasco, 15 August 1917, 17 February 1920.

83 El Pueblo Vasco, 15 August 1917, offers an example.

84 Manual descriptivo é historico de San Sebastián (Madrid, 1857), p. 13.

85 See, for example, the publicity Portfolio de San Sebastián (1903, copy in British Library).

86 Also available was the Roman identity of Easo, which was San Sebastián's cosmopolitan avatar, as in the elite society the Círculo Easonense which met in the Gran Casino.

87 El Pueblo Vasco, 4 January 1920.

88 For the limited success of attempts to build vigilance committees based on recreational societies and trustworthy residents to combat strikes, see Luengo, La crisis de la Restauración, p. 127.

89 El Pueblo Vasco, 21 December 1916.

90 See, for example, the jeremiads in La Constancia, 2 July 1916, on the evils of horse-racing, or 13 July 1920, on the evils of gambling.

91 La Época, 28 August 1920.

92 Robert Tressell, The Ragged-trousered Philanthropists (a classic, with many editions).

93 Cannadine, D., Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns, 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980), pp. 370–375Google Scholar; and see also Bailey, V., “Salvation Army Riots, the ‘Skeleton Army’ and Legal Authority in the Provincial Town”, in Donajgrodzki, A. P. (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1977), p. 241Google Scholar.

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