The Barcelona Urban Elite, 1808–1899: Between Liberalism and Catholic Corporatism

This article focuses on the relationship between classical liberal ideology and the Barcelona urban elite between 1808 and 1899. For many historians this question would not be seen as problematic. «Bourgeois» elites are often described as liberals and «bourgeois» and «liberal» culture elided. However, in the Catalan case matters were not so straight forward. While Barcelona big business and wealthy professionals supported key liberal economic and political reforms in the early nineteenth century, they also stymied meritocratic social advance and viewed the democratization of the political system as a theat. Moreover, they looked to adapt and reinterpret elements of old-regime thought and practice that they believed could be used to stabilize the new social order. At the same time, the dominant tendency within these elites elaborated an organic vision of society, making them susceptible to anti-liberal Catholic-corporatist ideology. This could be seen from the 1880s, when business leaders became increasingly critical of the political system and began to advocate corporatist forms of representation. Such developments show that there was no straightforward link between industrialisation and democratisation, with currents emerging from within the new industrial world that defended an alternative authoritarian road to modernity to that advocated by liberals.