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NATION AND CONFLICT IN MODERN SPAIN 
that "our neighborhood centers are essentially worker centers; visit
[them]... and you will 
see the personification of the proletariat, the predominance of democracy,
those faces de- 
fined by the suffering of work, those blue blouses so characteristic of the
workers."9 Analysis 
of the location and membership of party circles corroborates these claims.
At least ten of the 
twenty Carlist centers were specifically called worker circles, and fully
sixteen were located 
in lower-middle-class or worker neighborhoods. Their sizes varied, but averaged
about 250 
members for the ten worker circles. By taking into account all sixteen circles
in non-middle- 
class neighborhoods and allowing for the few cases where membership was greater
than 
250, one can arrive at a rough estimate of about 3,500 Carlist workers in
Barcelona, not too 
different from the party's own estimate of 4,000 to 5,000 worker members
in the Barcelona 
traditionalist worker Census of 1910.10 
That about one third of Barcelona's Carlist militants were workers is not
surprising. 
The party had always been cross-class in nature, and even when restricted
largely to the 
Catalan hinterland, artisans and town dwellers had fought in Carlist armies
alongside peas- 
ants. Migration into Barcelona before World War I came hugely from the Catalan
rural 
uplands where Carlism was firmly entrenched. Not all peasants lost their
religion upon be- 
coming workers and dependientes. For Carlist newcomers to the city, affiliation
with their 
neighborhood traditionalists center eased the transition into urban life.
These circles pro- 
vided many of the services offered by the Church-directed Catholic centers
and the ASP, 
but without their stifling paternalism and with a dose of social leveling
inherent in common 
dedication to a political cause. Although few in number and surrounded by
a working class 
hostile to all manifestations of Carlism, these traditionalists workers would
eventually exert 
a far greater influence among the Catalan proletariat than all the efforts
of the Church, the 
Catalan Catholic elite, and the Carlist party's official leadership combined.
Barcelona's Carlist workers sparred constantly with the official party leadership
that 
represented mainstream Carlism. In 1912, a group of young, worker-oriented
radicals 
founded the obrerista Carlist weekly La Trinchera, which engaged in constant
guerrilla war- 
fare with the official party mouthpiece, El Correo Catalan, until at least
1919. Throughout 
this period the official party leaders-represented by the Duque de Solferino,
regional party 
president, and Miguel Junyent, editor of the Correo Catalan--retained control
of Catalan 
Carlism. But the radicals maintained their dominance in the Barcelona worker
centers and 
were especially well organized at the Ateneo Obrero Legitimista and the El
Porvenir and Crit 
de Patria Carlist worker clubs.' 
Worker Carlism differed from the mainstream in being primarily a movement
of youth. 
The leaders of this faction, unlike the middle-aged moderates, were mostly
in their twenties 
or thirties. La Trinchera spoke for "a youth fed up with being deceived
and ridiculed" by old 
men "concerned only with retaining their seats in parliament."
Unable to defeat the moder- 
ates, the radicals look refuge in bloody fantasies of civil war in which
Carlism triumphed but 
"all our leaders" died, making way for a new generation of youthful
party chiefs.'2 
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