'' The repression of the otherwise unexceptional uprising was disproportionately severe. The
Cádiz province labor movement was sent underground as its organizations were shuttered, publishing abated, and militants arrested. Local authorities did not question the uprising's connection to the anarchist movement. Tasked with restoring order, the army strongly repressed what it considered a military insurrection. The
Spanish Civil Guard gathered anarchists and labor activists from the countryside over months, prioritizing the authors and distributors of the anarchist press, which it considered the key vehicle for transmitting ideas of revolt with the working class. At trial, the ability to identify issues of the anarchist press was treated as incriminating. A total of 315 detainees from this period were mostly fieldworkers who identified as anarchists. The regional repression outpaced the anarchist press' ability to report on the uprising, leading anarchists to rely on official and mainstream reporting. Some anarchist papers followed the official reports of the uprising as revolutionary violence, the type of spontaneous and inevitable reaction to debilitating regional poverty. The Seville anarchist paper
La Tribuna Libre was suppressed after affirming its support for subsequent revolutionary action. More often, anarchist papers denied the uprising's affiliation with anarchism yet did not decry it.
Le Corsair of
A Coruña justified the fieldworkers' rage as the result of farm owner exploitation and the impropriety of the 1882
Mano Negra affair. The publication condemned the "bourgeois press" as using the opportunity to defame anarchism. The largest Spanish, non-Catalan anarchist newspaper,
La Anarquía, doubted the uprising's revolutionary potential as either a political or social revolution based on its organization and location. All refuted the mainstream claim that anarchists had sparked the uprising, whether to avoid press censorship or because anarchists believed that anarchist revolutions would not have leaders, only instructional propaganda. The first trial—two
military tribunals on charges of
sedition and murder—was held a month after the uprising, in February. The main evidence came through an informant and
forced confessions. Of the eight on trial, four were executed by
garrote on 10 February 1892: self-declared anarchists Antonio Zarzuela and Jesús Fernández Lamela for starting the uprising, and Manuel Fernández Reina and Manuel Silva Leal for the murder of Manuel Castro Palomino. Four more were given life sentences: one who died in his cell on the day of the executions, two who denied being anarchists, and the informant. Another trial later in 1892 had 46 defendants, of which ten received life sentences and seven received sentences between 8 and 20 years. Two who were accused of visiting
Fermín Salvochea in prison to plan the uprising received life sentences. Salvochea, who was in prison during the uprising, received a 12-year sentence. Independent and liberal newspapers condemned the severity of the government's response. The hunger and deprivation that sparked the uprising,
El Heraldo de Madrid wrote, would be better quelled through knowledge than violence. Madrid's
republican La Justica acknowledged the "anarchists" as culpable but considered tribunal response an overreaction, both an "abominable crime" and a "political blunder", exacerbated by governmental and press pressure. The roiled anarchist press reflected the anger of the international movement and portended acts of retribution. They referenced a cycle of violence in which the desperation contemporary society had caused the uprising and the choice to respond by killing workers would only further aggravate relations and prompt hatred. The protests and attacks immediately following the executions persisted through the year. The Spanish consulates of Europe saw protests and clashes with police. There were protests across Spain, especially in Barcelona. An explosion in its
Royal Square killed a bystander and wounded others. There was a bombing attempt on the
Cortes parliament building in Madrid.
Anarcho-communist newspapers of
Catalonia both encouraged and celebrated these attacks, while the anarcho-communist newspapers outside Catalonia were more pacifying or distancing, instead blaming attacks on police. Anarchist
Paulí Pallàs would later attempt to assassinate
Catalonia Captain General Arsenio Martínez Campos for the latter's role in the Jerez uprising's repression and executions. The September 1893 assassination attempt was unsuccessful and resulted in Pallàs's execution, and a spate of Spanish bombings throughout the 1890s. == References ==