Modernity

This photo of a group of men and women at the Riazor beach in A Coruña illustrates the ways in which Galicia was undergoing various type sof social and cultural changes in the first third of the 20th century. Anarchosyndicalism made up a significant part of a labour movement that was home to ideas of equality and social revolution. Together with Republicans, anarchosyndicalists sponsored cultural extension initiatives where they developed new ideas about social, gender, and  sexual relations, as well as about nutrition and hygiene. A Coruña was a centre of these progressive projects in Galicia and in Spain as a whole. These were not invented during the Republic; they had been growing roots in cities and rual áreas for decades.

Modernity was reflected in the spread  technological and material innovations such as the car—the first of which appeared in A Coruña, Vigo and Lugo in 1898; the telephone —which had reached Vigo in 1892; radio—Radio Galicia began broadcasting in Santiago de Compostela in 1932; and agricultural machinery, which became much more widely used during the 1920. For Galicia, the 20s and 30s were years of great socio-economic transformations that were abruptly cut off by the coup, the war, and the dictatorship.

But above all, modernity was reflected in social changes such as the greater presence of women in higher education and public life in general, the entry of working class people into political positions as mayors or members of parliament, and the undoubted prominence of the new urban middle class. In an atmosphere of increasing political pluralism, multiple political forces: left and right-wing republicanism, workers’ organizations, agrarianism, and Galician nationalism drew on these changes. Taken in 1931, the photo shows a new time that was victim of the coup and the war.

AMM