BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

El artículo analiza las formas de castigo empleadas en las comunidades rurales durante el período de la Restauración. Los conflictos sociales fueron el escenario en el que se desplegaron diversas y cambiantes formas de castigo entre contendientes. Estos castigos permiten examinar las normas y valores que regulaban la convivencia colectiva en las comunidades rurales, las maneras en las que se gestionaban los conflictos y se ejercía el control sobre los vecinos. La disputa política y las nuevas formas de movilización social que se produjeron en estas décadas imprimieron cambios en la gestión del conflicto y la utilización del castigo. Estos cambios dejan observar la transformación de las ideas, identidades y relaciones sociales en el ámbito convivencial.

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.

La particularidad del mundo rural ofrece un reto a los historiadores sociales: analizar de cerca la conflictividad social en el campo, descubrir otras posibles formas de contienda, ampliar el marco interpretativo de los estudios centrados en las prácticas del movimiento obrero y evitar los tópicos que aún recaen sobre la sociedad rural y dificultan su comprensión. Las últimas investigaciones en este espacio, sin embargo, han destapado los matices que se esconden detrás de los estereotipos y han mostrado una sociedad rural mucho más compleja que la retratada por los coetáneos, expuesta al cambio y repleta de tensiones sociales. Para ello, ha sido necesario desafiar las grandes generalizaciones de los marcos teóricos, ampliar la búsqueda de fuentes y descender al escenario local.

This article examines the relationship between the height of adult males and marital outcomes, including likelihood of marrying, age at marriage, and marital fertility, in rural Spain. For this analysis, a sample of 4, 501 men born between 1835 and 1975 living in 14 villages in northeastern Spain was taken. Previous research has shown that shorter individuals are less likely to marry. However, it is still disputed whether differences exist in the timing of marrying based on height, and little attention has been paid to the effect(s) of height on offspring. Family data were obtained from parish records and interviews with individuals and their families, while height data were obtained from military records, with individuals in Spain being conscripted at the age of 21 years. The data were linked according to nominative criteria using family reconstitution methods. The results confirm that shorter individuals were less likely to marry. Individuals of medium and medium-high height were the first to marry, with a small gap between them and shorter individuals. With regard to marital fertility, no difference in terms of average fertility by height were found, but there were small differences in timing of childbirth, possibly as a result of delayed marriage.

This article uncovers the existence of discriminatory practices in pre-industrial Spain by examining the fate of twins. The analysis of the complete parish registers of a small rural area (17 villages) shows that female twins were discriminated both at birth and during infancy and childhood. Not only the sex ratio of twins at baptism was extremely unbalanced, but discrimination continued throughout infancy and childhood and resulted in female excess mortality, despite that males are biologically more vulnerable. Although their extremely high mortality rates question the idea that twins constituted an exogenous shock to family decisions due to their impact of the family budget, studying twins helps shedding more light on discriminatory patterns because many families prioritised male twins to enhance their survival chances.

Several recent European studies conducted over the past 50 years have documented a positive connection between a person’s height and their salary. However, there are very few studies for earlier periods and for southern Europe. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the height of conscripts born between 1888 and 1907 and their daily wages in 1924. Data for the Spanish city of Zaragoza was used. The results showed that for every additional 10 cm of height, an individual earned approximately 3% more. Furthermore, the shortest 25% of individuals suffered a considerable penalty in their income (about 15%). To understand the causes of this discrimination, we then analyzed the data by socioeconomic group. We found that people in low socioeco nomic groups essentially suffered wage discrimination. This finding could be linked to the fact that a tall stature conveys an image of strength and productivity. It should be noted that these results were found mainly for the urban areas, with their relatively large labor supply and weak blood ties rather than rural areas or among immigrants. In other words, the height penalty affected the weakest groups of society (low socioeconomic level and immigrants).