The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( , PSOE or ) is a social democratic Updated as required.The PSOE is described as a social-democratic party by numerous sources:
political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in government longer than any other political party in modern democratic Spain: from 1982 to 1996 under Felipe González, 2004 to 2011 under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and since 2018 under Pedro Sánchez.
The PSOE was founded in 1879, making it the oldest party currently active in Spain. The PSOE played a key role during the Second Spanish Republic, being part of the coalition government from 1931 to 1933 and 1936 to 1939, when the republic was defeated in the Spanish Civil War. The party was then banned under the Francoist dictatorship and its members and leaders were persecuted or exiled; the ban was only lifted in 1977 in the transition to democracy. Historically Marxist, it abandoned the ideology in 1979. Like most mainstream Spanish political organizations since the mid–1980s, the PSOE has been considered by experts to have embraced a positive outlook towards European integration.
The PSOE has historically had strong ties with the General Union of Workers (UGT), a major Spanish trade union. For a couple of decades, UGT membership was a requirement for PSOE membership. Since the 1980s, the UGT has frequently criticised the economic policies of the PSOE, even calling for general strikes against the PSOE governments on 14 December 1988, 28 May 1992, 27 January 1994, and 29 September 2010, jointly with the Workers' Commissions, another major trade union in Spain. The PSOE is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and the Socialist International.
Both the trade unions and the left have often criticised the economic policies of the PSOE for their economically liberal nature. They have denounced policies including deregulation and the increase in precarious and temporary work, cuts in unemployment and retirement benefits, and the privatisation of large state-owned organisations and public services. The PSOE has traditionally attracted a higher share of female voters than its rivals. Same-sex marriage and adoption were legalised in 2005 under the Zapatero Government, and in 2023 a transgender rights bill was passed to allow more freedom in regards to gender identity.
The PSOE is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and the Socialist International. The PSOE's 20 Members of the European Parliament sit in the Socialists and Democrats European parliamentary group.
History Restoration regime (1879–1931)
The PSOE was founded by Pablo Iglesias on 2 May 1879 in the Casa Labra tavern in Tetuán Street near the Puerta del Sol at the centre of Madrid. Iglesias was a typesetter who had previously come in contact with the Spanish section of the International Workingmen's Association and with Paul Lafargue. The first program of the new political party was passed in an assembly of 40 people on 20 July of that same year. The bulk of the growth of the PSOE and its affiliated trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) was chiefly restricted to the Madrid-Biscay-Asturias triangle up until the 1910s. The obtaining of a seat at the Congress by Pablo Iglesias at the 1910 Spanish general election in which the PSOE candidates presented within the broad Republican–Socialist Conjunction became a development of great symbolical transcendence and gave the party more publicity at the national level.
The PSOE and the UGT took a leading role in the general strike of August 1917 in the context of the events leading to the Spanish crisis of 1917 during the conservative government of Eduardo Dato. The strike was crushed by the army as a result of further undermining of the constitutional order. The members of the organizing committee (Julián Besteiro, Francisco Largo Caballero, Daniel Anguiano and Andrés Saborit) were accused of sedition and sentenced to life imprisonment. Sent to the prison of Cartagena, they were released a year later after being elected to the Cortes in the 1918 Spanish general election. During the 1919−1921 crisis of the socialist internationals, the party experienced tensions between the members endorsing the Socialist International and the advocates for joining the Communist International. Two consecutive splits of dissidents willing to join the Communist International, namely the Spanish Communist Party in 1920 and the Spanish Communist Workers' Party in 1921, broke away from the PSOE and soon merged to create the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). The PSOE was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1940.Kowalski, Werner (1985). Geschichte der sozialistischen arbeiter-internationale: 1923–1919. Berlin: Dt. Verl. d. Wissenschaften (in German). p. 325.
After the death of Pablo Iglesias in 1925, Julián Besteiro replaced him as president of both the PSOE and the UGT. During the 1923–1930 dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, corporatist PSOE and UGT elements were willing to engage in limited collaboration with the regime, against the political stance defended by other socialists such as Indalecio Prieto and Fernando de los Ríos, who instead advocated a closer collaboration with republican forces. The last years of the dictatorship saw a divergence emerge among the corporatist which was personified by Francisco Largo Caballero, who began to endorse the rapport with bourgeois republicans; and Julián Besteiro, who continued to show great distrust towards them. Besteiro's refusal to participate in the Revolutionary Committee led to his resignation as president both of the party and the trade union in February 1931. He was replaced as president of the party by Remigio Cabello.
Second Republic and Civil War (1931–1939)
After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, three PSOE members were included in the cabinet of the provisional government, namely Indalecio Prieto (Finance), Fernando de los Ríos (Education) and Francisco Largo Caballero (Labour). The socialist presence remained in the rest of cabinets of the Social-Azañist Biennium (1931–1933).
After the November 1933 general election which marked a win for the centre-right forces in a climate of increasing polarization and growing unemployment, along with a desire to make amends for the mistake of not having sided with the republicans in the election against the united right, Largo Caballero adopted a revolutionary rhetoric, calling for violent revolution and a transitionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Indalecio Prieto had also participated in the increasingly aggressive rhetoric, having already condemned the heavy-hand repression of the December 1933 largely anarchist uprising by the government, that has been cheered on by the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (CEDA) leaders in parliament. The Socialist Youth of Spain (JSE) also engaged in a shrill revolutionary rhetoric, while Besteiro firmly opposed the insurrectionary drift of the militancy.
The formation of a new cabinet in October 1934 (including CEDA ministers) was perceived among the left as a reaction, because the CEDA party was perceived as being indistinguishable from contemporary fascism to most workers, while CEDA leader Gil-Robles had advocated the establishment of a corporative state in the 1933 electoral campaign. The UGT called for a nationwide general strike for 5 October, which developed into a full-blown insurrection (the Revolution of 1934) in the mining region of Asturias, and was vocally supported by socialists such as Largo Caballero and Prieto. Most PSOE and UGT leaders were jailed after the end of the revolt, whose repression was entrusted to generals Francisco Franco and Manuel Goded.
A growing rift between Prieto and Largo Caballero (with disparate views of politics, albeit sharing a general pragmatist approach) formed in 1935, while Besteiro's hold on the party diminished significantly. Followers of Indalecio Prieto would ultimately become "estranged from the party left". The PSOE formed part of the broad left-wing Popular Front electoral coalition that stood for election in the 1936 Spanish general election, and achieved a victory in seats over the right.
In September 1936, a few months into the Spanish Civil War (which lasted until 1939), a cabinet presided over by Largo Caballero was formed (he also held the functions of Minister of War). In November, Largo Caballero succeeded in bringing some National Confederation of Labor (CNT) members into his government. The left socialist caballeristas were revolutionary in rhetoric, although in reality they proposed moderate reformist policies while in government. The May Days of 1937 in Barcelona destabilised the government which was replaced by a new cabinet led by Juan Negrín, another socialist.
Clandestinity and exile (1939–1974)
With the PSOE reduced to clandestinity during the Francoist dictatorship, its members were persecuted, with many leaders, members and supporters being imprisoned or exiled and even executed. Prime Minister Negrín fled to France in March 1939 after the final collapse of the Republican front and his fall from office. The aging and ill Julián Besteiro, who preferred to stay in Spain over exile, died in a Francoist prison in 1940. Julián Zugazagoitia, government minister in 1937–1938, was captured with others in exile in Paris by the Gestapo, handed over to Spain, tried and found guilty of rebellion, and executed by firing squad in 1940. The party was legalised again only in 1977 during the Spanish transition to democracy.
Disputes between the followers of Indalecio Prieto (who had exiled to Mexico) and Juan Negrín over the political strategy of the Republican government in exile soon arose. Negrín, whose 1937–1939 spell at the government in wartime was seen negatively by large elements of both caballerista and prietista extraction, had become vilified. The party was re-organized along new lines in 1944 in the 1st Congress in Exile that took place in Toulouse and in which Rodolfo Llopis became the party's new secretary-general.
The PSOE congresses in exile during the post-war period were marked by strong anti-communist positions as a reflection of how the exiles remembered the last events of the Civil War (which featured bitter strifes with the communists) and in line with the stance of other parties of the Socialist International during the Cold War, neglecting any kind of rapprochement with the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). The relative void left in Spain by the PSOE, with a Toulouse-based direction lacking in dynamism and innovation, was filled by the PCE and other new clandestine organizations such as the Agrupación Socialista Universitaria (ASU), the Popular Liberation Front (FELIPE) or later the Enrique Tierno Galván's Socialist Party of the Interior. The Toulouse executive board became increasingly detached from the party in Spain in the 1960s an insurmountable chasm between the former and the party in the interior was already defined by 1972.
Return to democracy González leadership (1974–1996)