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The 1st PSOE Congress was held in Barcelona (Spain) between August 23 and 25, 1888, during the Regency of Maria Christina of Habsburg, nine days after the 1888 Barcelona Workers' Congress in which the General Union of Workers was founded, linked to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) founded in Madrid in 1879. Thus, "for the first time in the history of Spain, a clear and distinct definition was proposed between a working class party (which aspires to the exercise of power) and a resistance organization or union, aimed at defending the interests of all workers in their relations of production (with employers or companies) and, in general, their living conditions".

Origins of socialism in Spain
Socialism was introduced in Spain in 1849, with the creation of the Democratic Party, progressive and close to socialist principles. However, Marxist socialism did not appear in Spain until the celebration of the First International (1864). At that time there was a heated debate in the Spanish Cortes on whether or not to legalize the International in Spain. It was finally outlawed, but Marxist and anarchist ideas spread among the Spanish working class, despite the clandestinity and the dissolution of the 1st International.

Background
The Madrid Marxist group expelled from the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA in June 1872 and which the following month formed the ephemeral New Madrid Federation (Nueva Federación Madrileña), in May 1879 founded the Socialist Workers’ Party. During the period of clandestinity that began in January 1874 when the banning of the First International in Spain was decreed, it had used the Asociación del Arte de Imprimir as its legal cover.(6) On July 20, 1879, the first assembly of the new party was held in a tavern on Visitación Street  —attended by 21 people—(7) at which the first Executive Committee of the party was elected —Pablo Iglesias, secretary; Inocente Calleja, treasurer; Alejandro Ocina, accountant; and Alejandro Calderón and Gonzalo Zubiarre, members— and the "Manifesto and Program" was approved,(8) "until a workers' congress" could "ratify or amend it". This document stated:(9) "[...] The Spanish Democratic Socialist Workers Party declares that its aspiration is: the abolition of classes, that is, the complete emancipation of the workers; the transformation of individual property into social property or of the entire society; the possession of political power by the working class."

The first group of the party that was created outside Madrid was the one in Guadalajara and the next one in Barcelona thanks to the trip of the typographer Toribio Reoyo who contacted Josep Pàmias, director of El Obrero, and members of the "societario" movement. The Barcelona group decided to clandestinely edit the Manifesto and Program approved on July 20, but introduced some modifications such as "The constitution of society on the basis of economic federation, scientific organization of work and comprehensive education for all individuals of both sexes", and further specified the immediate political objectives such as the achievement of universal suffrage. Later, two other nuclei of the party emerged in Valencia and in San Martín de Provensals.(10)

In 1882, the Barcelona group headed by Pàmias held a Workers' Congress at which 88 workers' organizations were represented and at which it was decided to advise workers to join the newly created Democratic Socialist Workers' Party.(11)

In 1883 the party decided to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the recently created Commission of Social Reforms and presented the "Written Report of the Madrid Socialist Grouping", a work by Jaime Vera, which Manuel Tuñón de Lara considers "the most important theoretical document of Spanish Marxism in the 19th century". For his part, Pablo Iglesias wrote the report of the Asociación del Arte de Impresión and was the spokesman of the Madrid group when it was presented before the Commission —Antonio García Quejido and Facundo Perezagua also intervened—.(12)

At the beginning of 1885 the first crisis occurred within the party due to the discrepancies that arose between Pablo Iglesias, on the one hand, and Jaime Vera and Francisco Mora Méndez, on the other, during the debate on the bases that should guide the newspaper that it had been decided to found in order to spread socialist ideas and strengthen the organization. Vera defended that the federal republicans were potential allies of the socialists, while Pablo Iglesias opposed any pact with the "bourgeois" parties. Antonio García Quejido tried to mediate but Iglesias' position prevailed and Vera and Mora left the active militancy for four and fifteen years, respectively. Finally, in the fourth base it was approved that the newspaper had to "combat all the bourgeois parties and especially the doctrines of the advanced ones, while stating that between the republican and monarchic forms of government, El Socialista always prefers the former". The first issue of the newspaper, under the name of El Socialista, hit the streets on March 12, 1886.(13) The editorial board consisted of six members, but the weight of the publication was carried by Pablo Iglesias and Gómez Latorre. José Mesa sent many contributions and translations from Paris.(14)

In the middle of 1887, the Mataró Workers' Center proposed to the Barcelona Workers' Center the celebration of a Workers' Congress for the following year, coinciding with the Universal Exposition of Barcelona (1888), thus resuming the project of creating an organization at the state level already proposed at the 1882 meeting. The Barcelona Center accepted the idea and published the call in September. Antonio García Quejido, who was in Barcelona, transmitted the proposal to the socialist group in Madrid, which not only supported it but also decided to take advantage of the occasion to hold immediately afterwards the First Congress of the Socialist Workers' Party, constituted in 1879.(15)

The Congress
"Whereas:

This society is unjust, because it divides its members into two unequal and antagonistic classes: one the bourgeoisie, which, possessing the instruments of labor, is the ruling class; the other the proletariat, which, possessing only its life force, is the dominated class;

The economic subjection of the proletariat is the first cause of slavery in all its forms: social misery, intellectual debasement and political dependence;

The privileges of the bourgeoisie are guaranteed by political power, which it uses to dominate the proletariat.

On the other hand:

Whereas necessity, reason and justice demand that inequality and antagonism between one class and the other should disappear, by reforming or destroying the social state which produces them;

This can only be achieved by transforming individual or corporate ownership of the instruments of labor into the common property of society as a whole;

The powerful lever with which the proletariat must destroy the obstacles to the transformation of property must be political power, which the bourgeoisie uses to prevent the vindication of our rights;

The Socialist Party declares that it has two aspirations:

The possession of political power by the working class.

The transformation of individual or corporate ownership of the instruments of labor into collective, social or common property. We understand by instruments of labor the land, mines, transports, factories, machines, capital-currency, etc.

The organization of society on the basis of economic federation, the usufruct of the instruments of labor by the workers' collectivities, guaranteeing to all its members the total product of their work, and the general scientific and special teaching of each profession to individuals of either sex.

The satisfaction by society of the needs of those handicapped by age or infirmity.

In short: the ideal of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is the complete emancipation of the working class; that is to say, the abolition of all social classes and their conversion into a single class of workers, owners of the fruit of their labor, free, equal, honest and intelligent."

- Program of the PSOE approved in the 1st Congress. 1888.

The Congress began on August 23, 1888, nine days after the closing of the Workers' Congress of Barcelona in 1888 in which the General Union of Workers was founded. It was attended by 18 delegates, all of them manual workers, representing 20 groupings of the party: 13 from Catalonia, plus Madrid, Guadalajara, Valencia, Játiva, Linares, Málaga and Bilbao, the latter founded in 1886 by Facundo Perezagua.(16)

At the Congress the party program was approved, in which, according to Manuel Tuñón de Lara "certain utopian elements are still present; the "economic federation" resembles more a Proudhonian residue than an interpretation of Engels' thesis on the higher stage of the disappearance of the State; the right to the "full product of labor" is likewise a pre-Marxist formulation which does not take into account the need to reproduce and extend the instruments of production. As for the "ethicism" of "honest and intelligent", how can we not see in it a continuation of the spirit of the Constitution of Cadiz, Article 6 of which prescribed that Spaniards "be just and beneficent""(17)?

At the Congress the relationship with the "bourgeois" parties was debated, imposing once again Pablo Iglesias' thesis of maintaining a "constant and harsh war" with them independently of their political orientation. Strikes were also discussed, and it was agreed that "the P.S.O. will encourage as much as possible the resistance movement, and will support with all its strength the battles which the workers' organizations wage with the bosses", in reference to the recently founded General Union of Workers.(18)

As for the organization of the party, it was decided that it would be formed by local groupings and at the top by a National Committee that would be appointed by the Agrupación Socialista Madrileña (a power it maintained until 1915, although its president was elected at the congresses from 1894 onwards). It was also decided to send a delegate to Paris where a workers' congress was to be held, from which the Second International would be born.(18) The Madrid Grouping appointed the following National Committee: Pablo Iglesias, president; Francisco Diego, secretary; Francisco Carrero, treasurer; and Mariano Rodríguez and Antonio Atienza, members.(18)

The congress closed on August 25 and the following congresses were held in Bilbao (1890), Valencia (1892) and Madrid (1894 and 1899).(19)