Latifundia
Another presence that caused unrest in the country side of Spain was the ‘disease’ of latifundia, which, in essence were farms that were much too large. The rich owned all the land and poor labourers earned their living by hiring themselves out by the day, month or season. In Seville in the nineteenth century, for example, 5 percent of people owned 72 percent of the province’s farming land; in Cadiz 3 percent owned 67 percent[1]. These men had no rights, were paid very little and had no certainty of employment. The braceros, as they were called, were landless men and lived hard and miserable lives. At most times up till the civil War there were 2, 500, 000 of them[2]. The braceros began to rebel, the first revolt being at Malaga in 1840, as a bitter hatred had developed between landowners and peasants. The problem was once described by one historian as ‘that cancer of Spanish society, then unwieldy, uneconomic estates of the great landowner’[3]. In the pool of hate which triggered the Civil War, the ‘disease’ of the latifundia was a very prominent influence.
[1] & [3] Ernest Snellgrove, L, Franco and the Spanish Civil War, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1968.
[2] ‘The Spanish Civil War’, History World International, <http://history-world.org/spanish_civil_war.htm>