n under the new impulse
of the London Congress, really kept in the main to its old
Collectivist principles. In consequence of the movement proceeding
from the London Congress, the Spanish Anarchists called a national
congress at Barcelona on September 24 and 25, 1881, at which, in the
presence of one hundred and forty delegates, a programme and statutes
of organisation were drawn up and a "Spanish Federation of the
International Working-Men's Association" was founded. Its aim was to
be the political, economic, and social emancipation of all the working
classes by the establishment of a form of society founded upon a
Collectivist basis, and guaranteeing the unconditional autonomy of the
free and federally united communes. The only means of reaching this
aim was declared to be a revolutionary upheaval carried out by force.
The organisation sketched out at the Barcelona Congress is quite in
Proudhon's spirit; the arrangement of its members was to be a double
one, both by trades and districts, and both divisions had mutually to
enlarge each other. The basis of the trade organisation was to be
formed by the single local groups; these were to be united into local
associations, these into provincial associations, and these again into
a national association, the "Union." Monthly, quarterly, and yearly
conferences, and the committees attached to them, were to form the
decisive and executive organs of these associations. Parallel with the
arrangement by trades was to be the territorial arrangement, all the
local trade associations of the same district being formed into one
united local association, this again into provincial associations,
these into the national association of the whole country, _i. e._,
into the "Federation"; and here again local, provincial, and national
congresses performed all executive functions as local, provincial, and
national committees. The National Committee established by the
Congress developed immediately an active agitation, so that at the
next congress at Seville (24th to 26th September, 1883), attended by
254 delegates, the Federation numbered already 10 provincial, 200
local unions, and 632 sections, with 50,000 members. Their organ, the
_Revista Social_, which appeared in Madrid, possessed about 10,000
subscribers, although besides this there were several local journals.

But this rapid growth of the Anarchist movement in Spain was followed
by a retrogression, mainly caused by the increased seve