ABSTRACT
On 2 July 1855, the first general strike in Spanish history took place in Barcelona and nearby industrial towns. In the absence of the city’s bishop, the prelate of the neighbouring diocese of Vich, Antonio Palau, urged workers to return to work with a spirit of Christian resignation. By 1858, after becoming bishop of the country’s manufacturing capital, Palau viewed growing social tensions in a more pessimistic light. He warned the rich of his diocese: ‘Your pride will cause the disbelieving masses to rise up; your banquets will irritate the appetite of the naked and hungry crowds, and neither laws, courts, gallows nor armies will be sufficient to contain the outburst of the unbridled multitude.’1 The bishop’s fear of an imminent explosion of violence proved unfounded, but Palau foresaw in some measure the religious implications of incipient urbanization and industrialization: ‘Who can doubt that people from all parts of the world, of all religions …flow to the great centres of manufacturing and commerce, and communicate…their religious indifference.’ In his own diocese, the prelate believed that ‘faith has grown languid, charity has become cold [and] religious sentiment has grown weak’.2
