ABSTRACT
Teresa María Ortega López assesses the Spanish rural world in all of its complexity from 1900 until the civil war. Across Europe peasant parties and organizations increasingly engaged in mass mobilization in defence of their interests. Spanish agriculture itself was increasingly undergoing practices of modernization, which impacted farms both large and small, generally producing increased access to the land. The state intervened in Spain in a variety of areas to increase productivity and create a competitive capitalist agriculture. However, day labourers were at the centre of conflictual social relations. A distinctive political orientation became evident between, small to medium landholders with those without land, increasingly mobilized around radical right and radical left postulates, respectively. This fracture intensified during the Second Republic. The role of women in the countryside is also considered. Responding to the questioning of private property, religion and the social order, a ruralist conception of an idealized woman as embodiment of hierarchy, family and tradition was constructed.
