Valencia Conference

The Valencia Conference was a secret meeting of the delegates of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) held in Valencia in September 1871, during the reign of Amadeo I. It was held in secret due to the persecution it suffered in consequence of the panic caused by the Paris Commune among the European governments and ruling classes.

In March 1871, the Paris Commune broke out, causing a "psychosis of terror not only in the conservative and right-wing media, but also in most of the bourgeois media" throughout Europe. In Spain, one of the first authorities to react was the civil governor of Barcelona, who prohibited strikes and workers' meetings and ordered an attack on the premises of "Las Tres Clases del Vapor" and arrested its main leader, which led to the fact that on 22 May several Catalan federal republican deputies presented a protest in the Cortes. They were answered by the Interior Minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta who said that the internationalists were foreigners "whose mission is to disturb order and proselytize" —in reality they were "communard" refugees fleeing from the repression that followed the defeat of the Commune.

Six days later, on 28 May 1871, Sagasta sent a circular to the civil governors in which he granted them broad powers to act against the International. Faced with this situation on 3 June the Federal Council of the FRE-AIT decided to leave Madrid and settle in Lisbon. There went Anselmo Lorenzo, Tomás González Morago and Francisco Mora Méndez, while Ángel Mora stayed in Madrid. From Lisbon, the Council contacted the local federations, pointing out the difficulties that existed in convening an ordinary congress of the FRE-AIT, which was where the new Federal Council was elected, so they asked them to arbitrate some system to renew it. As they received no response, González Morago resigned, while Mora and Lorenzo decided to remain in their positions, although formally resigned, and to convene a secret conference to be held in Valencia on 10 September, in which the new Council would be elected.

After the fall at the end of July 1871 of the government of Francisco Serrano, in which Sagasta was the Minister of the Interior, and his replacement by another chaired by Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, who was more tolerant towards the activities of the International, the Federal Council decided to return to Madrid - although González Morago preferred to remain in Lisbon.

Between 10 and 18 September 1871, the Conference was held in Valencia "in an atmosphere of semi-secrecy." In attendance were 13 delegates representing 3,000 contributors and 2,000 passive members. At that time the FRE-AIT had 12 local Federations, with 45 sections of office.

At the Conference, a typically Bakuninist resolution was adopted: “That the true federal democratic republic is collective property, anarchy and the economic federation, that is, the free universal federation of free agricultural and industrial workers' associations.

On the other hand, the question of the integration of the peasants in the FRE was addressed for the first time, agreeing to the creation of the Union of Rural Workers, which held its first congress a few months later. The budget on which its creation was based was the assimilation of the tenant, and even the small owner, to that of the day laborer, a point of view defended, for example, by Francesc Tomàs Oliver.

The "regional" division of the Spanish Regional Federation was also approved: