REDEFINING PUBLIC EDUCATION: CONTESTATION, THE PRESS, AND EDUCATION IN REGENCY SPAIN, 1885-1902.

Introduction

Social scientists and historians alike have long stressed the centrality of print culture in the formation of national identities. [1] They have rightly emphasized that literate citizens are at the vanguard of nationalist movements and concurrent processes of nationality. If a literate polity is so essential to the nation-building, identity-forming project, then how did these movements proceed when a significant minority, a majority in many European states, could not read? Many studies do not address the large numbers of non-literate citizens that, in theory, belonged to the national communities being created all over Europe during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Were non-literate Europeans included in these 'imagined communities' and if they were included, how so? Were non-literate Europeans counted as citizens, or discounted and marginalized by their better-educated compatriots? [2] The spread of literacy in Regency Spain (1886-1902) provides some i nteresting answers to these questions. [3]

As my evidence will show, education is much more than just the formal process of attending a public or private school and being drilled in the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In fact, there are myriad ways in which education takes place outside the traditional formal avenues that are run or overseen by the state. This is particularly true of political education (politicization). The mission of any state-run education system is to create citizens who are "schooled" in the rudimentary behaviors that are necessary to enable them to participate in the political goings on of their particular town, city, state, nation.

But politicization also takes place in areas of society that are unencumbered by the "official" aims of the state. The path to a politically active citizenry is not solely dependent on a state's formal education system, and literacy can be a misleading statistic with respect to a people's level of political consciousness. The last decade of the nineteenth century saw the advent of a broad, politically active citizenry in Spain. That development was a complex interaction of public advocacy of the formal education system and burgeoning efforts to promote workers' literacy via the working class press and direct action organizations that were protagonists of an informal education system. This essay explores that interaction and, simultaneously, examines the role and workings of such an informal education system in turn-of-the-century Spain, arguing that an active, vociferous political press was a pivotal element of its development.

Nearly all modem states contain within them informal education systems that also politicize their citizens, though in ways that often do not coincide with the state's wishes. This is especially true in liberal polities that are predicated on popular sovereignty and free speech. Such a situation often produces classic conundrums. For example, liberal states advocate free speech, yet struggle to control the speech of illiberal groups like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi parties and the like. Liberal societies are predicated upon freedom of the press, but they often seek to restrict, if not eliminate entirely, pornography. Finally, liberal nations write constitutions that guarantee popular sovereignty, but have a long history of restricting and manipulating the right to vote. In the face of such contradictions, sites of informal education proliferate in liberal societies; places like taverns, reading clubs, associations, mutual aid societies, even the family dinner table serve as places where politicization occurs un restricted by state concerns.

But in order to understand why an informal education system developed in Spain we must first look at the public debate about education that took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This debate was critical because, as I will show here, Spanish liberalism could not survive without creating an educational system based on liberal precepts. Ultimate control and secularization of schools was of paramount importance to the liberal state. The Regency press was essential in creating and shaping public support for liberal educational reform by putting education on the nation's agenda.

If literacy is a requisite of citizenship, then nineteenth-century Spaniards arguably were not citizens in the terms of nineteenth-century liberals such as John Stuart Mill for they could not participate fully in the political process because of their inability to read. [4] Since liberalism is both a political and social system that depends on an active, literate populace, how could that system become legitimate in Spain, even in its own terms, when most of the country was illiterate and could not participate?

Spanish liberals and the Regency press publicized this situation and created demand for education reform. But they did more than this because for most of the nineteenth century more than 70 percent of Spaniards could not read. [6] During the Regency, the Spanish press provided an alternative to formal avenues of political participation. Further, its impact on public debate and the course and outcomes of elections was significant. [7] The ways in which the Regency press helped to develop and benefited from that informal system sheds light on the politicization of non-literate populations in other countries, in addition to Spain. [8]

But this is more than just a story about the Spanish press. It is a brief social history of the interaction, through public political discourse, of state, press, and citizens that resulted in real reform of Spanish education. In fact, the formation of the first Spanish Ministry of Education, in 1900, was in large part a direct outcome of the public debates on education that took place throughout the preceding decade. Moreover, that public discourse simultaneously spurred the growth of informal education systems that politicized Spaniards in ways the state could not foresee, resulting in a broader, more politically savvy, and less docile citizenry. Spanish citizens, particularly working people, became increasingly critical and more intolerant of the contradictions inherent in the liberal state, particularly the corrupt, oligarchic Spanish variant. While this story treats the press as the principal protagonist, it is incomprehensible without an understanding of the symbiotic relationship that existed between th e press and the Spanish public, one that I am sure the readers will recognize in their own society. The press does not operate in a vacuum and is utterly dependent on the interaction between itself and its readers, a dynamic relationship that is intrinsically reciprocal.

The press made education reform a topic of heated debate and national attention. [9] It also played a critical role in moving the formal educational system toward liberal values that encouraged Spaniards' access to the political system. Through the press, education reformers who may or may not have been journalists but used the press as a venue, called for a system of education supported legally and financially by the Spanish state. This aspect of the liberal agenda was especially urgent, since the formal educational system was, potentially, the site at which any state exercised its greatest influence in imbuing its populace with the rules of citizenship.

In addition to schools, a number of other institutions made up an informal education system in Regency Spain. Clubs and associations created by political parties outside the turno, and by private individuals, published newspapers that fostered the growth of a politically aware citizenry. [10] Perhaps to a greater degree than formal schools, the Regency press was a primary instrument in the battle against illiteracy in Spain. Spanish newspapers provided the most inexpensive form of popular literature, information on current events, and arguments for the value of education and political participation. Hundreds of political clubs and associations that proliferated in Spain during the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century relied on these newspapers for access to information, a political vocabulary, and a set of prioritized agendas.

The informal educational system had a symbiotic relationship with the press that paralleled relationships between the press and liberalism elsewhere in Europe. An analysis of that symbiosis is crucial to understanding how the informal system worked to overcome Spain's high levels of illiteracy, in spite of a formal education system that was under-funded and inadequate. Newspapers, due to their numerical abundance, availability, and low cost helped extend this informal educational system. Newspapers provided the hard copy while the clubs, associations, and other organizations supplied the verbal communications and the infrastructure that linked the printed word and the public. This helps account for the success socialists and anarchists enjoyed in reaching their largely illiterate working-class constituencies.

The Press and the Formal Educational System

Spain's official educational system comprised primary and secondary schools, both public and private, the university and special vocational and normal schools. The state inadequately funded public-school salaries, and public schools consistently lacked material support such as books, supplies, and buildings. Student fees and financial contributions from the Catholic Church mostly supported private schools. During the nineteenth century a series of different government ministries oversaw the Spanish educational system, the last being the Ministry of Development (Ministerio de Fomento). It was not until 1900 that the state set up a Ministry of Public Instruction devoted to the specific needs of the country's education system. One of that ministry's first acts was to require, for the first time since 1857, that students attend school through age nine! [11]

The effects of such a poorly run education system on Spanish society were reflected in its illiteracy rate (see Table 1.1 above).

As late as 1877, 62 percent of males and over four fifths of women remained illiterate. These figures only dropped to 29.7 percent and 37.8 percent, respectively, by 1940. Still, as World War II got underway, Spanish literacy was on a par with many other countries in Europe and the Americas:

Given the absence of radio and television, the newspaper was the primary source of secular information--particularly political information--during the nineteenth century. However, given the initial 70 percent illiteracy rate in Spain, the reading public represented only a small portion of the populace. Nevertheless, the impact of newspapers on Spaniards' literacy--and hence on their political awareness-was undeniable. [12] The press advocated the critical education reforms that led to a wider reading audience and it created a base of politically aware people to lead the drive for those and other liberal reforms. By the end of the Regency, literacy in Spain had fallen to just below 64 percent and by the end of the Restoration to around 44 percent. Newspapers both contributed to that drop and were strengthened by it.

The Regency press not only promoted literacy but shaped the education debate in specific ways: first (the Catholic press aside), it advocated a state-run education system and pushed for reforms to increase state involvement; it acknowledged that the aim of education was to create better citizens and, consequently, a better, more modem nation; and finally it challenged the efficacy of private education, a direct threat to the Catholic Church. The Church was characterized as an impediment to the advancement of the Spanish people and the modernization of the country. The Regency press transformed the debate on education reform into a social debate on the direction of Spanish society. [13]

By 1886, the first full year of the Regency, the public sphere was alive with the debate on education reform. The opposition republican daily La Republica, which asserted that Spanish schools must concentrate on training students in useful skills, fired the opening salvo in January. La Republica contended that the current system of education drilled students in abstractions, citing this as the reason rural parents refused to send their children to school. [14] Rural people's indifference to education was explained in an interview published in La Republica, "my son doesn't need to know how to read or write in order to dig, plow, make shoes or to sharpen the plow blade." [15] La Republica concluded that the poor condition of public education allowed such an attitude to prevail and that lack of education was responsible for the deplorable condition of the country's urban industry and rural agriculture. La Republica blamed shortcomings in Spain's primary education for the country's inability to compete in the wo rld agricultural market. La Republica called for an increase in the number of primary schools, especially those that taught agriculture, something akin to contemporary vocational agriculture and technology schools. La Republica also proposed that the agricultural systems of other countries be studied so that Spanish farmers would have access to the latest knowledge and methods. [16]

Through initiating a debate on public education the press in Regency Spain educated the public about the state's responsibility to its citizens. It also reinforced the belief that Spain's current ills were a direct result of the inadequacies of its education system. [17] Both themes are present in the following passage from the republican newspaper EL Resumen:

The attention of politicians should be fixed on educating and improving the ethical standards of the people. If the people are deprived of education, they won't have any way of understanding their duties, not sufficient intellectual development in order to exercise their rights.... [If] education is not imposed as an essential and necessary obligation, all of the efforts that are made for the betterment of a country will be useless. Those efforts will shatter against an impassable barrier, ignorance. And ignorance is not conquered with speeches, it is conquered with school teachers. [18]

Imbued with this notion, the Regency press bombarded the reading public with suggestions for improving Spanish education. [19] Many journalists explicitly recognized the connection between education and the "social question" in Spain, calling for expansion of educational opportunities for women and for the working class. [20] They, rightly, surmised that modernization of agriculture and industry could nor take place without at least a minimally educated populace that would implement the changes at the grass roots level. Nearly all of this unsolicited advice, as the passage above demonstrates, amounted to a demand for greater state action in the financial support, maintenance, and regulation of education. Journalists, across the political spectrum, publicized their position in the newspapers. In so doing, they set the agenda and shaped popular discourse on the subject.

Belief in the efficacy of state intervention in education was far from unanimous. For the most part, support for reforms cut across traditional political boundaries among liberals, conservatives, democrats, moderates, socialists, and anarchists. The Catholic press, however, carried on a campaign opposing the expansion of state responsibility and control of education. The Church asserted that liberty of education, properly understood, meant that the Church had as much legal right to pursue its own educational agenda as did the state. That agenda, it believed, was the moral and spiritual education of the Spanish people, an area in which the state had neither authority nor expertise. The Church pleaded its case in the Catholic press for decidedly non-liberal purposes, demonstrating its willingness to employ tools Liberalism had put at its disposal for illiberal ends. [21]

But for the most part the Regency's liberal press drove the education debate, exemplified in this passage from the Republican paper La Justicia:

Today it is necessary to start anew, to redeem thought, to emancipate the conscience, so that liberty is nor an empty word without meaning. For this gigantic work it is necessary to train men, and this is the mission of education. [22]

Most Spaniards would have recognized this as a thinly veiled attack against the Church because the Church controlled education. It was from the Church's grasp that Spanish consciences had to be freed. In 1895, the Liberal newspaper El Imparcial criticized the Regency state for neglecting its responsibilities toward its citizenry:

Public education is not a local function but rather an essential duty of the State. The means for attaining culture and civilization via the education of the citizens should be obtained by the assistance of the nation and not by the initiative of individuals ... [23]

El Imparcial linked public education to the intellectual and cultural well-being of every Spaniard and then proclaimed it a matter of national interest to which the state was obliged to respond. [24]

While the mainstream press, the Church, and the state focused primarily on schools as the site of formal public education, a less formal system of education was taking shape among workers and other marginalized Spaniards. Newspapers produced by and aimed at a working-class readership provided another example of how the informal education system worked. The Madrid daily El Socialista, official organ of the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE), offered direct public education to its readership by providing articles that spelled out party goals, defined worker's interests as its own, and instructed workers on proper socialist behavior in an effort to mass-produce model Socialists. Anarchists also published newspapers and magazines, such as La Revista Blanca, which pursued essentially the same goal--except they wished to create good Anarchists. This informal system operated unencumbered by state regulations, church doctrine, personal idiosyncrasies of teachers, or budget restraints of local municipal councils. In educa ting working Spaniards the press played an even more pivotal role than the liberal press had in the debate over reform in the official education system. E.P. Thompson elucidated the educational potential of the press and its importance to working class political consciousness for eighteenth-century Britain similarly. [25] Thompson asserts the integral nature of systems of informal education, unimpeded by questions of literacy, in the development of working people's "political consciousness." [26]

Socialist and anarchist periodicals helped to create an "imagined community" of ideological adherents, a community that extended beyond Spain to elsewhere in Europe and the world. [27] An "imagined community" is a group of people who may not necessarily live in close proximity to one another but are confident about some physical or metaphysical link that unites them like a national newspaper, a common language, a common religious belief, a common educational background and so on. These imagined communities provided Spanish dissidents with the physical and emotional strength to overcome the hostile social and political environment of the Regency. Newspapers were critical in the creation of these imagined communities because readers knew that their ideological brothers and sisters had access to the same material. Spanish workers could easily imagine the same struggles existing in France, Britain, Germany, and the United States. This metaphysical link to other workers was further strengthened by regular reports in Spanish socialist newspapers on strikes and other labor activity in other countries.

But the left press did more than simply link Spanish workers. Spain's working-class press employed a direct-action approach to the problem of political participation and popular education during the Regency. The newspapers El Socialista, La Lucha de Clases, and La Revista Blanca attempted to speak directly to semiliterate and even illiterate audiences in an effort to circumvent the Restoration's political influence. Articles in these papers employed a more 'folksy' language and focused on class-based concerns that any worker could easily recognize. In the process the leftist press widened the sphere of consciousness regarding liberal political values by not simply reporting the news, but by actively and self-consciously attempting to educate and shape the values of Spanish workers. While this discussion concentrates on the efforts of anarchists and socialists to educate Spanish workers, republicans also used the same approach to broaden their party membership. The press participated in two methods of public education: through its participation in the public debate on education and via the active proselytizing of the left press. Both approaches exemplify radically different methods to achieve the common goal of a better-educated, politically literate population.

Socialist and Anarchist Efforts

The Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol or PSOE), founded in 1879 by Pablo Iglesias, could not act publicly or officially as a political party until it was legalized in 1881 during Sagasta's first Liberal ministry. [28] The party's platform was straightforward: abolition of class inequality and the complete emancipation of the worker, transformation of private property into social property, and political power for the working class. Under these ideological mandates Spain's first Socialist party newspaper, El Obrero, was published in Barcelona from 1882 through 1886. [29] After 1886 El Obrero, perhaps trying to widen its readership or simply tired of standing on the political outside looking in, took a more conciliatory approach to the bourgeois parties and the PSOE withdrew its support from the paper.

Meanwhile in Madrid, Iglesias founded El Socialista in 1886, the first year of the Regency. [30] It was the first Socialist newspaper in the city to receive official support from the PSOE. Through its first few years Iglesias often forwent his salary to meet publication costs. [31] Because of the newspaper's penurious financial condition its articles were written exclusively by Iglesias and M. Gomez Latorre, a founding party member, or were borrowed from its French counterpart, Le Socialite. [32] Gradually El Socialista became the top Socialist newspaper in Spain because of its long uninterrupted publication history, from 1886 to the early days of the Second Republic in the 193 0s. [33]

EL Socialista, like virtually every Spanish newspaper, was published in four pages, with the last page usually reserved for advertisements. [34] Its articles were doctrinaire and confrontational:

According to the modern senores [ie. the bourgeoisie or ruling classes], if workers suffer hunger and misery they owe it to their profligacy and to their lack of economic spirit.... In a word, the wretchedness that the working class suffers is its own fault. The social misery, the intellectual debasement, and the political dependency of the wage-earning class ... has no other origin than the economic subjection of the workers by the capitalist class [same as modern senores]. [35]

This passage, illustrative of the paper's style, was more than a simple reiteration of orthodox Marxist/Socialist doctrine. [36] The article taught its audience to perceive their social position in important new ways. For, although the passage articulated virtually every bourgeois stereotype of the working class, later it urged proletarians not to accept such a situation. First, it suggests that the working class should pursue an 'economic spirit' and become more involved in the politics of their country. Second, stereotypes often have some grain of truth behind them; this article pointed out what behaviors workers should refrain from in order to play an active role in their own social improvement, thus constructing a 'reformed' working class identity or 'consciousness.' Third, it provided a focal point for workers' grievances; their social, political, and economic woes were, in large part, due to forces stacked in favor of, and mastered by, another social class. While the article confronted the unfairness of a system and was a source of orthodox Marxist/Socialist doctrine, it provided its readers with an education on the social, political, and economic structure of bourgeois society in Spain.

In a regular column called "Carta de" (Letter from), readers of El Socialista learned about the world beyond Spain's borders and about the progress of Socialist movements in other countries. This article, inspired by the Haymarket riots in the U.S., announced [37]:

Fate is cast; brave combatants have opened a breach in the bourgeois fortress, by the organized workers of America. The march of the struggling workers is perceived in the entire country like the dull sound of the storm. The Revolution is near in the American Republic, despite the so-called men of State having said that there is no social question. The Revolution in America is the alarm for the same in England, in France, in Germany, and in all civilized countries. The victory of socialists in any country means victory for socialists in every country, because modem socialism is international. [38]

Benedict Anderson has detailed the importance of print vernacular and print capitalism for the growth and development of national communities which, he argued, are essentially codified, widely-accepted imagined communities. Spanish socialists reading the Haymarket article, and others like it, would have recognized that they were part of a community with their socialist brothers elsewhere in the world. By virtue of print, El Socialista was giving substance to an "imagined community" of proletarians worldwide who were linked to Spanish workers. In other words, they demonstrated that Anderson's metaphor can be extended to international' communities. [39] Thus the socialist press helped Spanish socialism survive and develop as a political movement even while the Socialist party was still barred from official political participation. [40]

As part of this process, readers of El Socialista received a direct education on the activities, behaviors, and political opinions of a model socialist. A constant stream of articles reiterated the central principles of socialism, reinforcing them in the minds of El Socialista's growing Spanish working-class audience:

What is, then, the social revolution? What does it seek, what is its purpose, what does it come to achieve for humanity? It is the war to the death of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the laborer against the parasite, of everyone that produces against all who consume ...

It is the struggle for existence, sustained by reason and necessity, a struggle in which, undoubtedly, the strongest will win, as a logical consequence of that law of the universe. [41]

The subtle allusion to Darwin, "the struggle for existence," was not a common feature of El Socialista's rhetoric, but the fiery reiteration of revolutionary Marxist/Socialist dogma was, as was the emphasis on contrast between the social position of each class. [42] By focusing on class disparities, EL Socialista tried to inspire working class readers and make them aware of its central importance to society. The article offered workers hope, empowering them with the confidence that their struggle could be won. The cumulative effect of such articles on the Spanish labor movement may be linked with the growing intensity of labor unrest beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

The reiteration of fundamental socialist doctrine in these newspapers served two main purposes. First, it provided a political education for literate proletarians in an uncomplicated fashion. This aided and encouraged word-of-mouth dispersion of party ideals and goals. The socialist press reinforced the development of a highly politicized, highly indoctrinated cadre of 'true believers' who could proselytize other workers while maintaining the consistency of the message and a certain control of the new 'parishioners' by carefully limiting membership growth. Second, it helped channel working-class grievances, giving them a public voice. Through the socialist press, the party provided a political education that increased party membership and gave a sense of political participation to a sector of the population that had traditionally been denied an active role in Spanish politics.

While El Socialista and other socialist periodicals were appealing to working-class Spaniards, anarchism, intent on capturing the same audience, was also taking root in Spain. [43] The anarchist movement was more popular with its Spanish working-class constituents than socialism. A number of factors contributed to anarchism's predominance: anarchist ideology found an audience before its socialist counterpart and its founders welcomed members, while Iglesias rigidly restricted party membership. Anarchism in Spain was also non-partisan, a feature appealing to Spaniards irritated by the overt corruption of the turno system.

Socialists focused on the urban proletariat, a reflection of Marx's famous comment about the idiocy of rural life and Marxists' belief that the industrial proletariat were the gravediggers of capitalism and the vanguard of the working class. [44] Socialism held little for Spain's large disaffected class of desperately poor agricultural day-laborers. In contrast, anarchism appealed to rural Spaniards directly by tailoring the content of the newspapers to meet the interests of a rural, uneducated audience. Anarchism also competed with the Socialist party for influence over the urban working class. The Anarchist newspapers and periodicals surpassed the Socialist press in both intellectual rigor and circulation.

La Revista Blanca, founded in 1898 by returned libertarian exiles Federico Urales and Soledad Gustavo, was Spain's longest running anarchist periodical. It has been regarded as the most influential as well. [45] This bimonthly journal, appearing on the first and fifteenth of each month, became a public arena for discussing contemporary artistic, literary, and sociological credos including anarchism. La Revista Blanca managed to thwart censors and protect itself from official persecution by avoiding use of the words 'anarchism' and 'anarchist' in its title, but the contents of the journal and the names of its contributors clearly revealed its ideological leanings. [46] Like its socialist counterpart, La Revista Blanca sought to change Spanish society by offering its readers an education on the theories and practices of anarchism.

La Revista Blanca's first issue, published on July 1, 1898, contained the contributions of many well-known libertarian and non-libertarian writers including Anselmo Lorenzo, Miguel de Unamuno, and Alejandro Lerroux. It was divided into five sections: Sociology, Science and Art, a 'Free Section,' Workers' Forum, and Administrative. In 1900, the administrative section was dropped in favor of a biography section. In 1901 the number of sections was reduced to three: Sociology, Science and Art, and General. [47] La Revista Blanca's guiding principles were spelled out in its first issue:

Exploiting the public is not leading it; satisfying its passions or sanctioning its ideas is not bettering them; and we understand ... the heart of the people and their ideas.

One of the conditions that demands the desired outcome is that there are elements that transmit reforming ideas to the people; that serve as communication between the past and the future, between those who rule and those who have to be ruled, and that does so faithfully with love, with affection, willfully. This is the mission that La Revista Blanca intends to accomplish. [48]

Passages of this sort show that the clearly expressed desire to educate and thus lead and transform the Spanish people was at the heart of La Revista Blanca. Its writers believed that changing people's thoughts would change their deeds, which would, in turn, change customs and traditions that would change society. They also accepted the role of mediator between the government and the people. At the level of basic premises, the periodical promoted the same liberal and enlightenment assumptions seen in the editorials of the mainstream Regency press.

Thus La Revista Blanca sought first to change the world view of its readers. Articles with that goal often appeared in the Sociological section. In the excerpt below, Soledad Gustavo discusses the eternal earthly struggle of life in the context of the haves versus the have nots:

I don't believe in God, but I believe in human goodness, I believe in the honesty of a just and reasonable cause, and I believe in progress.... The eternal struggle of those two radically opposed forces, the light and the dark, good and evil ... will undoubtedly end when man is more in touch with nature; that is, when he has thrown off the stuff of generations in which he lived enslaved, was harassed and oppressed, and was never considered as an integral part of nature. [49]

The notion that humanity needed to throw off the accumulated superstitions of prior generations and return to a more natural existence was a recurrent theme in libertarian prose. As a direct inheritance from writings such as Rousseau's Emile, it sprang from a belief in a previously perfect state of humanity and in man's perfectibility and faith in progress, which marked the positivist liberalism of the era. [50] The anarchists viewed nature not as something to fear and control but as the peaceful, life-sustaining environment of which humanity is an integral part. [51] This belief implied that social relations should not be hierarchical in nature. [52] Here we see again liberal premises that, pushed to extremes, frightened many bourgeois liberals. In contrast, these ideas, espoused by anarchists, accorded a greater sense of self-worth to working people. Interestingly, these ideas conveyed the basic tenets of individualism articulated by J.S. Mill. They were essential for attracting people at the margins of a s ociety not of their making to the anarchist movement.

The section entitled 'Tribuna del Obrero' (Workers' Forum) demonstrated La Revista Blanca's firm commitment to the education of the working class. Articles appearing there were instructive, but their language was simpler, more direct, a style which set them apart from those in other sections of the journal. The following passage is a particularly direct explanation of anarchism and epitomizes the style of articles in the Workers' Forum section. Note the articulation of individualism, a direct inheritance from Mill:

The libertarian idea, comrades, is the anarchist idea.

We want freedom. I mean we demand for all human beings the right to do everything that pleases them, of satisfying completely all their needs, without any other limits than natural impossibility and the needs of their neighbor, which are equally deserving of respect.

We want freedom, and we believe its existence is incompatible with the existence of a power, whatever and whenever its origin, its form, whether elected or imposed, monarchical, republican, or socialist, that draws its inspiration from divine right or popular right, in sacred law or in universal suffrage.

Anarchists, then, intend to teach the people to do without government, as they have already begun to do without God.

We want equality, equality in fact as corollary; better said, as the first condition of freedom ...

... We want bread, nourishment, clothing, and an inhabitable house not a pigsty. We want for everyone the same, liberty, equality, and justice. [53]

The article's plain-spoken, yet fiery, language was written to be easily and completely understood. Its simplicity was likely to appeal to urban proletarian and rural 'jornalero' (day laborer) alike, most of who were undereducated if educated at all. [54] The article's instructional value also lies in the fact that it easily lends itself to being read aloud. [55] Each issue contained some article on anarchism. [56] In December 1899, the journal began a series entitled, "La Anarquia," which constituted a textbook on anarchism. [57] The series ran for twenty-six issues, ending on February 1, 1901. It touched on every conceivable facet of anarchism including its definition, its position on land redistribution, its relationship to the masses, its relationship to socialism, electoral abstention, reform and revolution, and much more. [58]

The libertarians of La Revista Blanca did not limit their educative appeals to working class men. As if to affirm its commitment to radical equality, La Revista Blanca carried articles of interest to women including many of whom did not belong to the working class. [59] The journal's staff of talented women writers contributed articles on a variety of topics. They were not merely ghettoized to those of feminist concern. [60] Soledad Gustavo, a founder of the journal and one of its most active female contributors, is credited with a key role in the continued growth of the anarchist literary movement. [61] Through her prolific writing, she articulated the anarchist ideal of women in society. In an essay that appeared in July, 1900, she wrote:

The goal pursued by anarchism is to destroy the current society and to found upon its ruins another more fair and just than the present. One where there are no women who sell themselves nor men who buy them; where love is a mutual attraction and not a social convention; where a woman is what she truly should be, a companion, a friend, a lover of a man, not his slave, as occurs in modern societies. Those societies start with laws that consider her an object and finish with customs that totally disfigure her. [62]

Such a succinct synthesis of the anarchist vision was widely appealing. The passage not only expressed the fundamental aim of the movement, to destroy Restoration society, replacing it with a more egalitarian one, but also the primary goal of feminism: a society where gender equality was reality. It also deplored contemporary practice and affirmed anarchism's communitarian appeal. Although it may have been at its core a working-class movement, there was room within Anarchism for everyone interested in a new, radically egalitarian society. Thus, anarchism's educative efforts may have begun with working-class Spaniards, but it is clear that the appeal was aimed at a much wider public, in other words, all Spaniards.

The Press and the Informal System

While church and state were involved in a struggle to control Spanish education, an informal education system grew alongside Spain's formal one. With the reform debate unresolved, the press, political clubs, political associations, and mutual aid societies took the education of the Spanish people into their own hands. [63] The importance of these groups cannot be overstated for they reached and influenced many more people than did the Spanish school system of the day. [64]

Spanish associations, secret societies, and clubs enjoyed varying popularity during the nineteenth century, proliferating during Liberal governments and facing restrictions or outright prohibition during Conservative periods. [65] These clubs constituted a critical infrastructure for informal education. Their popularity paralleled the rise and fall of press freedom. This situation changed with the passage of The Law of Associations during the famous long parliament of November 1885--June 1890. Societies, clubs, and associations existed in almost every province of Spain, as did national and provincial newspapers. [66] Many of these clubs existed prior to legal recognition, but now they were granted legitimacy. The new law's intent was to remove the remaining impediments to liberal institutions. It, coincidentally, contributed to a dramatic proliferation of political clubs and associations by allowing them to meet and advertise publicly. This process was key to the development of a liberal-democratic political culture in Spain. It was also an important step on the path to political legitimacy and participation. [67] From 1887 onward political associations and societies burst forth all over Spain. [68]

The Spanish government, in particular the Ministerio de Gobernacion, maintained a registry of all political and mutual aide societies, associations, clubs, and circles that were founded after the 1887 law was passed. For example, the registry for the city of Badajoz lists 119 clubs, of which only 16 contained "worker" in their title. However, 17 clubs listed their purpose as instruction, education, or development of political ideas. Another 39 characterized themselves as worker's cooperatives or mutual-aid societies. Forty-five were identified as recreational clubs. [69] This registry, numbering in the hundreds, was assembled from data by the civil governor's office in each province. There is no indication as to what the government did with the registry, but apparently no official fee was charged for forming one of these associations, which undoubtedly contributed to their proliferation during the 1890s.

Scholars have emphasized the educational importance of clubs and associations for marginalized groups of the Regency and the importance of such organizations to the rise of the working class and the "social question" during the last decade of the nineteenth century. [70] The role that newspapers played in the growth of clubs, associations, and societies has been left unexplained. The rise of periodicals suggests that an informal education system resulted from their growth and the simultaneous surge of popular reading clubs and associations. The informal education of non-literate Spaniards thus began as reading clubs founded by middle or upper-class Spaniards devoted to circulating the content of daily newspapers by reading them to their non-literate countrymen. The government registry provides some insight about what types of informal education operated in Spain. Clubs such as the 184 member "Worker's Center" identified its purpose as "instruction and aid." [71] Another club called "The Worker's Light" met in Torre de Sesmero for the "intellectual perfecting" of its 215 members. [72] The government classified these associations under the heading of press or newspaper societies. Given what we know of non-literate but improving workers in other contexts like nineteenth-century England and early twentieth-century Puerto Rico, it is likely that these clubs and organizations used newspapers, read aloud by a literate member, to fulfill their purpose. [73] There was no other source of written information that could so easily be read, digested, and discussed. These clubs were only loosely monitored by the government and they received no government support. The cost of 'formal' educational material such as books may have been prohibitive while newspapers were readily available and inexpensive (about 1.5 ptas. [1 peseta 50 centavos] for a month's subscription), but it was probably a mix of both that provided the educational material for these clubs. [74]

Conclusion

This essay has shown how newspapers helped to create and shape an informal system of education for both literate and non-literate Spaniards. Education and its reform were hotly contested topics of debate in Regency Spain. This was so for a variety of reasons. First, the Spanish state recognized the need for public education, ostensibly as a means of quickening the pace of modernization. Second, the Catholic Church sought to protect its social hegemony via its control of private education and vehemently opposed state involvement in education. Third, the Regency press made the public aware of the terms of the debate and did little to soften the ideological perspectives of the two combatants--liberals and the Catholic Church. Finally, both sides in the debate realized the importance of education to their respective social agendas. Liberals sought to make good citizens willing to take part in a progressive plan to modernize the country. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church saw education as a broadening of family instru ction. It tied Spain's renaissance to the re-emphasis of religious morality and would not compromise on that position, at least with regard to private education.

While the national debate raged on, an informal education system developed, via clubs and associations, with the press as an integral tool in its development. By the turn of the century all manner of societies, clubs, and associations were also taking part in an informal educational process. I have suggested the strong role played by newspapers as educational materials in support of this effort. There is little doubt that these organizations added to the educational fervor of the period. These clubs, like the socialist and anarchist movements, seemed to be focusing their attention on ways to participate in their nation's political life, despite the institutional impediments to that participation maintained by the parties of the turno. Importantly, these groups operated on an inclusive basis that seemed to focus on Spain's working class.

Simultaneously, political groups, such as republicans, socialists, and anarchists, excluded from or marginalized by the turno system pursued their own education agendas. Socialists, through their political press, began to build a small but loyal constituency, which they educated on the principles of socialist doctrine. Anarchists also focused on building a solid political base. To a greater extent than the socialists, they used their political press to instruct the public about anarchism. Indeed, La Revista Blanca publicly offered a virtual textbook course on how to become a libertarian and what being one meant, in spite of the illegality of any formal anarchist party.

The result of the debate on education and the competing educational systems was a growing politicization of the Spanish public. More Spaniards than ever before were being exposed to the liberal, and not so liberal, rhetoric of the Spanish and international political press. Also, there was a steadily increasing number of literate, politically aware Spaniards and, as evidence drawn from a broad spectrum of the Spanish press has shown, they were exposed to a wide variety of political discourse.

Spain's Restoration system of government depended upon a politically apathetic populace. However, in the final decades of the nineteenth century a politically educated and active citizenry developed in Spain via press freedom and the right to free association. This process, which outpaced the growth of literacy, brought mainstream politics to the Spanish public, changing the very nature of Restoration government. In the short term, such a development hastened the dismantling of the Restoration system. In the long view, the foundation for liberal democracy in the immediate pre- and post-Franco era was established. Literacy rates themselves rose steadily as the press expanded and clubs and associations increased from the last decade of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century. Eventually, marginalized sub-altern groups such as republicans, socialists, anarchists, and especially Spanish workers grew in strength and numbers via political parties that appeared in the first decades of the twentieth century and appealed specifically to a working class constituency. Thus, although the architects of the Restoration system may have preferred passive citizens, the informal education system they fostered via a free press and the right of free association resulted in a rapidly growing number of citizen activists. The informal education system, a combination of a contentious press and a receptive public, redefined 'public education' in Spain. The process should alert scholars to reexamine the effects of political discourse on public education elsewhere in Europe and the Americas.

ENDNOTES

(1.) See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York, 1991) and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976) for two such examples.

(2.) These questions are addressed in an extra-European context in Jack Goody, ed. Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968).

(3.) Regency Spain was the period between 1885 and 1902 when Queen-Regent Maria Cristina of Habsbourg-Lorraine ruled for her son, Alfonso XIII, because of Alfonso XII's death from consumption in November 1885. The Regency is part of a larger historical period known as Restoration Spain (1875-1923) because the Bourbon dynasty was restored after a six-year period of revolution and political experimentation.

(4.) See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and other writings, Stefan Collini, edit. (Cambridge, 1992), 105. Mill believed that the state should oversee the education of all of its inhabitants "up to a certain standard" or they could not be considered citizens because they would truly be unable to understand, comply with, or oppose the laws of their society.

(5.) See David Ortiz, Jr., Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain (Westport, CT, 2000), especially pp. 47-56. See chapter 2, 7-16. El Imparcial was one of the newspapers that clearly recognized press potential in this area. That opinion is expressed in, "Sobre la educacion social," El Imparcial (Madrid), 15 February 1902, 1. This article follows a theme raised in an article appearing on February 13, 1902 in El Espanol.

(6.) A. Guzman Reina, Valoracion del analfabetismo en Espana. Causas y remedios del Analfabetismo en Espana (Madrid, 1955), 15, quoted in Encarnaci6n Gonzalez, Sociedad y educacion en la Espana de Alfonso XIII (Madrid, 1988), 64. The illiteracy rate varied radically between provinces. For example; Santander had the lowest illiteracy rate at 26.03%, while Malaga had the highest at 79.46%, according to the 1910 census. In the province of Madrid the illiteracy rate was 36.34%. The national rate of illiteracy had fallen dramatically from 71.51% in 1887, but was still 59.35% in 1910.

(7.) See David Ortiz Jr., "Opposition Voices in Regency Spain: Liberalism, The Press, and The Public Sphere, 1885-1902" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1995), 148-209.

(8.) See E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966) and E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (London, 1975); Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period (Berkeley, CA, 1992); Jesus Colon, A Puerto Rican in New York (New York, 1961); Gary R. Mormino, "The Reader and the Worker: Los Lectores and the Culture of Cigarmaking in Cuba and Florida," International Labor and Working-Class History, 54, (Fall 1998): 7-10.

(9.) The press consisted of a broad spectrum of newspapers and periodicals that represented nearly every conceivable faction of nineteenth-century Spanish politics. There were Anarchist, Socialist, Republican, Catholic, Carlist, Military, Monarchist, and Democratic newspapers in addition to traditional Liberal and Conservative papers. Moreover, each of the newspapers above could be further divided into left, center, and right varieties.

(10.) Turno refers to the political parties of the turno, the Conservative party led by Antonio Canovas del Castillo and the Liberal party led by Mateo Praxedes Sagasra, that monopolized, by design, political power in Spain from 1875 to 1923. The Spanish Prime-Minister could only come from one of these two "official" parties and elections were managed by both parties to insure their continued control of political power. When one party had exhausted its agenda or suffered a political embarrassment, elections were called and the turno pacifico or peaceful shift would take place bringing the other party "legitimately" to power. Other parties were either coopted into the two official parties or politically marginalized.

(11.) See Ministerio De Educaci6n Y Ciencia, Historia de la educacion en Espana, vol. 2, De las cortes de Cadiz ala revolucion de 1868, introduction by Manuel de Puelles Benitez, (Madrid, 1985), 13-48, 245-300.

(12.) The importance of writing to the political process is developed in Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986), especially pp. 119-126.

(13.) A discussion of the public debate about secular versus parochial education is beyond the scope of this essay. See Yvonne Turin, Le educacion y escuela en Espana de 1874 a 1902 (Madrid, 1967).

(14.) "La Instruccion Publica, La Republica (Madrid), 16 January 1886, 1.

(15.) Ibid., 1.

(16.) Vicente Bas y Cortes, "La ensenanza agricola," La Republica (Madrid), 29 December 1886, 1-2.

(17.) See, "Las reformas en la ensenanza," El Imparcial (Madrid), 4 February 1886, 1, "El decreto sabre obligaciones de ensenanza," Ibid., 5 May 1886, 1; "Sabre la instruccion publica," 13 July 1895, 1, "La segunda ensenanza," 14 July 1895, 1' "Cronica: La instrucci6n primaria," La Justicia (Madrid), 28 May 1890, 1; "La mision del partido liberal: instruccion publica, El Globo (Madrid), 18 December 1898, 1, "La mision del partido liberal: instruccion publica," Ibid., 19 December 1898, 1; "La ensenanza y el estado," EL Liberal (Madrid), 2 October 1902, 1; "Problema latente," EL Correo (Madrid), 2 August 1902, 1, "La ensenanza oficial,: Ibid., 19 August 1902, 1.

(18.) "La instruccion primaria," El Resumen (Madrid), 19 February 1890, 1.

(19.) See, "Reformas En La Ensenanza," El Progreso (Madrid), 11 June 1886, 1; "Congreso de saciedades de educacion popular: y mejoramiento social," La Republica (Madrid), 2 July 1890, 1; "La intencion es buena," EL Liberal (Madrid), 2 July 1902, 1; "La escuela preparatoria--para ingenieros y arquitectos," Epoca (Madrid), 2 February 1886,1, "Escuelas de artes y oficios," Ibid., 7 November 1886, 1; "Reformas en la ensenanza media," La Correspandencia de Espana (Madrid), 14 October 1902, 1; "La segunda Ensenanza," El Imparcial (Madrid), 14 July 1895, 1, "El consejo de instruccion publica," Ibid., 1 August 1895, 1, "El pago a los maestros," Ibid., 14 January 1902, 1, "iUna ventaja mas!," Ibid., 13 June 1902, 1.

(20.) "Instruccion del abrero," El Correo (Madrid), 1 September 1902, 1, "La ensenanza del obrero," Ibid., 19 September 1902, 1; "Cangreso de sociedades de educacion popular: y mejoramiento social," La Republica (Madrid), 2 July 1890, 1.

(21.) This is one of the classic conundrums of liberalism writ large. Liberalism champions freedom of expression, but what happens when that liberty is employed against the state that guarantees it? Americans are familiar with this contradiction of liberalism whenever the Ku Klux Klan decides to hold a rally or parade.

(22.) Leon Vega, "La educacion nacional," La Justicia (Madrid), 23 October 1890, 1.

(23.) "Las Obligaciones De La Instruccion Publica," EL Imparcial (Madrid), 1.

(24.) Other articles calling for, or praising, legal intervention by the state are as follows: "La ensenanza y el clericalismo," EL Liberal (Madrid), 25 September 1902, 1; Leon Vega, "La educacion nacional II," La Justicia (Madrid), 18 November 1890, 1; "Medida oportuna," El Correo (Madrid), 30 August 1902, 1; "La fiesta de la ensenanza, La Correspondencia de Espana (Madrid), 2 October 1902, 1; "La segunda ensenanza," El Imparcial (Madrid), 14 July 1895, 1, "El problema de la ensenanza," Ibid., 2 October 1895, 1, "iUna ventaja mas!," Ibid., 13 June 1902, 1.

(25.) E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

(26.) Ibid., 711-713. See also Mormino, "The Reader and the Worker: Los Lectores and the Culture of Cigarmaking in Cuba and Florida," 7-10.

(27.) Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 711-832, and especially, 718-733. Benedict Anderson has described how this process worked in the creation of nationalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but it seems equally, if nor more, applicable to transnational movements. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York, 1991).

(28.) Maria Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en Espana, vol. 2 El Siglo XIX (Madrid, 1989) 300.

(29.) J.J. Sanchez Aranda and Carlos Barrera del Barrio, Historia del periodismo Espanol (Pamplona, Espana, 1992) 253.

(30.) Ibid., 252.

(31.) Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en Espana, 301.

(32.) Santiago Castillo, "Fuentes para La historia del movimiento obrero: El Socialista (1886-1900)," in Bernard Barrere et al., Metodologia de la historia de La prensa espanola (Madrid, 1982) 179. See also Sanchez Aranda & Barrera del Barrio, Historia del periodisimo Espanol 253. In the latter work, the authors note the steady growth of Socialist periodicals in Spain, from seven in 1905 to 42 by 1930. As the financial situation of El Socialista improved, guest writers such as Jacinto Benavente, Maetzu, "Clarin," Unamuno, and Joaquin Costa contributed their talents to the publication and it became a daily paper in 1913. See Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en Espana, 303; and Sanchez Aranda & Barrera del Barrio, Historia del periodismo Espanol, 254.

(33.) Castillo, "El Socialista (1886-1900)," 178.

(34.) The only advertisements the paper permitted were for recently published books of Socialist character, for example, La ley de los salarios y sus consecuencias by Julio Guesde, Socialismo utopico y social socialismo cientifico by Engels, and El Capital by Marx, etc.) See Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en Espana 301.

(35.) "El programa de nuestro partido III," El Socialista (Madrid), 26 March 1886, 1.

(36.) "El programa de nuestro partido VI," El Socialista (Madrid), 16 April 1886, 1, "La fuerza del socialismo," Ibid., 14 May 1886, 1, "El poder politico," 30 July 1886, 1, "La lucha economica," 27 August 1886, 1, "Organizacion proletaria," 8 October 1886, 1, "La accion politica y las sociedades de resistencia," 5 November 1886, 1, "La concentracion capitalista y sus consequencias," 10 December 1886, 1, "Partido socialista obrero," 14 January 1898, 1, "1 de Mayo," 1 May 1898, 1, "Desunion burguesa y union obrera," 26 August 1898, 1, "A traves de la doctrina de Marx," 4 November 1898, 2. The above is merely an example. This type of article proliferates throughout the pages of El Socialista.

(37.) The Haymarket Incidents took place in Chicago from May 1 through May 4,1886. Part of what American historians call the 'great upheaval,' this incident was actually the culmination of socialist unionism in the U.S.) By 1890 unionism was on the decline, a spent force in America. See Dave Roediger, "Haymarket Incident" in Encyclopedia of the American Left ed. Man Jo Buhle, et. al. (New York, 1990), 295-297. See also American Social History Project, Who Built America? ed. Stephen Brier (New York, 1992), 126-127.

(38.) "Carta de America," El Socialista (Madrid), 11 June 1886, 2. Similar articles appeared on a regular basis and were not limited to international reports, see for example: "Carta de Cataluna," Ibid., 11 June 1886, 2, "Carta de Francia," 2 July 1886, 2, "Carta de Suiza," 16 July 1886, 2, "Cartas de Alemania," 30 July 1886, 2, "Carta de Francia," 10 June 1898, 2. Later there was a format change and these international reports were published as follows; "El socialismo en Asia," El Socialista (Madrid), 2 September 1898, 2, "El socialismo en Dinamarca," Ibid., 21 October 1898, 2.

(39.) See Anderson, Imagined Communities, Chapters 2-3.

(40.) The first Socialist deputy elected to the Cortes was Pablo Iglesias in 1910, 31 years after he founded the Socialist party. See Sanchez Aranda & Barrera del Barrio, Historia de periodismo Espanol, 253.

(41.) "La Revolucion Social," El Socialista (Madrid), 21 May 1886, 1.

(42.) See also, "Ocho horas de trabajo," El Socialista (Madrid), 11 June 1886, 1, "Farsa burguesa y solidaridad obrera," Ibid., 2 July 1886, 1, "Contradicciones aparentes," 16 July 1886, 1, "Ignorancia burguesa," 6 August 1886, 2, "La lucha economica," 27 August 1886, 1, "Organizacion proletaria," 8 October 1886, 1, "La accion politica y las sociedades de resistencia," 5 November 1886, 1, "Partido socialista obrero: El comite nacional a sus correligionarios y a todos los trabajadores," 14 January 1898, 1, J. Guesde, "Antisemitismo y socialismo," 11 February 1898, 2, P. Dorado, "El socialismo es beneficioso para los burgueses," I May 1898, 2, F. Engels, "Las clases y su desaparcion," 1 May 1898, 2, G. Deville, "La libertad," 1 July 1898, 2, Edmundo De Amicis, "El socialismo y la igualdad," 23 September 1898, 2, "El individualismo," 16 December 1898, 3.

(43.) Other periodicals aimed at working class readers were: La Lucha de Clases (1894) of Bilbao, La Aurora Social (1896) of Oviedo, La Revista Social (1881) of Madrid, Tierra y Libertad (1886), Bandera Roja (1888), and Idea Libre (1894) all of Barcelona. See Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en Espana, 304; and Sanchez Aranda & Barrera del Barrio, Historia del periodismo espanol, 254. Simultaneously, a number of anarchist periodicals appeared in the Spanish public sphere: Acracia (1886) and El Productor (1887) of Barcelona, and later, La Revista Blanca (1898) of Madrid. See George Richard Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898 (Berkeley, 1989), 126-33, 202-204. For an excellent list of anarchist periodicals of the period, see also, Renee Lamberet, Mouvements ouvriers et socialistes L' Espagne (1750-1936) (Paris, 1953), 75-101.

(44.) See Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Boston, 1999).

(45.) See G.R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology, 202.

(46.) Ibid., 202-204.

(47.) See Anselmo Lorenzo, "La fe en el progreso," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 1, 1 July 1898, 3-5, Soledad Gustavo, "De la moral," Ibid., 5-6, Miguel de Unamuno, Literatismo, 11-15, Alejandro Lerroux, "El caciquismo," 17-20, Federico Urales, "Chispazos," 22-23.

(48.) The Editorial Staff, "La Revista Blanca," La Revisra Blanca (Madrid), 1 July 1898, 1-2.

(49.) Soledad Oustavo, "La Eterna lucha," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No.4, August 1898, 104-105.

(50.) See Jose Alvarez Junco, La ideologia politica del anarquismo espanol (1868-1910) (Madrid, 1991), 45-48, 95-99.

(51.) See Jose Alvarez Junco, La ideologia del anarquismo, 49-57.

(52.) A. Del Valle, "Jerarquia social," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 7, 1 October 1898, 196-197.

(53.) Jose Claros, "Lo que es la idea libertaria," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 59, 1 December 1900, 349-350.

(54.) Other good examples of Worker's Forum style include, Diego Espinosa, "Present and Future--A Story," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 22, 15 May 1899, 633-634, Jose Cuenca, "Escucha, pueblo," Ibid., No. 28, 15 August 1899, Damian Hernandez, "A los libertarios de Cartagena," No. 31, 1 October 1899, Francisco Naves, "Educacion instruccion, No.37, 1 January 1900, Aurelio Muniz, "Entre jaras y brezos--confidencias,' No. 43, 1 April 1900, 559-560, Jose Pujol, "La revolucion," No. 54,15 September 1900, 192, J.S. Prole, "Prostitucion de la mujer," No. 56, 15 October 1900, 254-256.

(55.) Evidence for the dissemination of liberal or any other hegemonic values to a non-literate population is abundant. See Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 718-733; and E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (London, 1975). See also James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven, CT, 1985); Jesus Colon, A Puerto Rican in New York (New York, 1961). Temma Kaplan underscores the importance of cafes as inter-class political centers in Red City, Blue Period, 1-12, 37-78. See also Mormino, "The Reader and the Worker: Los Lectores and the Culture of Cigarmaking in Cuba and Florida," International Labor and Working-Class History 54 (Fall 1998): 7-10.

(56.) See for example, Anselmo Lorenzo, "La fe en el progreso," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No.1, 1 July 1898,3-5, Federico Urales, "Antropologia social," Ibid., No. 2, July 1898,35-37, Federico Urales, "Ideas nuevas," No. 4, August 1898, 101-104, Donato Luben, "La economia politica," No. 5, 1 September 1898, 135-137, Soledad Gustavo, "Camino del bien," No. 6, 15 September 1898, 165-166, Charles Money, "El estado contra el individuo," No. 10, 15 November 1898, 278-279, Peter Kropotkin, "Ciencia social," No. 12, 15 December 1898, 334-337, Anselmo Lorenzo, "Miguel Bakunin," No. 16, 15 February 1899,449-455, Francisco Giner, "Para la historia de las teorias 'Libertarias'," No. 17, 1 March 1899, 474-477, R. Mell, "El socialismo anarquista," No. 30, 15 September 1899, 158-161, Juan Grave, "La anarquia--su fin y sus medios," No. 36, 15 December 1899, 311-320, Peter Kropotkin, "Comunismo y anarqufa," No. 39, 1 February 1900, 401-404.

(57.) The translation is "Anarchy--Its Purpose and Its Methods." See Juan Grave, "La Anarquia--Su Fin Y Sus Medios," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), 15 December 1899, 311-320.

(58.) Juan Grave, "La Anarquia--Su Fin Y Sus Medios," La Revista Blanca, No. 36, 15 December 1899, 3 11-320, No.37, 1 January 1900, 339-343, No. 38, 15 January 1900, 373-377, No. 40, 15 February 1900, 443-448, No. 41, 1 March 1900, 471-475, No. 43, 1 April 1900, 534-540.

(59.) Aurora Vilanova, "Movimiento feminista," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 1,1 July 1898, 23-24, Teresa Mane, "El feminismo," Ibid., No. 3, July 1898, 67-69, Juan Daga, "El feminismo en Espana," No. 8, 15 October 1898, 240-243, Tomas Orts-Ramos, "El feminismo en Espana," No. 11, 1 December 1898, 326-329, Leopaldo Bonafulla, "La fidelidad conyugal," No. 13, 1 January 1899, 378-379, Francisca Rovira de Forn, "De la mujer--un sueno original," No. 22, 15 May 1899, 628-631, Soledad Gustavo, "El divorcio," No. 24, 15 June 1899, 666-667, Soledad Gustavo, "El anarquismo y la mujer," No. 49, 1 July 1900, 5-8.

(60.) The following is a brief example of female writers tackling topics other than those traditionally associated with women. The point is these women were treated as real journalists, that is, their opinion was respected and accepted on a wide range of topics. In the case of Soledad Gustavo (pseudonym of Teresa Mane), it would require several more pages to cite all of the articles she wrote for La Revista Blanca. Emma Goldman, ""Que es anarquismo?," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 82, 15 November 1901, 293-296, Soledad Gustavo, "Concepto de la anarquia," Ibid., No. 107, 1 December 1902, 349-351.

(61.) See George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology, 116.

(62.) Soledad Gustavo, "El Anarquismo Y La Mujer," La Revista Blanca (Madrid), No. 49, 1 July 1900, 5-8.

(63.) Research on these clubs and associations is scanty and the implications drawn here are necessarily speculative. Future research using meeting minutes or some other form of memoir or club agenda may eventually prove definitively that these clubs used newspapers as educational material.

(64.) Alexis de Tocqueville also perceived the social and political impact of the press in nineteenth-century America. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, with a new introduction by Daniel J. Boorstin (New York, 1990), 181-198.

(65.) See for example, Jean-Louis Guerena, "Las Instituciones Culturales," 78-79.

(66.) The registry lists in my possession come from the provinces of Alicante, Badajoz, Barcelona, Burgos, Cadiz, Leon, Malaga, Oviedo, Pontevedra, Salamanca, Santander, Tarragona, and Teruel--that is 9 of Spain's 14 peninsular autonomous regions are represented by this sample.

(67.) See Martinez Cuadrado, Restauracion y crisis de la monarquia, 61. On the importance of the Ley de Asociaciones de 1887 see Ibid., 126 and Elena Maza Zorilla, "La 'cuestion social' en la Restauracion," Chapter 11 in Javier Paredes Alonso, edit., Espana Siglo XIX (Madrid, 1991), 330-331.

(68.) The extant records for Spain during the Restoration can be found in the Archivo General de la Administracion (AGA), in Alcala de Henares. These records document the registration of new societies, clubs and associations in six separate categories: name of the society, group, club or association; the city, town, village where it was located; its purpose; the current number of members; its founding date; and the president or founder of said group. Thus, a typical registry would record the following information:

Name, Location, Purpose, Members, Date,

1) El Trabajo, Alcoy--cooperative, 1,900, 1-5-1880,

2) Circulo Obrero, Elehe--mutual aide, 1,671, 23-5-1885,

3) Circulo Liberal, Elehe--dev. of ideas, 80, 30-12-1894

President

1) Dn. Eduardo Segura Borrell

2) Dn. Tomas Alonso Blasco

3) Dn. Bta. Cantario

All of the primary sources I refer to in this section can be found by consulting AGA--Documentos del Ministerio de Gobernacion, Numero de Orden #671, Caja #247, Signatura #2099, Concepto--Sociedades Prensa, Anos-1891-1900. Subsequent citations, using the above as an example, will be noted as follows: AGA Caja #247, Relaciones de Sociedades, Circulos, etc., que existen en la provincia de Alicante y alteraciones, 1 Junio 1900.

(69.) See for example, AGA Caja #247, Relaciones de Sociedades, Circulos, etc., que existen en la provincial de Badajoz y alteraciones, 1 July 1900.

(70.) See Vicente Palacio Atard, Manual de historia de Espana 4: Edad contemporanea 1, 1808-1898 (Madrid, 1978), 551-563; and Jean Luis Guerena, "Las Instituciones Culturales: Politicas Educativas," Chapter 4 in Serge Salaun and Carlos Serrano, 1900 en Espana, 78-79.

(71.) Caja #247, Relaciones de Sociedades, Circulos, etc., que existen en la provincia de Badajoz y alteraciones, 1 July 1900. The club was founded in 1892.

(72.) Ibid., The "Worker's Light" was founded in April, 1901.

(73.) This was a common practice in societies where a substantial portion of the population was illiterate. Some documented examples include eighteenth and nineteenth century England where groups of illiterate citizens (mostly working class) would meet in taverns, shops, or other public places and have the news read to them by a literate patron. See Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 406-407, 711-733. This also occurred in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico according to Jesus Colon, A Puerto Rican in New York, pp. 11-13. See also Thompson, Whigs and Hunters; Scott, Weapons of the Weak; Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period, 1-12, 37-78; Mormino, "The Reader and the Worker ... ," 7-10.

(74.) This is based on the price of El Correo for one month. Prices varied among newspapers, but this is a good representative cost. See El Correo (Madrid), 19 February 1890, 1--heading of newspaper.

Table 1.1
Levels of Spanish Illiteracy, 1877-1940
                            % Decrease
Year   Men   Women  Total  in Illiteracy
1877  62.0%  81.0%  72.0%        --
1887  61.5%  81.2%  71.6%       0.4%
1900  55.8%  71.5%  63.8%       7.7%
1910  52.6%  65.8%  59.4%       4.4%
1920  46.4%  57.8%  52.3%       7.1%
1930  38.7%  58.2%  44.4%       7.8%
1940  29.7%  37.8%  33.7%      10.6%
Source: A. Guzman Reina, Valoracion del analfabetismo, 15 quoted in
Miguel Martinez Cuadrado, Restauracion y crisis de la monarquia, vol. 6
of Historia de Espana, directed by Miguel Artola (Madrid: Alianza
Editorial, S.A., 1991), 488.
Table 1.2
Spanish Literacy in Comparative Perspective
Country & Period      % Illiterate at Start  % Illiterate at End
U.S.A., 1900--1940            10.7%                  2.9%
France, 1901--1946            16.5%                  3.4%
Italy, 1921--1931             26.8%                 21.6%
Greece, 1907--1928            60.5%                 41.9%
Portugal, 1900--1940          73.4%                 50.4%
Mexico, 1900-1940             77.7%                 54.0%
Spain, 1877--1940             72.0%                 33.7%
Source: S. Gil Carretero and F. Rodriguez Garrido, Causas y remedios
del analfabetismo en Espana (Madrid, 1955), 89, quoted in Miguel
Martinez Cuadrado, Restauracion y crisis, 488.