How clandestine trade unions operated under Francoism

The Franco dictatorship was a period when workers’ rights were limited and freedom of expression was suppressed. Political parties and trade unions were outlawed, apart from Franco’s own Falange party and the regime-controlled trade unions in each industry, which served only the interests of the dictatorship and not the workers. 

“For writing a little note and distributing it among colleagues, you could get three years in prison,” Pedro López Provencio, a former technician and trade union organizer in SEAT during the Franco dictatorship, explains to Catalan News.

So how was it that people like Pedro were able to lead his fellow SEAT workers into a thousands-strong strike on the factory floors, all inspired by his trade unionism affiliated with the Communist Party-linked Comisiones Obreros (CCOO) workers’ committee?

Pedro explained the reality of his experiences organizing his fellow workers in an interview with Catalan News to mark the anniversary of the strike he helped organize in the SEAT factory in 1971 that turned deadly when police looked to violently suppress the workers. 

The former SEAT technician explains that he attended some political meetings discreetly, but on the factory floor, his daily political activity was quite open. Pedro never hid his motives, objectives, or organization: for him, organizing his fellow workers was just a natural reality that involved, effectively, only speaking. 

“We were hardly clandestine, at least from my side,” he says. I felt that everything we did was normal, meeting with colleagues, talking about our problems, and sharing what we thought with them.” 

“At the factory, we weren’t hiding, everyone knew who we were, we were the ones from the Workers' Commission. If the colleagues didn’t know us, how could we lead them in union matters, right?” 

However, more serious meetings were held in secret, often in churches. “Meeting with some friends to talk about our problems, even in a church, was considered an illegal meeting, and you could also get a few years in prison for that.”

This lack of freedom only served to fuel his and his colleague's desire to stand up for themselves: “All of this made people mobilize and say ‘this can't continue’.”

Yet, even though there was a serious danger to what Pedro was doing, he found this fact somewhat abstract: “Even so, I thought this was normal, but the fact that it was penalized under the Criminal Code seemed like an obsessive issue that we couldn't comprehend.”

“Of course, sometimes people were arrested,” Pedro acknowledges. “I was lucky that I was never caught or detained. I think that was pure luck, because there’s no other way to explain it.” Pedro thinks that his genuinely held Catholic faith may have fended off suspicion from authorities – “‘This guy can’t be a communist if he’s Catholic’,” he jokes. 

‘Sindicat Vertical’ 

During the Franco era, there was only one trade union that was legal – the ‘Central Nacional Sindicalista’, otherwise known as the ‘Organización Sindical Española’, but popularly referred to as the ‘Sindicat Vertical’. 

The ‘Law of January 26, 1940, on Trade Union Unity’ mandated that the only organization to organize workers in any industry or professional capacity was the Falange-controlled ‘Sindicat Vertical.’ 

Organizations that existed prior to the civil war which led to Franco’s rise to power, such as the Socialist Party-affiliated UGT, the Communist Party-linked CCOO, and the anarchist CNT, were all outlawed. Their members still met through the decades, but their workings were made clandestine, and they couldn’t officially reproduce material or exist as an official entity. 

The Sindicat Vertical still held elections among workers to determine who would represent their voices in any dealings with the company, and in 1971, Pedro López and his colleagues won all the available seats to join the Sindicat Vertical.

However, despite being part of the only legally operating trade union, their own personal beliefs and motives were completely opposite to those of the dictatorship. Rather, they co-opted the only vehicle available to them – the Sindicat Vertical – to get themselves into a position of being able to negotiate with company management on issues important to the workers.

López remained one of the trade union leaders in the SEAT factory until he was fired from his job for standing up for the rights of his fellow workers, leading to the occupation of the factory and violent response from the police.