Anti-industrialism in Spain, 1870-1936

Abstract

Anti-industrialism implies the abstract negation of industrial civilization as a whole, usually through piecemeal formulations developed outside the scope of Economics. In general, it has tended to combine an anti-machinist, ruralist and anti-urban conception with a critical view of competition, often looking back —especially to the Middle Ages— in search of alternative models and from a pre-eminent consideration of the moral aspects. Spain, despite experiencing a more modest industrialization process than other countries, which therefore was associated with less dramatic changes, was not an exception as to the presence of anti-industrialists currents between 1870 and 1936: on one hand, Social Catholicism; on the other, the fin de siècle anti-industrialism, influenced by the spreading of the romantic ideas of Ruskin and Morris; and finally, the libertarian naturism, whose origins could be put to the French naturien movement.