Railway workers’ purge during Spanish Civil War and Francoism: a first approximation through the comparison between Tudela and Sakana Valley (Navarre)

Abstract

During the Spanish Civil War and the postwar period, between 1936-1942, all workers of railway concessionary companies suffered the opening of purging dossiers, within a massive process of professional cleansing initiated by the Franco dictatorship. Their professional activity, their political and union militancy or affinity, and their attitudes before, during and after the war were researched. According to them, they returned to work, with or without punishment, or were expelled. Evaluations carried out by companies and authorities on their profiles or activities could involve the return of these workers to the profession, with or without economic sanctions, or their expulsion. As with other aspects of economic and socio-occupational repression, professional cleansing has been researched in different studies, because of the innovation that occurred in the last quarter of a century in the analysis of Franco's repression. However, the purge of the workers of the railway companies, in particular those residing in Navarre, has had little monographic study. The objective of this work is to offer a quantitative and comparative analysis of the depuration processes and repressive acts suffered by railway workers from the different municipalities of Navarre, divided both in workers with known militances and in workers without them. On the one hand, Tudela, the main city of the Ribera, located south of the province, and on the other, the localities of the Sakana Valley region, located north-west. For the future, this comparison aims to serve as a basis for future analyses and comparative studies with other municipalities of Navarre and other regions of the Spanish State.