Live off the land. Organization, conflict, and change in the agrarian Catalonia: the Peasants Union, 1973-1979

Abstract

Founded during the late Franco’s dictatorship, the Unió de Pagesos (Peasants Union) was an experience of a unitary, democratic and independent trade union, both from the political parties and the economic powers. Its construction as an agrarian association was mediated by the centrifuge dynamic which affected the anti-Francoist movement as a whole during the years of the transition to democracy. Nevertheless, the union reached 1979 strengthened. It was one of the few successful unitarian trade unions of the time. This paper proposes to explore the origin, construction and consolidation of the union in the political change context, of which it was a fundamental agent in the Catalan countryside.