This Wednesday, May 1, is a holiday throughout Spain as Workers’ Day is celebrated and has been celebrated that way for more than a century. But why is it celebrated today? And most of all, what is actually celebrated today?
To find the answer, we have to go to the United States and go back to May 1 of the year 1886
, That day, more than three lakh workers took to the streets demanding better jobs. Among other things, an eight-hour working day. Although protests broke out across the country, it continued chicago Where demands were most intense with strikes lasting several days. Like many other demands, this request was not well received by the ruling class, so reprisals and violence increased in the streets.
A year and a half later, several protest leaders (August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolf Fischer, Georg Engels and Louis Ling) were sentenced to death, However, two others were sentenced life imprisonment
, He was the most famous face of that protest and that demand.
Three years after that incident, in 1889 itself, Second International Congress, celebrated in Paris, approved the observance of Labor Day on each May Day, as a tribute to those martyred in Chicago. And a year later, in 1890, the first celebrations of Labor Day took place in many countries.
When was the 8 hour working day achieved in Spain? 1919, As for Labor Day, although it began to be celebrated in Barcelona and spread to other cities, it was declared a national holiday during second republic
In 1931.