La revolución social en imágenes. Iconografía de la prensa socialista y anarquista española (1872-1920)

Abstract

The social revolution in images. Iconography of the Spanish socialist and anarchist press (1872-1920)

Starting from Sexenio Democrático, the Spanish working press got used to issue pictures to make effective propaganda for social mobilization. The drawings that weekly appeard on “El condenado”, between february and August 1872, were the first “internationalist” drawings and had the advantage of not being only popular caricatures, but to have a bigger social sensibility. The way opened by this maga- zine was followed in the Eighties from the catalan ‘‘LaTramontana’’, that tried to combine anarchism and nationalism: a difficult contraddiction to overcome. In the Nineties the anarchist magazines from Madrid “La Anarquía” and “La Idea Libre”, kept considering prolétariat like the main character of their iconographie universe. The socialist iconography from the ninteenth century was much weaker than the anarchist, committing especially in spreading the international socialist leaders’ physiognomy and in underlining the importance of celebrating the first of May. These were the main topics developed by “El Socialista” during the first two decades of the Twentieth century. The emblematic working holiday was made proper by anarchists too, they made it free from the socialist strategy that would have had the power of making it become a simple popular holiday, concentrating about its claiming side: the general strike, altough this has never been an important subject in libertarian iconography.