Sindicato Libre

The Sindicatos Libres (Free Trade Unions; in Catalan: Sindicats Lliures) was a Spanish trade union born in Barcelona, Catalonia, formed by Carlist workers active during the interbellum period.

They were founded on 10 October 1919 in Barcelona, during a time of severe and violent class conflict between employers and workers in the city, with the practice of "pistolerismo" widespread. With employers feeling that the police and Army were inefficient in their attempts to stop the left-wing agitation they sponsored the growth of the Sindicatos Libres, seeking to use them as violent militia groups. Formed by highly conservative Catholic workers, they took on some of the features of a yellow union as employer subsidies to the groups grew. Vilified by anarcho-syndicalist rivals as strikebreaking thugs, the Sindicatos Libres sided with the Police in the 1920−1922 period, when Civil Governor Severiano Martínez Anido and Chief of Police Miguel Arlegui unleashed a campaign of State Terror against trade unionists. Aside from a small Carlist core, their militancy was not particularly ideological, with members often returning to the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. They reached 150,000 members in the 1920–21 period. However, as strike action declined in 1921 and beyond so too did the influence of the Sindicatos Libres as their violent activity became of less value to the employers.

During the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–30) they expanded outside of Barcelona; towards the end of the 1920s their membership stood at around 200,000. However, Primo de Rivera's laws against the anarcho-syndicalists and other leftist groups again meant that the group were less essential for the street battles than they had been.

The group initially espoused a sort of heterodox Carlism with potentially revolutionary undertones, but as they progressively lost the traditionalist tenets of Carlism, Colin M. Winston argues that they evolved into a first strand of Spanish fascism.

The Confederación Nacional de Sindicatos Libres ("National Confederation of Free Trade Unions") dissolved right after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

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