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Spain SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
Spain in the 1980s possessed a socioeconomic class
structure
typical of countries entering the advanced stage of
industrialization. In general terms, society was becoming
more
differentiated along class, occupational, and professional
lines,
with an expanding middle class and a decreasing proportion
of
rural poor. Although Spain had not yet reached the degree
of
social differentiation seen in other advanced industrial
democracies in Western Europe, it was clearly moving in
the same
direction. As in other areas, however, Spain was
modernizing in a
distinctly Iberian style, retaining some important social
characteristics from an earlier era.
By the mid-1980s, the structure of Spain's economy had
come
increasingly to resemble that of most other West European
countries, as evidenced by changes in the distribution of
its
work force. Throughout the twentieth century there was a
steady
decline in the proportion of workers employed in
agriculture and
other primary sectors (from 60.4 percent of the work force
in
1900 to 14.4 percent in 1981); a gradual increase in the
proportion employed in the services sector (from 15.1
percent to
40.4); and an increase in the proportion employed in
industry and
construction, until the 1970s when the percentage leveled
off and
even declined slightly (13.6 percent in 1900, to 37.4
percent in
1970, then 35.3 percent in 1981). (The residual
percentages are
accounted for by "other" and "unclassified" economic
activities.)
Changes were especially dramatic during the fifteen-year
period
from 1965 to 1980. According to a 1983 study, the Spanish
work
force consisted of 15 percent in agriculture, 33 percent
in
industry, 25 percent in non-information-related services,
and 27
percent in the information sector (compared with 40
percent in
the United States and 30 percent or more in West Germany,
in
France, and in Britain).
There were, however, worrisome signs that certain key
sectors
of the work force had not kept pace with the country's
transition
to advanced industrial status. In 1980 administrative and
managerial workers, the key to guiding a complex
industrial
economy, constituted a tiny portion--only 1.3 percent--of
Spain's
work force, which put Spain on a par with Uruguay and
Brazil.
Professional and technical workers, the sector relied upon
to
provide basic and applied research for a country's
industrial
base, constituted only 5.9 percent of the work force,
which
placed Spain on about the same level as Mexico and the
Philippines. In both cases, among West European nations,
Spain
was close to only Greece and Portugal. The rest of Western
Europe
was still far ahead in these crucial areas. Changes in
Spain's
economic structure have been reflected in class structure
changes
as well. By 1970 Spanish sociologist Amando de Miguel had
reported that the country's occupation structure was
dominated by
a growing middle (including upper-middle) class of
administrators, service personnel, and clerical workers.
On the
basis of the 1970 census, de Miguel found that fully 40
percent
of Spain's working population was employed in the category
of
"nonmanual and service workers"; the country's industrial
labor
force, or blue collar-workers, constituted 35 percent of
the work
force; the rural workers (including employed farm workers,
day
workers, and farm owners) accounted for 25 percent (still
high by
West European standards). The occupational structure
differed
markedly among Spain's various regions. In the more
industrial,
urbanized north and northeast (the Basque Country and
Catalonia),
white-collar service and administrative workers made up
about 45
percent of the work force; industrial blue collar workers,
about
47 percent; and rural workers, about 8 percent. In the
more
traditional rural and agrarian south and west of the
country
(Andalusia and Extremadura), the relative percentages were
35
percent white-collar, 30 percent blue-collar, and 35
percent
rural. A decade later, American political scientists
Richard
Gunther, Giacomo Sani, and Goldie Shabad studied the class
implications of the 1979 Spanish elections and discovered,
first,
that the country's class structure had become more
differentiated
in the preceding decade, and second, that the upper and
middle
classes had grown in size, while the urban and rural
working
classes had contracted. Gunther and his associates found
that
12.6 percent of their respondents classified themselves in
the
highest status group (entrepreneurs, professionals, large
landowners, etc.), an increase from 5.2 percent in the de
Miguel
study. Another 36.3 percent could be classified as
upper-middle
class (these in technical professions, small businessmen,
mid-level public and private employees), up from 15.4
percent in
1970; and 16.3 percent fell within the lower-middle class
category (sales and supervisory personnel and small
farmers),
down from 21.8 percent a decade earlier. Thus, the number
included in the general category of middle class rose from
about
one-third of the work force to about one-half in a decade.
As a
percentage of the total, blue-collar workers and rural
farm
workers fell from about 60 percent in 1970 to only 33.3
percent
in Gunther's 1979 study.
Later studies, using less precisely differentiated
categories, found that many Spaniards continued to
classify
themselves as working class people regardless of the color
of
their collar. In one 1979 study, done by American
political
scientists Peter McDonough and Samuel Barnes and their
Spanish
colleague Antonio Lopez Pina, 48 percent of their
respondents
classified themselves as "working class"; 36 percent, as
"low-middle"; and 16 percent, as "middle-high." In a 1984
study,
these same three researchers reported that self-classified
working-class respondents were 55.9 percent of the sample,
middle
class people were 33 percent, and upper-class subject were
11.1
percent. Allowing for a considerable degree of overlap and
ambiguity in answers across surveys, particularly in
aggregating
the responses for working class and lower-middle class
into a
single statistic, it still seems clear that Spanish
society had
become more middle class and less poor over the decade and
a half
between 1970 and 1985.
Data on class structure from 1984 have been analyzed in
a
study by Spanish sociologists Salustiano del Campo and
Manuel
Navarro, who divided the Spanish work force into two broad
groups: salaried employees, constituting approximately 68
percent
of the work force, and owners, managers and professionals,
making
up about 31 percent. The first group was further divided
into
nonmanual and service workers, who accounted for about 34
percent
of the work force, and blue-collar workers, who also
constituted
approximately 34 percent. The second group had the
categories of
capitalist business class, with about 5 percent of the
work
force, and the liberal professional class (e.g.,
attorneys), and
self-employed small business owners, merchants and small
farmers,
who accounted for approximately 27 percent.
Although Spaniards experienced many of the same social
and
class cleavages that occurred in other advanced industrial
societies, they retained a distinctive commitment to
greater
income equality, an egalitarian value that stands out in
comparison with their wealthier and more industrialized
neighbors. In a 1985 study, McDonough, Barnes, and Lopez
Pina
asked their respondents, "Do you think there should be a
great
deal of difference, some difference, or almost no
difference in
how much people in different occupations earn?" The
proportions
of respondents answering "a great difference" were 3
percent from
the working class, 4 percent from the middle class, and 7
percent
from the upper class, compared with 26 percent, 32 percent
and 49
percent from comparable classes in the United States.
Thus,
McDonough and his colleagues call our attention to "the
salient
fact [of] the high level of egalitarian/populist
expectations in
Spain. The pattern is understandable in light of the
poverty
which for many Spaniards is not a vicarious memory and in
view,
as well, of the paternalistic legacy of Latin Catholicism.
On the
one hand, then, economic and social issues are probably
not as
conflict-ridden as caricatures of Spanish politics imply--
relative to the symbolic-moral issues, for example. On the
other
hand, the public seems to entertain high expectations
about the
benefits and social equity to be delivered by the
government."
According to data from 1980 and 1981, Spain's household
income was distributed in the following pattern: the
poorest
quintile of the population received 6.9 percent; the
second
poorest, 12.5; the middle quintile, 17.3; the fourth
quintile,
23.2; the richest quintile, 40.0; and the richest decile,
24.5.
The ratio between the richest and the poorest quintiles
was
5.8:1, a fairly equitable distribution pattern compared
with
other advanced industrial West European democracies. The
Spanish
pattern of income distribution did not differ dramatically
from
that of advanced welfare states like Sweden or Denmark.
The
crucial difference was, of course, that in those countries
there
was much more income to distribute. Outside Spain's urban
areas,
in the small and mid-sized towns where more than a quarter
of the
country's population still lived, there were two
distinctive
models of class structure and conflict. In the small
villages of
Castile and the north, where land was more evenly
distributed,
and where the land was worked by its owners, social
cleavages
were much less acute, and class conflict was much less
strident.
There, the sense of community was reinforced by the
still-powerful forces of kinship and religion. Moreover,
modernization, principally by raising the salaries of
laborers
and by diminishing the gap in material possessions between
rich
and poor, had erased the few class or status differences
that had
existed previously. As the ownership of automobiles,
refrigerators, and television sets spread to practically
the
entire population, upper-class status became largely
meaningless
in these small villages.
In the larger agro-towns of the south, however, a
totally
different picture was found. In Andalusia, land was
distributed
in a highly unequal way and the land was worked
principally by
day laborers who owned no land and who seldom even lived
on it.
In these towns, class structure was very sharply
delineated and
class conflict was aggressive and often violent.
Traditional
values of kinship and religion failed to diffuse these
conflicts,
and the towns and villages were held together by what
anthropologist David Gilmore calls the "coercive
integration"
imposed by external forces, primarily the government in
Madrid.
Data as of December 1988
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