The Faith and the Fury: The Construction of Anticlerical Collective Identities in Spain, 1874–1931

Abstract

This article explores the construction of anticlerical collective identities among Spanish workers from the late nineteenth century, outlining the ways in which the daily experience of the Church generated and intensified anticlerical sentiment. From the turn of the century, political, social and cultural changes sparked by industrialization and ruralurban emigration altered the face of 'traditional' Spanish popular anticlericalism; newly politicized workers increasingly identified the Church as part of the repressive machinery of the Restoration Monarchy's political system. As workers struggled to fend off the ever-expanding central state's intrusions into their domestic space and the Church's influence over innumerable aspects of everyday life (including, crucially, its control of public spaces) they constructed their own, strongly anticlerical 'workers' public sphere' grounded in alternative forms of socialization, cultural activities, and new secular rituals.

The ‘Martyrdom of Things’: Iconoclasm and Its Meanings in the Spanish Civil War

“…There is clear evidence of recycling, with women making cushions and curtains from 'chalice cloths' and vestments, 'espadrilles, trousers and shirts' from other church fabrics and underwear-presumably heavy woollen petticoats-from 'white religious habits'. 41 Though it seems clear that these fabrics moved into domestic space, and were repurposed for practical use, we know little of how they were used, or even what kind of cloths were taken. Church textiles range from fine lawn through cotton and linen to heavily embroidered silks, while habits and cassocks were made of heavier stuff, such as wool.…”

‘The Cruellest of all Forms of Coercion’: The Catholic Church and Conflicts around Death and Burial in Spain during the Restoration (1874–1923)

“…There were also relatives who tried to maintain family unity into death, even when this clashed completely with the ideas of the dead, as in the case of the father of an anarchist shot in 1897 for allegedly committing a terrorist attack, who sought -unsuccessfully -to bury his son next to his mother in the local Catholic cemetery. 55 Those close to anyone thus excluded could be subject to distress from several sources at the same time: fear of eternal damnation, the pain of seeing their family split up, the label of indigno or 'unworthy' 56 that the Church applied to those barred from consecrated ground, 'the infamy of lying in a rubbish-heap', as Jime´nez Lozano has described the repulsion inspired by the decrepit civil cemeteries. 57 It was, moreover, entirely logical for Catholics to reject the 'dissenters' cemeteries', since the Church considered that anyone interred there was 'buried like a dog'.…”