Punishment meted out by the community: politics and popular justice in rural Spain, 1895-1923

Abstract

The book's chapter analyses the numerous attempts at popular lynching that took place in the Spain of the Restoration. The primary objective is to clarify the causes, logic, and historical processes underlying this phenomenon of collective violence. To do this, we study the social behaviors that elicited this type of popular reaction, the social practices, cultural meanings, and political uses that were manifested in these expressions of violence, and their relationship with the processes and political structures of the State. Considered in the past as outbursts of anger and revenge typical of a backward society, these forms of violence reveal the purpose of punishing an infraction that exceeded the limits of what is tolerated by the community, proper ways of understanding justice and a shared concern to maintain norms of conduct that preserve certain ways of coexistence and integrity of the population. In addition, these actions uncover the existence of other practices of punishment in society, very different from the liberal procedures that could persist or feed in a context of distrust and discredit of public representatives and State institutions. The investigation is based on the exploration of the national and provincial press, government, judicial, and bibliographical sources.