ABSTRACT
Spain in the 1930s was a backward agricultural country divided by the most brutal economic inequalities. The coming of the Second Republic in April 1931 was seen by many on the Left as an opportunity to reform Spain’s antiquated social structure. In the course of the two years of the Republic’s first legislature, between 1931 and 1933, the Socialist members of a Republican-Socialist coalition pushed for the introduction of a programme of reform aimed at alleviating the day-to-day misery of the great southern army of landless labourers (braceros and jornaleros). The prevailing economic system, however, depended on the fact that the daylabourers worked from dawn to dusk for a pittance at harvest time and were then unemployed for the rest of the year. The Socialists’ reforms, improving working conditions and basic pay, necessarily implied a redistribution of wealth. Coming in the context of the Great Depression, these measures inadvertently constituted a challenge to the existing balance of social and economic power in Spain.
