In early March 1919, the strike at Barcelona Traction, Light and Power, better known as La Canadiense, came to an end. It achieved key gains for Spanish workers, the most important being the eight-hour workday. However, due to the government's refusal to free all prisoners once the conflict was over, another strike began soon afterwards, and, on 24 March, a state of war was once again declared throughout the province of Barcelona. This allowed the captain general of Catalonia, Joaquín Milans del Bosch, to order the military repression of the conflict and authorise the deployment of the Somatén, a citizen militia, in the streets of Barcelona, despite the absence of major violence in the city. The Somatén acted as an auxiliary public order force in rural Catalonia and, over time, increasingly became an ‘anti-worker militia’.Footnote 1 Ramon Pla i Armengol, a leading Catalan doctor and a socialist, recalled years later how he had confronted a member of the group, reproaching him for going out with a weapon when all was calm in the city. The member of the Somatén replied that things had changed and that at long last they had weapons. In clear reference to the prerogatives that had apparently been granted to members of the militia regarding their actions against striking workers, the doctor countered that ‘you have always been able to have a weapon; what you have now is impunity’.Footnote 2 At the same time, in late March, Spain's Interior Ministry (Ministerio de la Gobernación) asked the civil governors of all provinces to authorise ‘responsible’ residents in each city and town to use weapons. These citizens were charged with keeping order in the absence of the Civil Guard.Footnote 3 The following autumn, executives at multiple companies applied to the civil government of Barcelona for gun licences for trusted workers. These companies included Ebro Irrigation and Power and Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña; the former was a subsidiary of La Canadiense, which was a shareholder in the latter. In some cases, more than fifty licences were requested. All of the applications were approved.Footnote 4 These occurrences are evidence of the progressive arming of private citizens with the authorisation of the state and its various institutions at a particularly sensitive time of social conflict. Meanwhile, the violent clashes in Barcelona between members of the Sindicatos Únicos Footnote 5 of the National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; CNT) and groups linked to the Federation of Employers was escalating. These clashes, in which a total of approximately 1,000 people were involved between 1917 and 1923, left more than 200 dead in the Catalan capital alone, making Spain one of the hotspots of violence in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.Footnote 6
This article aims to shed light on one of the least-studied topics in the abundant historiography on political violence in Spain: the circulation of guns among the civilian population during the Restoration period (1874–1923) and the state's actions in this area.Footnote 7 It focuses on the last years of the Bourbon Restoration, from 1917 until the coup d’état led by the general Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923. As was the case elsewhere in Europe at this time, the public sphere in Spain was increasingly inundated with guns, which had become widely available starting in the late nineteenth century. Social unrest and clashes between political factions commonly involved the use of a large number of firearms.Footnote 8 A key explanation for this development lies in the efficacy of gun control measures and the presumed tolerance exhibited by authorities and the police with regard to the circulation of guns. Indeed, illegal possession of a firearm did not become a criminal offence in Spain until 1923. This might seem surprising in a country that experienced multiple magnicides and attempted assassinations at gunpoint starting in the 1870s, but Spain was by no means an outlier in Europe. In many other European countries, gun licences and permits were not introduced until the late 1920s and early 1930s, as governments sought to maintain a delicate balance between safeguarding supposed personal liberties and strengthening the principle of authority.Footnote 9
A study of civilian gun ownership and gun control measures offers several important insights into the explosion of political violence in the interwar years. In the early 1990s, George L. Mosse popularised the theory of ‘brutalisation’, which holds that the experience of fighting on the frontlines during the First World War (1914–18) was responsible for the high levels of political violence seen in the ensuing period.Footnote 10 More recent scholarly work has revised and in part moved beyond this theory's premises regarding violence.Footnote 11 However, the paramilitarism and high levels of violence of the period after 1918 have hardly ever been tied to the diffusion of firearms. There is a dearth of research on the availability of guns and their role in sustaining violence. There has likewise been little consideration of the relationship between state control and the circulation of guns. This may be because existing studies have linked the violence of the period after the First World War to the collapse of the state. As a result, neither the state nor its actions have been taken into account, not even in the case of countries that emerged victorious from the conflict. Spain, which paradoxically experienced a violent post-war period despite not having participated in the war, represents a clearly contrasting case. The high levels of violence seen during this period cannot be attributed to the effects of defeat nor to the collapse of the state (the same might be said of other western and southern European countries, including Italy, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom). Nor can it be explained by the proliferation of guns as a result of the war. It is therefore reasonable to consider other, long-term factors.Footnote 12
One such factor is the distribution, availability, and control of firearms. While distribution networks and the volume of gun sales will be considered as secondary topics in this article, the main focus is the role of authorities in disarming civilians and in what I call the ‘selective rearmament’ of part of the population, which was always done in the interest of maintaining ‘public order’. Selective rearmament refers to the state's use of both legal and illegal means to arm a particular segment of the population in the context of the social and political conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I will first analyse policies to disarm citizens and control the circulation of guns during the final years of the Restoration (1917–23). In order to do so, it will be necessary to briefly examine earlier events. I will consider why no laws in this area had been enacted in the preceding half-century and identify certain dynamics which were to continue up until the period of the final crisis of the Restoration regime. Second, I will discuss the selective rearmament of part of Spain's population with the occasional complicity or tolerance of various authorities during the final period of the Restoration, which also saw the enactment of more restrictive gun laws in the early 1920s. In the conclusion, I will discuss the relationship between these dynamics of selective rearmament and the evolution of the alleged state monopoly on violence in Spain and other European countries.
Policies to Disarm Citizens and Control the Circulation of Guns
The gun laws that were in force prior to the 1920s dated back a half-century to the eve of the Restoration and the regime's first years. These laws were intended primarily to neutralise the corps of armed citizens that had emerged as a result of nineteenth-century conflicts, and particularly the Voluntarios de la Libertad (1868) and the Voluntarios de la República (1873) – both of which had initially been formed to defend the achievements of the revolution of September 1868 – as well as the various citizen forces that had been created at the local level.Footnote 13 In 1874, the government established a state monopoly on importing weapons and ammunition. However, after the wars between liberals and absolutists came to a definitive end with the conclusion of the Third Carlist War (1872–6), the apparent pacification of the political situation in Spain led to new laws on the circulation of weapons. In June 1876, the government importation monopoly was abolished, and in August 1876 a ban on using weapons without a licence was instated. Licences were to be issued by provincial civil governors, and six licence categories were created for different types of weapons and uses. This law was to define the legal framework in this area until 1923, even if its implementation was not very effective in practice.Footnote 14
The period that immediately preceded the Restoration and the first years of the regime are relevant to the subsequent evolution of disarmament policies in Spain because already in this period general provisions to disarm the civilian population were accompanied by dynamics of selective rearmament. The state endeavoured to bring groups of armed volunteers under its control, capitalising on their activities, selecting their members and endowing them with regulations.Footnote 15 While this involved neutralising armed groups by occasionally disarming their members, it also meant that the state absorbed these members, which allowed it to have armed contingents in place to maintain public order and control the demobilisation process.Footnote 16 Authorities allowed some groups – free corps (cuerpos francos), volunteer militias, local citizen forces – to remain in existence on an extra-legal basis, largely to protect against an undefined ‘threat’. These groups were primarily engaged in persecuting political adversaries and the first workers’ movement, which was organised under the banner of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) – not only in major cities but also in smaller cities and towns that had citizen corps. These groups were generally made up of local property owners because, as was sometimes noted, it was ‘upstanding and good patricians . . . who must take up arms’.Footnote 17
There was an additional reason for the use of volunteer corps that persisted throughout the Restoration period. That police forces were seemingly insufficient for keeping public order had two separate consequences. Firstly, it heightened military involvement in law enforcement, one of the defining characteristics of Spain's public order system.Footnote 18 Secondly, it was said to oblige citizens to do their part. The latter was reflected in a process of civilian disarmament that was neither one-way nor complete. Already in the years prior to the establishment of the Restoration regime, this process was disrupted on more than one occasion to rearm part of the population, as occurred in 1867, 1869 and also 1874, when some local authorities successfully requested that weapons be returned to ‘upstanding citizens’ (‘buenos ciudadanos’) so that they could defend themselves.Footnote 19 The Restoration regime operated on the basis of this rearmament of the ‘loyal classes’ and continued the same policy of selective armament, mainly entrusting control over the circulation of weapons and the concession of licences to the discretion of local and regional elites who acted as a filter, arming citizens as suited their interests. Under the abovementioned August 1876 law, licences were granted by civil governors. Article 10 stipulated that mayors could, after notifying the civil governor of the province, authorise the use of any type of weapon under certain circumstances. These included the formation of somatenes [groups of armed men], the pursuit of criminals, and prisoner transport.
At the turn of the century, and particularly during the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a steep rise in the number of firearms in the hands of property owners and businessmen, who were increasingly turning to private security. This was reinforced by the state's partial delegation of responsibilities in the realm of security, as seen in the controversial Rural Police Law of 1898 and the creation of Landowning and Tenant Farmers’ Communities (Comunidades de Labradradores), which had armed guards who were vested with law enforcement authority (as were members of the Somatén beginning in 1905).Footnote 20 The same occurred with private police forces and the security forces of various businesses, which carried out enforcement duties on company premises. A significant number of these companies had foreign owners and investors. Many businesses, from mining companies like the British-owned Rio Tinto Company Limited to electric companies like La Canadiense, chose to adopt this security model, though they continued to call on public police forces in moments of unrest.Footnote 21 In addition, organisations whose principal aim was to defend ‘public safety’ (‘seguridad ciudadana’) were founded, such as the Liga de Defensa in Barcelona, founded in 1907, and the Centro de Defensa Social, founded in 1903 (which became the Comité de Defensa Social in 1908).Footnote 22 Subsequently, during the period of maximum social conflict from 1918 to 1920, the institution of the Somatén was replicated in other places outside Catalonia, new citizen defence groups were founded in provincial capitals and large leaseholders and new property owners in agricultural areas amassed veritable home arsenals, in some cases creating somatenes and irregular militias.Footnote 23 These citizen groups were in fact part of a broader phenomenon in Europe, the foundations for which had begun to be laid at the turn of the century.Footnote 24 In the post-1917 period, the spectre of the general strike and fears of potential revolutionary contagion decisively encouraged the development of a counterrevolutionary paramilitarism based on two premises: the need for citizen defence and growing dissatisfaction with the liberal system, whose use of coercive powers was deemed insufficient.Footnote 25
Concerns about the quantity of guns in circulation increased only at the turn of the century, leading to the adoption of some preventative measures. In the first decade of the twentieth century, there were calls for the Spanish government to increase penalties for the unauthorised carrying and use of weapons, establish a system for monitoring gun manufacturers, make it difficult to obtain new licences and reinforce measures to curb the manufacture and sale of banned weapons (which was so common as to be deemed ‘scandalous’ in 1907).Footnote 26 Still, no changes were made to penalties. As late as early 1914, the General Directorate of Security reaffirmed the regulations that were in force on the sale and use of all categories of weapons, considering that these existing provisions sufficed. Authorities needed only to ‘monitor the implementation of what has already been ordered’.Footnote 27 Nevertheless, gun shops and dealers were asked to hand over firearms when authorities believed unrest might be imminent, and starting in the mid-1910s there was increased surveillance and investigation into the place of manufacture and intended recipients of guns found in the hands of certain individuals. Authorities likewise increasingly inquired as to whether dealers in various cities were in possession of firearms, and if so in what quantities.Footnote 28 Communications between the Interior Ministry and provincial governors also reflected the perceived need to enact specific legislation and, as occurred in late 1918, to implement temporary preventative measures ‘until a special provision on the circulation of guns is enacted’.Footnote 29
It was the Conservative government led by Manuel Allendesalazar (December 1919–May 1921) that acted to strengthen legislative measures to control the circulation of weapons, but no specific law was passed. Instead, the tax reform law of 29 April 1920 established compulsory paperwork to demonstrate that weapons were legally owned or possessed. In addition to the licence requirement, it created a special ‘ownership certificate’ (‘guía de pertenencia’), which was to list the type of weapon, the factory where it had been manufactured, its serial number and any other information that might be needed to distinguish it from similar weapons. The law included another equally important provision: the aforementioned certificate had to be endorsed by the Civil Guard.Footnote 30 In mid-September, the Spanish government issued a Royal Decree to regulate state intervention in the manufacture, importation and circulation of weapons and bring other applicable provisions on gun licences together in a single piece of legislation. These regulations, introduced by the last government under prime minister Eduardo Dato, appeared to be aimed at stopping the trafficking of handguns, which was spurring pistolerismo (armed conflict between anarcho-syndicalists, on the one hand, and conservative trade unionists and other pro-employer groups, on the other), particularly on the streets of Barcelona.Footnote 31 Dato was himself assassinated with a firearm in early March 1921, thus joining the list of victims of magnicides that had taken place in Spain since the late nineteenth century. At any rate, the new decree failed to have the desired effect of standardising legislation in this area. Subsequent Royal Orders and ministerial instructions on how to interpret the new legislation created a situation of ‘great confusion’, as the onslaught of communications from civil governors to the Interior Ministry asking for clarification regarding particular aspects of the law and its practical effects would appear to confirm.Footnote 32
Judging by the contents of some of these communications and the successive regulations that were issued thereafter, the provisions found in the September 1920 legislation fell far short of providing a satisfactory solution. Some governors placed special emphasis on the number of guns in the hands of trade unionists, which had been purchased without a licence from businesses engaged in this form of clandestine commerce, including businesses that sold foodstuffs. This is what the governor of the province of Cádiz (Andalusia) worriedly reported in January 1921, noting that a large number of Browning pistols were circulating among local trade unionists. Moreover, this coincided with an alleged campaign of anonymous threats sent to various employers. The governor bitterly criticised ‘the lack of zeal of local authorities and the Civil Guard, despite not only recent but also earlier provisions and repeated warnings about the purchase and sale of weapons’. He added that this ‘amply explains why the terrorists of Spain so easily find the means to carry out their crimes’.Footnote 33 A contrasting view was expressed by the civil governor of Oviedo (Asturias), who was elated at the results of the measure approved in September, deeming it a ‘colossal’ success in his province. He added that crime had fallen significantly after authorities collected firearms as a result of the enactment of the law. The governor claimed that the measure had been unanimously applauded by members of all social classes because ‘they all say: THIS IS A MEASURE WHICH OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN ADOPTED A LONG TIME AGO’.Footnote 34
Indeed, evidence on the number of weapons seized in the months after the decree of September 1920 went into effect suggests that the volume of circulation up until that point had been substantial. However, the true extent of weapons in circulation was at times difficult to determine. As some civil governors pointed out, prior to the new decree security employees had been accountable to municipal courts, making it difficult to track this information.Footnote 35 With regard to the widespread circulation of handguns without a licence, it is certainly worth noting that the fines imposed in some provinces in accordance with the decree referred to the constant discovery of such weapons in rural areas and small towns.Footnote 36
Additional key aspects must be taken into account in relation to the notable spread and circulation of weapons in Spain. Firstly, the country was home to a significant number of weapons manufacturers, as became apparent on occasions such as the attempt to create a sort of gun manufacturing monopoly in 1924. Numerous voices were raised in opposition to this proposal and in defence of ‘private manufacturers’.Footnote 37 Secondly, gun shops could be found throughout Spain. In January 1921, a number of Basque manufacturers requested that they be authorised to dispatch handguns not only to dealers in Madrid and provincial capitals, but also to shopkeepers in small cities and towns who had previously sold them. The manufacturers noted that the volume of sales in such shops was ‘extraordinarily important’.Footnote 38 The third aspect that must be taken into account is the active domestic arms trade. There were many investigations into sizeable shipments of handguns to different parts of Spain. In some cases, orders were even given to temporarily halt shipments.Footnote 39 This active domestic trade generated fraudulent practices, which is a fourth aspect to consider. Sales were carried out without meeting legal requirements and authorities uncovered large numbers of unbranded weapons with no serial number, pistols that had not been declared or had repeated serial numbers and shipments of guns that had been declared as ironmongery products, machines or foodstuffs. In addition, the theft of guns before they reached their destination was a worrying and increasingly common phenomenon.Footnote 40
Another illegal means of bringing guns into Spain that contributed to the overall supply was cross-border smuggling, especially from France. In the 1880s, authorities in both Spain and France were already concerned by news of clandestine caches, seized ammunition, the discovery of arsenals and the smuggling of guns through border crossing points.Footnote 41 Smuggling continued in the early twentieth century and increased at certain times – starting in 1909. By the early 1920s, there were recurrent reports that hundreds of pistols, presumably intended for Barcelona trade unionists, had entered the country. The governor of the province stated in early March 1923 that the majority of unionised workers were armed with pistols which had been smuggled across the border and were ‘mostly domestically manufactured’.Footnote 42 Maritime routes were also used to bring firearms to Spain. In 1922, authorities expressed concern about the arrival of guns on German ships, whose crews were allegedly transporting pistols which they then sold in Spanish ports. Nevertheless, the governor of the province of Barcelona informed the Interior Ministry that it was impossible to police such shipments to the extent that might have been desirable due to insufficient means. Authorities in the Canary Islands, another hotspot for gun trafficking, said the same in May 1922.Footnote 43
It appears that Barcelona was at the vanguard in the application of measures which subsequently served as the basis for Spain-wide legislation on carrying, using, selling and transporting guns. A month before the decree of September 1920, in early August, the province's civil governor issued a proclamation containing provisions to make it more difficult to acquire firearms and ammunition. The contents of this proclamation are illustrative of the ease with which existing arms legislation could be flouted. It noted that ‘the prohibition on weapons being sold to those who are not in possession of the required licence is not working effectively enough in Barcelona’ and indicated that ‘a criminal need only be in possession of a licence, acquired anywhere at all with deceit or stolen, to equip an entire gang with them’.Footnote 44
It was in the summer of 1923 that a bill on the possession of handguns was finally debated in the Cortes. It was passed in early August. The new law contained only six articles and two additional articles. It was a temporary law, which was to remain in effect for no more than two years and apply only in certain parts of Spain, to be determined by the government. The same day, the Ministry of Grace and Justice issued a Royal Decree specifying that the law would apply only in the provinces of Barcelona, Biscay, Valencia and Zaragoza, which shows that the new provisions were mainly aimed at disarming the organised labour movement.Footnote 45 This law was the most comprehensive specific regulation enacted since the beginning of the Restoration, after a more than fifty-year absence of legislation in this area. The combination of the phenomenon of pistolerismo and awareness that handguns were widely available and that there was a problem with fraudulent practices in manufacturing and selling them convinced the Spanish government that such a move was necessary. Overall, this amounted to a reestablishment of centralised control, but these policies were simultaneously accompanied by certain practices of selective rearmament.
Arming ‘the Best Classes of Citizens’
Claudio López Bru, 2nd Marquess of Comillas, who financed and organised the Somatén in Barcelona and Madrid, stated during the revolutionary general strike of the summer of 1917 that ‘upstanding citizens ought to act as policemen at certain moments’.Footnote 46 López Bru was in fact restating an idea which had repeatedly been put forth in the Catalan Somatén's official bulletin since the late nineteenth century: the solution to the supposed scarcity of public police forces was to ‘arm property [owners]’.Footnote 47 It is possible to identify numerous actions taken by the state which were aimed at arming property owners and protecting them and their assets. These ranged from facilitating the entry from abroad of weapons intended for certain members of the nobility and politicians, to urgently arming certain segments of society, even if this sometimes meant disregarding existing regulations, as in the case of bank employees.Footnote 48 Perhaps even more telling is the data on the concession of gun licences. In the case of Barcelona in late 1919 and 1920, which was mentioned in the introduction to this article, the many applications presented by employers on behalf of numerous groups of employees stand out. For instance, Juan Miró y Trepat, one of the leading figures in the Federation of Employers,Footnote 49 applied for licences for thirty-four of his employees in late September 1919, citing the prevailing ‘exceptional circumstances’. Other employers made similar applications, such as the heads of the Fabra y Coats textile factory, who requested licences for some fifteen employees whom they considered ‘worthy of obtaining the necessary permit’. Several of these employees were foreign nationals. Another noteworthy case, which was also mentioned at the beginning of this article, is that of La Canadiense's subsidiary, Ebro Irrigation and Power, which applied for as many as fifty-one licences between December 1919 and June 1920. It was half-owned by Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña, which itself applied for some twenty licences in October. In addition to these applications, it is significant that the governor ordered a total of forty-five people, including eminent figures such as four members of the Conde y Gómez del Olmo family, be urgently granted provisional permits to carry weapons. In many cases, political and military figures provided endorsements for the prompt issuance of gun licences to other people. Such recommendations were given by the captain-general of the region, Civil Guard officials, the mayor of Barcelona, and members, leaders and financial backers of the Somatén. The latter included the Count of Güell and the Count of Montseny, a financier and member of the Cortes who belonged to the National Monarchist Union (Unión Monárquica Nacional) party.Footnote 50
This evidence points to a sort of selective rearmament of private citizens, also by means of the development of the state's own legal mechanisms – the concession of licences. The figure of the armed citizen was thus tied to the existing relationship between the defence of public order, on the one hand, and personal defence and the defence of private property, on the other. The question is to what extent arming citizens to defend order was also, or primarily, a way of ensuring their personal safety and protecting their belongings. Conversely, and paradoxically, the cases in which there was open talk of ‘differentiating between [weapons] which are for the defence of non-suspicious persons and those who may have them in order to carry out attacks’, with no mention of whether the people in question were in possession of a licence, provide a picture of a rearmament that adhered not to legal measures but to ideological and organisational criteria.Footnote 51 At any rate, again with regard to the concession of licences, it is likely no minor detail that notices from the Interior Ministry primarily emphasised ‘applicants’ ideas’, as was indicated in March 1923.Footnote 52
In the case of Barcelona, this ‘rearmament’ evidently took on notably different dimensions. In the midst of escalating violence linked to the phenomenon of pistolerismo, one observer, referring to members of the Somatén, resolutely affirmed that ‘not only the police and the army, but also the best classes of citizens are taking an active part in the fight’. These citizens were ‘armed and doing exercises in military formation’. The same observer spoke of these groups’ ‘unlimited authority to use weapons’, noting that citizens who had previously not participated in episodes of social conflict had taken an active part in these armed drills: ‘even the rector of the University of Barcelona, a dignified and elderly gentleman . . . who, under normal circumstances, would not have hurt a fly, armed himself to the teeth and took command of a company of elegantly dressed youths carrying brand new rifles’.Footnote 53 Following the deployment of the Somatén in Barcelona during the 1919 strike, sectors linked to Carlist ultraconservatism created the Sindicatos Libres. Subsequently, Defensa Ciudadana – which later became the Madrid Somatén – the Zaragoza Somatén and Unión Ciudadana in Madrid were founded. The following year, Acción Ciudadana de Barcelona was formed in the Catalan capital in response to – according to its instigators – the ‘nearly complete lack of effective police and security services’.Footnote 54 Meanwhile, the Requeté, an armed faction of the Carlist absolutist movement, remained active.Footnote 55
Because these citizen organisations acted as containment groups, they were frequently positively received by authorities. This had already occurred in the past. Fernando Soldevilla had said as much in his 1915 political yearbook, writing that the Carlist Requeté had been ‘viewed sympathetically since it was created, because it contained and reduced the audacity of radicals and separatists’.Footnote 56 The organisation's members likewise claimed that this had been their role since its creation:
with our might we were guarantors of elections . . . in cases of social disturbance and revolutionary threat we stood as zealous custodians of order willing to give our lives to prevent another week like that of July 1909, ah! We Jaimistas were the first, the only to receive praise.Footnote 57
There were frequent references to firearms and advertisements in the press linked to these groups, which even held raffles for handguns, as the Carlist weekly La Trinchera had been doing since 1912.Footnote 58 By this point – and not without reason – radical republicans were already denouncing members of the Requeté for their tendency to ‘under authorities’ noses . . . patrol in uniform, practice target shooting, distribute and raffle off Browning pistols and plan killings’.Footnote 59 Soldevilla also noted in his yearbook that members of the Requeté had at times ‘caused concern due to their violent interventions in public events’. Despite efforts to hide the extent to which these groups were linked to those in power, their members’ own words provide evidence that they continued to be instrumentalised by authorities and other political factions.Footnote 60
In June 1920, one of the topics discussed at the 14th Congress of the General Union of Workers (Unión General de Trabajadores; UGT) in Madrid was precisely the armed activities of groups like the Somatén and the recently created Unión Ciudadana. Participants resolved to demand that the Spanish government dissolve these organisations, which they called ‘extra-legal and honorary gendarmerie[s]’, within a month. If this failed to happen, the UGT would provide its members with ‘the guns and means of defence which the government allows Unión Ciudadana and the somatenes’ so that they could fight off attacks.Footnote 61 In early September, the CNT and the UGT issued a joint statement in which they denounced the actions of the government and the bourgeoisie, claiming that authorities had ‘legalised the bourgeoisie's weapons and given it special rights which amount to clear impunity for crime’.Footnote 62 Spanish authorities’ concerns about and response to complaints about the ‘civic guards’ (guardias civícas) offer plenty of evidence of outright bias. In 1921, for instance, the foreign minister informed the interior minister of the activities of the Spanish ambassador to Switzerland. The ambassador had an infiltrated agent who was to attend the Socialist Congress in Lucerne in September with the principal mission of preventing Spanish socialists’ motion that ‘action be taken in their favour and in opposition to Spanish civic guards’ from being discussed.Footnote 63
There is substantial evidence to suggest that the interests of these groups and those of state authorities sometimes converged or that there was overt complicity between them. This includes legal practices (the concession of licences and privileges to carry guns) and illegal practices (licences were granted to certain citizens and groups of citizens fraudulently and without legal obstacles, and authorities failed to act in cases of illicit possession or use of a weapon). The most paradigmatic example of this connivance remains the work of the duo made up of Miguel Arlegui, the head of the Barcelona police, and Severiano Martínez Anido, who served as the province's civil governor from November 1920 to October 1922 and whose appointment had the active support of the Federation of Employers.Footnote 64 There were other examples, too. When the Sindicato Libre in the city of Reus was founded in December 1920, the interim civil governor of the province of Tarragona, in southern Catalonia, sent the group's promotional leaflet to Millán de Priego, head of the public order section at the Interior Ministry, along with an explanation in writing of ‘the method used to do away with the Sindicato Único’.Footnote 65 By contrast, in early April 1923, the interior minister expressed concern upon receiving information suggesting that the police in cities such as Manresa were indirectly involved in attacks.Footnote 66 There otherwise appears to have been a great degree of institutional complicity that extended to the judicial system, as can be seen in the distrust that the actions of the courts elicited among authorities in 1923. With efforts to try to pacify Barcelona in full swing, the interior minister told the province's governor in early April to inform him immediately ‘if judges refuse to prosecute and to issue arrest warrants without bail’. He added in no uncertain terms that it was imperative that ‘the arrests of these gangs of gunmen begin as soon as possible’, a demand which was to be repeated over the course of the following months.Footnote 67
In any case, policies to manage public order also depended largely on who was in charge of law enforcement. The declaration of a state of war handed power to military authorities. This was compounded by the army's eagerness to intervene in matters of public order. This created friction between civilian and military authority. In February 1920, the captain general of Catalonia, Milans del Bosch, was forced to resign for acting independently of the government and fully aligning himself with employers. However, the appointment of Martínez Anido, then serving as Barcelona's military governor, as the province's civil governor in November 1920 meant that civilian authority was again clearly inhibited. Martínez Anido continued the counterrevolutionary policy deployed by military authorities. Milans del Bosch's successors as captain general did not interfere with the new civil governor's activities. General Primo de Rivera was named captain general of Catalonia in March 1922, further facilitating these activities and continuing them.Footnote 68
Primary sources appear to confirm that these groups had access to a significant number of firearms. In mid-August 1923, two Catalan men showed up at a factory in Eibar asking to purchase nearly a thousand automatic rifles in cash without complying with legal requirements. After the manufacturer refused, they declared that they could ‘obtain as many weapons as they want from France, of which they already had an arsenal’. In early October, a nearly identical purchase again set off alarm bells. In what appeared to be an attempt to obtain favourable treatment, the buyer, who had been involved in the fraudulent weapons trade for some time, told the police that he had ties to Ramon Sales, former president of the Sindicato Libre (and also a former member of the Requeté), and Oliver, leader of the Carlist youth organisation Juventud Jaimista.Footnote 69 At the same time, authorities were forced to acknowledge that, despite being illegal gambling, gun raffles continued to take place.Footnote 70 Meanwhile, the number of weapons in the hands of Somatén members increased significantly from 1918 onwards, especially in the province of Barcelona.Footnote 71
In spring 1923, the conflictive situation on the streets of Barcelona worsened to the point that there was a significant risk of a return to the levels of violence seen in earlier periods. Heavily armed groups could not be controlled by authorities. These circumstances caused the Spanish government led by Manuel García Prieto to take action.Footnote 72 In communications sent to the civil governor of Barcelona, the interior minister called for equanimity and strongly insisted on the need to pacify the situation. He referred to the problem of gunmen without making distinctions between different sides and presented himself as a mediator between groups. In late March, he stated that it was ‘essential that an active campaign against the gunmen be initiated as soon as possible, because if action is not taken quickly, we will find that this ends extraordinarily badly’. In a telegram sent immediately thereafter, he insisted on the ‘need to proceed with utmost urgency with the arrests of the gunmen. . . . it is necessary to begin to carry them out’.Footnote 73 In mid-May, he argued that it was ‘necessary to carry out the general disarmament of the Sindicatos’, referring to both the anarcho-syndicalist Sindicato Único and the conservative Sindicato Libre. He further indicated the need to monitor establishments that sold guns. This meant strengthening institutional intervention, which by this point appeared extremely difficult, as the governor noted in July, lamenting that ‘the violence of trade unionism, White and Red, that of the Requeté, that of separatism, are becoming exacerbated and increasing, while not a single voice is being raised in support of official interventions . . . life in Barcelona must be brought under government control’.Footnote 74
It was difficult to find a balance, particularly given that up until this point the benefits of the conflict and the tolerance of authorities had been on the side of the Federation of Employers and those who had fought against anarcho-syndicalism in the streets. But a telegram from the interior minister to the civil governor of Barcelona in early June 1923 suggested that the tide was turning. Stressing that he wanted to establish the principle of authority, the minister stated that he was certain that ‘the working class and the class which leads trade unions will appreciate the search for gunmen’. For this reason, he thought the governor ought to, ‘in the way you think most advisable, give the impression that this is being done’.Footnote 75 Shortly thereafter, the governor revealed authorities’ complicity with anti-anarchist pistolerismo when he stated that all licences issued up until that point had to be declared expired because information had been received that ‘more than 80 gunmen are in possession of guns, having not been asked for their police records, and there is no record of them at Police Headquarters, where many other licences signed in blank have been found’. Still, the governor was adamant that disarming part of the population was not a good idea because, ‘given the prevailing unrest in Barcelona, it does not seem at all wise to prevent citizens who only want to defend themselves and who might be more or less under threat from using this handgun’.Footnote 76
The Spanish government likewise expressed its misgivings about a complete disarmament. Only three hours after the civil governor of Barcelona sent this telegram, the interior minister sent him an urgent encrypted reply informing him that the socialist minority in the Cortes was proposing that all gun licences be declared expired and no new licences be granted in the areas of Spain where the new gun bill was to apply. The socialists’ proposal aimed to make possible the implementation of the new legislation (which was finally passed in early August), given the high number of guns in circulation. The minister expressed his fears regarding this proposal:
. . . what they want is, as long as the law remains in effect in Catalonia, not only to prohibit the issuance of licences, declaring them expired, to the sindicato único, but also to at the same time extend this measure to the Sindicato Libre, requetés and somatenes, who will only be able to use long guns.
He added, ‘as this is a delicate matter, the government wishes to know your opinion . . . and the advantages and disadvantages’.Footnote 77
It seems that the measures introduced did have an impact on how many people could carry weapons. Evidence that points in this direction includes a notice that the civil governor of Barcelona intended to publish in the press in mid-August 1923, advising citizens to use alarm whistles like those used by bank employees and tax collectors. The reason given for this advice was that ‘the entry into effect of the new law on handguns will greatly reduce the number of people who can use them’.Footnote 78 On 15 September 1923, just two days after the military coup led by Miguel Primo de Rivera that ushered in the dictatorship of 1923–30, a piece published in El Eco Patronal complained of the alleged situation of defencelessness into which ‘upstanding citizens’ had been plunged: ‘the government's key measures for dealing with the problem have consisted in searching honourable persons and preventing them from carrying guns’. The author of the piece added: ‘If I were a minister, I would make it compulsory for respectable people to use a gun’.Footnote 79
Conclusion
In the preceding pages, I have explored the dynamics of selective rearmament in Spain, a state which initially had scant financial resources, experienced serious difficulties in founding and developing a national police force, and acknowledged that many guns were in circulation – some of which were unlicensed. Because these dynamics were accompanied by a gradual process by which the state's administrative and repressive apparatus was expanded, it would be incorrect to speak simply of a weak state or one incapable of managing a high volume of gun circulation. While it is true that concerns were repeatedly expressed about this issue, it is also true that guns were not initially seen as a threat to the Restoration regime's stability. This was largely due to the absence of a clear parallel power in competition with the state, be it the private sector or any of the political movements which defied authorities. Indeed, the wide circulation of guns was to some extent the result of a selective rearmament of part of the population, which at times served to strengthen the state's ability to protect the ‘citizenry’ and private property. Alongside a growing tendency to delegate policing to private actors, these processes amounted to something of a state monopoly on the use of force by other means.
The problem was that rearmament eventually become a clear threat to public order, a problem which was exacerbated by an increase in gun possession among the working class, as occurred throughout Europe. Faced with this situation, the state opted for general disarmament and acted to centralise and claim exclusive jurisdiction over public order. While previously there had been something of an equilibrium – the fact that ‘everyone’ was armed did not necessarily mean an increase in violence – this equilibrium was shattered by the direct action of Barcelona trade unionists, particularly at the end of the 1910s. It was then that the state truly tried to curb gun possession, albeit while continuing to exhibit a clear class bias, particularly in the case of certain authorities at the local and provincial levels. The actions of militias, somatenes, requetés, Sindicatos Libres and even hired gunmen had previously been considered an occasionally valid means of countering trade unionist ‘terror’. But, by the early 1920s, the violence committed by these groups came to represent an unsustainable threat to public order. Their actions were perceived as potentially subversive, rather than complicit with the deployment of legal and extra-legal means of maintaining public order. This change led to both increased legislative restrictions and stricter and more impartial law enforcement, which aimed to position the state on a middle ground between the organised labour movement, the Sindicatos Libres and employers, though this equilibrium always leaned towards the demands of the most belligerent segment of the latter. Starting in 1920, a series of gun control provisions were enacted, each more restrictive than the last. This was the result of the widespread availability of guns, revolutionary movements better equipped (and more motivated) to put their ideas into action, the emergence of the Sindicatos Libres, employers’ organisations that presented a more united front – which increased their defensive and offensive aggressiveness – and the state's efforts to regain a central role that was difficult to attain.
The study of what occurred in Spain, which experienced high levels of gun violence in the interwar period, provides valuable insight into gun control policies in this period more generally. One particularity of the Spanish case was the existence of more structured forms of gun control than in other European countries prior to the First World War, at least formally speaking. This legal framework, which was comparatively ahead of its time, did not necessarily pose an obstacle to the diffusion of guns. Rather, it was the instrument that made possible the disarmament and selective rearmament of the population using both legal and illegal means. The introduction of more restrictive measures in the 1920s made these policies apparent and highlighted their contradictions at a time of heightened social instability, when there was a high volume of guns in circulation – mostly domestically manufactured – and revolutionary alternatives had become more established.
It should be stressed that the levels of violence seen in Spain cannot be explained by the collapse of the state so much as by changes resulting from a process of constitutional normalisation and the questioning of existing equilibriums by a reinvigorated labour movement. The result of these processes, in addition to the widespread violence between trade unions and the escalation of the conflict between revolutionary trade unionism and the Sindicatos Libres, led the state to gradually transition from a sort of ‘shared’ monopoly on violence to a Weberian model. This process culminated in the September 1923 coup d’état led by the captain-general of Catalonia, the general Primo de Rivera, who became the head of the new dictatorial regime. Primo de Rivera's actions were supported and applauded by the Federation of Employers.
In post-1918 Europe, the growth of an increasingly well-organised workers’ movement, and particularly widely supported strikes, was seen as a pre-revolutionary situation by specific social sectors. This decisively contributed to the growth of strikebreaking groups, civic guards and auxiliary police, movements encouraged by the increasing importance of conflicts between capital and labour worldwide. Given these circumstances, cooperation between legal authorities and ‘honourable citizens’ was common throughout Europe. This can be seen in France in the citizen response centred around the Unions Civiques in the context of the major strikes of 1919 and 1920; in Italy, in the emergence during the unrest of 1919 and 1920 of groups of ‘loyal citizens’ in which the government gradually came to place its trust; and, in Germany, in the emergence of defence organisations and auxiliary militias in the context of the quasi-revolutionary circumstances of 1919. This involved the deployment as paramilitary forces of the Citizens’ Defence (Einwohnerwehren) and the Technical Emergency Corps (Technische Nothilfe), the latter under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence. The actions of citizen militias and the Sindicatos Libres in Spain, which had remained neutral during the war, were part of this global impulse and constituted an important precedent for the phenomenon of fascism in Spain.Footnote 80
However, the impact of these developments varied greatly, even among victorious countries. In France, citizen forces, whose scope of action was limited, did not undermine the strength of a cohesive and victorious state. In Italy, where the legitimacy of the governing liberal elite was being questioned and the state gradually turned power over to citizen forces, this encouraged anti-government attitudes and created a favourable environment for fascist mobilisation. In Germany, defeat in the war and the collapse of the imperial regime, as well as the establishment of a democratic regime with high levels of social unrest, fostered the emergence of anti-government paramilitary forces.Footnote 81 In Spain, high levels of social unrest and the increasing predominance of military authority – which was in collusion with employers – over civilian authority, as well as the attempt to restore constitutional normality in spring and summer 1923, led to the military coup. There is every indication that, despite the gradual application of more restrictive gun control policies at the beginning of the 1920s, many European countries continued to experience high levels of violence.Footnote 82 This is a reminder that gun control legislation did not automatically bring down levels of political violence, particularly in contexts where the legitimacy of the state was in question or in places where there was a high level of social conflict. To make matters worse, gun control legislation could in some cases go hand-in-hand with selective rearmament – a policy convergence that could have deadly consequences.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article received funding from the project ‘A Fragile Monopoly? Firearms, Self-defence, Gun Licence and the State Monopoly of Legitimate Violence in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (1860–1960) – FRAGMON’, financed by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italian Government (MIUR) – Framework for Attracting and Strengthening Research Excellence in Research in Italy (FARE).
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