Excerpts from ANARCHISTS IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION by José Pierats #9

In the face of such repression, Solidaridad Obrera convened a national congress in Barcelona. The syndicalists realized that the lack of a national organization had hindered the cause of the rebels of 1909 and facilitated the Ferrer trial and execution. A kind of guilt complex led to the founding of an anarcho-syndicalist central committee on a national level. The other national union, The General Union of Workers (UGT), was only a docile satellite of the Pablo Iglesias Socialist Party, organized between 1879 and 1881. The Congress of Solidaridad Obrera took place in Barcelona's Palace of Fine Arts, and so was known as the "Congress of Fine Arts". It met on October 30 and November 1, 1910 and was composed of delegates from almost all of the regions of Spain. One of the most notable adherents was Anselmo Lorenzo, founder of the old Spanish Regional Federation. His message was prophetic:

You are going to make an accord that will influence the ever-progressive march of humanity. A page of the book of history lies blank before you; prepare yourselves to fill it in a way that will be to your credit and to the benefit of all persons, now and in the future.

The Congress of Solidaridad Obrera founded the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) on the model of French revolutionary syndicalism. Perhaps old Anselmo Lorenzo smiled when the syndicalist Charter of Amiens was used as a model by the Spaniards. For in fact this syndicalism had been invented by the Spanish members of the International, and brought to the London conference of 1870 in a speech that produced astonishment and admiration. The speaker had been none other than Anselmo Lorenzo himself, then a youth, sent for the first time to an international conference.

The Congress of Fine Arts defined syndicalism as

... a way of struggle ... to obtain at once all those advantages that enable the working class to intensify the struggle within the present order, so as to gain .... its complete freedom, by means of the revolutionary expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as soon as syndicalism .... considers itself numerically strong enough and intellectually competent to carry out the general strike. The general strike by definition must be revolutionary, and have as its watchword the motto of the First International: The workers must free themselves. Consequently only workers, who earn their wages in factories or businesses run by the bourgeoisie and the State, may be members of the unions of the CNT.