Although the Great Depression has been the subject of much research, focus normally centers on the impact instead of the tactics developed by working-class organizations to tackle the problems it caused, specifically unemployment. Recent research has sought to fill this gap, but numerous areas remain uncovered. This paper covers two of these: the situation in Spain and the reaction of anarcho-syndicalist unionthe Confederación Nacional de Trabajo. Spain presents an anomalous case; a country that saw the replacement of a semi-fascist dictatorship by a democracy in the 1930s. Furthermore, the fact that the initial government of the Spanish Second Republic included the Socialists provides an opportunity of comparing and contrasting the positions and policies of reformist and revolutionary workers' organizations. The study is based on predominantly on articles appearing in the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. The conclusion reached is that for the CNT rising unemployment was a symptom of an irreversible trend in a failing capitalist system, which could only be solved by the revolutionary overthrow of that system. Nonetheless, the union had to present plausible solutions to ameliorate the conditions of the workers to attract the unemployed and thus, create a force strong enough to lead that revolutionary change.The economic and political impact of the Great Depression is a central topic for almost, if not all, national historiographies of the last century. However, few have focused on one important aspect of the evolving global economic crisis: the rise of unemployed workers' movements during the 1930s, which played a significant role in organizing social protest, particularly in some European countries and the United States (Croucher, 2008). This is particularly the case in the historiography of Republican Spain (1931Spain ( -1936, in which this subject has been almost totally ignored. The aim of this article, therefore, is to begin to fill this vacuum, and it is based on looking at projects, policies, and actions undertaken by the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT, the National Confederation of Labor) during the two years of the Second Republic's first government from 1931 to 1933. During this turbulent period in Spanish history, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT became the main national trade union