El corporativismo en España: desde los orígenes a la década de 1930

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the origins and evolution of the corporatist social and political model in Europe and its spread in Spain, especially from the last third the nineteenth century up to the 1930s. By corporatism we mean a social and political model that emphasizes a social structure based on «intermediate bodies» within a social hierarchy as a means of avoiding the conflicts typical of an individualistic society. Spain has had three corporatist models: the Catholic model, obsessed by the idea of returning to the Ancien Regime; the Krausist model, reformist in character and aspiring to achieve social equilibrium; and the conservative model, which through Catholic influence was used as a means of defence against the advances of universal suffrage. The last part of the article focuses on the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and its socially based corporatist model supported by the socialist trade union, UGT.