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Spain Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido
Socialista
Obrero Espanol--PSOE) is the oldest political party in
Spain.
Founded by Pablo Iglesias in 1879 as a Marxist proletarian
party,
it evolved alongside the trade union UGT, which was the
basis of
its support. The goal of both organizations was to obtain
a voice
for the working class in the political arena. As the party
began
to win parliamentary seats in the 1920s and the early
1930s, its
membership began to broaden to include intellectuals,
writers,
and teachers. The PSOE's first experience as a governing
party
was during the turbulent Second Republic, but its time of
leadership was short-lived. The party experienced severe
repression under Franco, and its leaders went into exile,
primarily in France.
In the early years of the Franco dictatorship, the PSOE
within Spain was almost obliterated. In succeeding years,
the
party's leadership in exile gradually lost touch with what
was
evolving inside the country. In the mid-1950s, socialist
groups
began to organize within Spain; and, in the 1960s a small
group
of activists, led by two young labor lawyers from Seville
(Spanish Sevilla), Alfonso Guerra and Felipe Gonzalez,
revived
the PSOE and began to agitate for changes within the
party.
The leaders in exile had fought in the Civil War, and
they
had strong feelings against compromising the ideological
purity
of their cause by collaborating with other forces opposing
Franco. Conversely, the younger activists, with no
personal
memories of the Civil War, were willing to work with other
antiFranco groups to the left as well as to the right of the
PSOE.
These young socialists, who had been strongly influenced
by
Social Democrats in the Federal Republic of Germany (West
Germany), also favored a more moderate ideology than the
rigid
Marxism of the old guard. By 1972 the struggle for power
between
these two groups had been won by the younger generation,
and
Gonzalez was elected secretary general of the PSOE at its
Twelfth
Congress in 1974.
During the transition to democracy, the PSOE
essentially
cooperated with the reform plans set forth by Suarez, as
did the
other major leftist groups. When the country's first free
elections since the Civil War were held in June 1977, the
PSOE
became Spain's leading opposition party. While growing in
popularity, however, the party was beset from within by
profound
ideological tensions. Although the Socialists had gained
support
by presenting an image of moderation to the electorate,
this
stance was vehemently attacked by the more radical members
of the
party, who criticized Gonzalez and his supporters for
placing
more emphasis on gaining votes than they did on advancing
the
interests of the workers.
This rift came to a head at the party's Twenty-Eighth
Congress in May 1979. When Gonzalez failed in his effort
to
remove the term Marxist from the party's constitution, he
resigned. Gonzalez was successful in his gamble that most
PSOE
members considered his leadership invaluable, and at an
extraordinary congress held in September 1979, he was
re-elected
on his own terms. The party no longer defined itself as
Marxist,
and policies of moderation and pragmatism prevailed,
thereby
enabling the PSOE to appeal to a wider spectrum of
society. This
broader electoral base was a key factor in the Socialists'
victory in 1982, when they increased their popular vote
from 5.5
million in 1979 to 10 million.
Nevertheless, Gonzalez continued to emphasize economic
modernization rather than traditional socialist policies,
which
resulted in increasingly vociferous opposition from his
historical base of support, the labor unions
(see Political Developments, 1982-88
, this ch.). A poll taken at the end
of 1987
revealed a steady, albeit not dramatic, decrease in
popular
support for the Socialists. Even so, in mid-1988 the PSOE,
as
governing party, had no serious rival.
Data as of December 1988
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