On May 31, 1906, the streets of Madrid awoke covered in garlands, flags, and royal portraits. The wedding of Alfonso XIII to Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was intended to represent the stability of a regime corroded from within. Barely eight years earlier, the Spanish State had lost the war against the United States, and with it, its last overseas colonies. Furthermore, the Crisis of 1898 had opened a deep political, moral, and social wound. The monarchy attempted to rebuild its legitimacy through patriotic spectacle, while beneath the surface, strikes, hunger, radical republicanism, workers' anarchism, and a generation that no longer believed in the Restoration were growing.
Table of Contents
The Workers' Awakening and the Political Thought of Mateo Morral
The Bombing of Calle Mayor
Repression, Propaganda by the Deed, and the Crisis of the Restoration
Memory, Popular Culture, and the Red Thread of History
That morning, among the crowd watching the wedding procession, two irreconcilable classes coexisted. One, the political, military, and ecclesiastical elites who shared power through parliamentary rotation and the systematic repression of any social protest. The other, the working-class neighborhoods, the textile workshops, the libertarian cultural centers, and the workers' societies that were beginning to weave a new political culture based on popular organization, rationalist education, and direct action.
As the royal carriage passed through Calle Mayor near number 84, a bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers was thrown from a balcony. The blast shook Madrid. Alfonso XIII survived by sheer luck, but about fifteen soldiers and a dozen civilians were killed, and many others were wounded. The person directly responsible was Mateo Morral, a young Catalan anarchist associated with the Modern School of Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia. His name has since been linked to one of the most notorious terrorist attacks in contemporary Spanish history.
For decades, official historiography and the bourgeois press constructed the image of Morral as an isolated fanatic, a disturbed individual incapable of understanding the world around him. However, behind his actions lay a specific political context: the rise of the labor movement, the radicalization of broad sectors of the population, and the shared perception among many European revolutionaries that the old order was undergoing an irreversible crisis.
One hundred and twenty years after that attack, reclaiming the figure of Mateo Morral does not imply glorifying individual violence or turning assassination into a valid political strategy. It implies understanding the tensions of an era when thousands of workers were beginning to organize against a regime founded on misery, exploitation, and authoritarianism. It also implies rescuing the memory of a generation that believed it was possible to overthrow the existing order and build a new world.
The awakening of the working class and the political thought of Mateo Morral
At the end of the 19th century, the Spanish state was undergoing an uneven and deeply conflictive transformation due to the advance of the liberal bourgeoisie in the class struggle. Industrialization was progressing particularly in territories such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, and some urban centers of the Levante region, while vast masses of peasants remained trapped in conditions of extreme poverty. Endless working days, child labor, subsistence wages, and a complete lack of rights shaped the daily reality of the working class.
In Catalonia, industrial growth had generated a significant concentration of workers in cities like Barcelona, Sabadell, and Terrassa. There, resistance societies, cooperatives, workers' centers, and revolutionary newspapers began to proliferate, articulating a distinct political culture. Anarchism, introduced decades earlier through the First International, found fertile ground among a proletariat subjected to fierce exploitation and distrustful of both the liberal bourgeoisie and the state institutions that represented it.
Far from the caricature of the chaotic, individualistic anarchist, the libertarian movement of the time developed a vast cultural and organizational network. Workers' cultural centers, rationalist schools, public libraries, and workers' universities sprang up in neighborhoods and towns as spaces for political education and mutual support. Collective readings, lectures, educational excursions, and debates on science, sexuality, and social emancipation formed part of a genuine working-class counterculture.
In this context, Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia and his Modern School project played a fundamental role. Founded in Barcelona in 1901, the Modern School sought to break the Church's educational monopoly and form free individuals through a rationalist, scientific, and anti-authoritarian pedagogy. It was not merely an educational project; it was a tool for building critical consciousness among the working classes.
Mateo Morral Roca was born in Sabadell in 1879 into a well-to-do family connected to the textile industry. His father was a Republican businessman, and his mother held deep conservative Catholic convictions. This family contradiction would mark part of his youth. Unlike many labor activists of the time, Morral received a relatively privileged education and traveled extensively throughout Europe from a young age.
During his time in France and Germany, he came into contact with libertarian thought, radical anticlericalism, and the neo-Malthusian currents circulating within the international anarchist movement. He learned several languages, read extensively in philosophy, and participated in political debates that would ultimately distance him from the bourgeois life his family had envisioned for him.
Upon his return to Catalonia, he even tried to connect with the employees of the family business and participated in labor disputes. This experience deepened his break with the social environment from which he came. Morral decided to leave the family business and join the Barcelona libertarian movement, where he found a vibrant political and human space.
Early 20th-century Barcelona was a city rife with social unrest. Strikes were on the rise, and the state responded with imprisonment, newspaper closures, and police torture. The memory of the Montjuïc Trials, triggered by the 1896 Corpus Christi procession bombing, still weighed heavily on the working class. Hundreds of anarchists were arrested, tortured, and convicted without sufficient evidence. This state brutality further fueled hatred toward the monarchy and the regime.
Morral began collaborating closely with Ferrer i Guàrdia and went on to work as librarian at the Modern School. From there, he participated in the dissemination of rationalist and revolutionary texts, as well as associating with some of the most active sectors of Catalan anarchism, collaborating on various publishing projects and libertarian publications.
Although he would later be portrayed as an isolated and psychologically unstable man, Mateo Morral was in fact fully integrated into certain political circles of the time. He shared debates, readings, and perspectives with a generation of activists who perceived the exhaustion of the Restoration regime. For many workers, the monarchy appeared as the ultimate expression of a system based on exploitation and sustained by state violence.
In those years, the Spanish labor movement was also beginning to undergo a process of reorganization and growth. Workers' societies were expanding their influence, and general strikes were beginning to emerge as a tool of political struggle. The National Confederation of Labor (CNT) was still four years away from being founded, but the trade union and cultural fabric that would make it possible was already developing.
Within anarchism, multiple currents and strategies coexisted. While large sectors advocated revolutionary syndicalism and mass organization, others continued to defend what was called "propaganda by the deed": insurrectionary actions or individual attacks intended to strike at symbols of power and unleash broader revolutionary processes.
Mateo Morral operated precisely within that historical tension: between the patient construction of an organized popular movement and the conviction that a spectacular action could precipitate the collapse of a weakened regime.
The bomb on Main Street
The wedding of Alfonso XIII was conceived as a massive propaganda operation. The monarchical regime needed to project an image of strength and continuity after years of political crisis and social unrest. Madrid was filled with foreign delegations, military personnel, aristocrats, and representatives of the European elite, in a lavish display showcasing the Spanish ruling class.
Meanwhile, Mateo Morral had been preparing the attack for weeks. He had traveled to Madrid under a false identity and rented a room in a boarding house on Calle Mayor, very close to the planned route of the royal procession. From the fourth-floor balcony, he would have a prime position to carry out the attack.
Subsequent investigations indicated that Morral received logistical support from contacts linked to the libertarian and republican movement. Far from the image of the "lone wolf," there existed a network of ideological affinity, safe havens, and complicity that facilitated clandestine movements and the protection of persecuted activists.
On the morning of May 31, 1906, Madrid was completely packed. The procession was returning from the Church of Los Jerónimos to the Royal Palace when, at 1:55 p.m., Morral threw the bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers. The device, an Orsini-type bomb, accidentally struck the tramway and was deflected from the royal carriage before exploding over the crowd.
The scene was quite bloody. Horses were torn to pieces, and soldiers and civilians lay covered in blood on the cobblestones of Calle Mayor. More than twenty people died, and dozens were injured. Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia survived by mere meters due to an accidental failure that Morral had not foreseen.
The political and media impact was immediate. The conservative press demanded exemplary repression against anarchism and the labor movement. The attack was used to justify new police measures and reinforce the narrative that equated any form of social protest with terrorism.
As chaos gripped Madrid, Mateo Morral managed to escape by blending into the crowd. He partially changed his appearance and headed towards the offices of El Motín, a republican newspaper edited by José Nakens. Nakens was a well-known figure for his anticlericalism and his ideological stance against the monarchy.
Although he initially didn't know Morral's exact identity, he ended up helping him hide. The anarchist spent the night sheltered at the home of a typesetter connected to the newspaper. That chain of clandestine solidarity reflected the extent to which underground political networks existed, capable of protecting political refugees even in a context of enormous repressive pressure.
Among those who came into contact with Morral during those hours was the young journalist Julio Camba, still close at the time to libertarian circles. The figure of Mateo Morral quickly began to circulate among Madrid's cafés, printing presses, and newsrooms, shrouded in rumors, admiration, and condemnation.
After leaving Madrid, Morral fled towards Barcelona. He traveled disguised in humble clothing and tried to avoid police checkpoints on main roads while the press circulated his portrait throughout the country. On June 2nd, he reached the outskirts of Torrejón de Ardoz and stopped at the Ventorro de los Jaraíces to eat something before attempting to continue his journey.
His behavior aroused suspicion. Some of those present distrusted this cultured and educated man dressed like a simple laborer. His bandaged hands and Catalan accent also drew attention. The innkeepers then alerted the gamekeeper, Fructuoso Vega.
The official version maintained that Morral shot the guard and then committed suicide. However, from the outset, enormous doubts arose about this account. Various subsequent analyses and testimonies from the time pointed to the possibility of an extrajudicial execution.
The photographs taken of the body showed wounds inconsistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound at close range. Furthermore, it was difficult to believe that the authorities would forgo publicly questioning the man who had just carried out the most serious attack against the monarchy in decades.
The most plausible hypothesis is that Mateo Morral was summarily executed without due process after his arrest. The regime needed to quickly close the case, portraying it as a victory, and avoid a trial that could become a political platform for anarchism or reveal the existence of broader support networks.
His body was publicly displayed in Torrejón de Ardoz amidst insults and monarchist shouts encouraged by the authorities and the conservative press. Later, it was transferred to the Civil Cemetery of Madrid, where it ended up in a common ossuary.
Even so, the attempt to erase his memory was never complete. In working-class neighborhoods, libertarian circles, and certain popular environments, Morral's figure began to transform into a contradictory symbol of rebellion, despair, and direct confrontation with power.
Repression, propaganda by the deed, and the crisis of the Restoration
The bombing on Calle Mayor triggered a massive crackdown. Police carried out mass searches, arrests, brutal interrogations, and the closure of spaces linked to the working class and specifically to the libertarian movement. Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia was imprisoned on charges of complicity, although he was ultimately acquitted due to lack of evidence.
José Nakens was also tried and convicted for aiding Morral during his escape. The trial became a major political event and fueled a campaign to criminalize anarchism.
At the same time, the State strengthened its control and surveillance mechanisms. During those years, police structures specifically geared toward the persecution of the labor movement and revolutionary organizations were consolidated. The identification of social conflict with the threat of terrorism would become a constant feature of contemporary Spanish politics.
The Morral assassination cannot be understood in isolation from the European context. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, numerous assassinations and attacks were carried out by anarchists or individuals influenced by the libertarian political climate of the time. Kings, presidents, and heads of government were murdered in various European and American countries.
These actions were part of a strategy known as "propaganda by the deed." Its proponents believed that a spectacular attack could act as a revolutionary catalyst, awakening popular consciousness and accelerating the fall of the system.
However, historical experience revealed the profound limitations of this strategy. Assassinations rarely sparked widespread revolutionary processes and, instead, facilitated massive waves of repression against unions and workers' organizations. Individual violence ended up replacing collective action and becoming detached from the realities of the working class.
Much of organized anarchism would eventually develop a critique of these insurrectionary dynamics disconnected from the masses. Revolutionary syndicalism, workers' organizing, and the patient construction of class power proved to have a far greater capacity to generate real transformative processes.
However, to reduce Mateo Morral to the figure of an isolated fanatic would be to accept the self-serving interpretation constructed by the bourgeois press and the state apparatus. Morral acted within a political climate marked by the perception that the Restoration was undergoing a terminal crisis.
Strikes were on the rise, radical republicanism was gaining influence, and large sectors of the working class considered any profound democratic reform impossible under the monarchy. In this context, some revolutionaries believed that the king's death could trigger a popular uprising or a general strike capable of creating a historic turning point.
The idea didn't stem solely from individual delusion, but from a misinterpretationyet politically sharedof the historical moment. There was a widespread conviction among certain revolutionary circles in Europe that capitalism and liberal monarchies were on the verge of collapse.
The Spanish labor movement itself would experience episodes of enormous and growing radicalization a few years later: the Tragic Week of 1909, the great revolutionary strikes, employer gunmen and finally the expansion of the CNT as a great anarcho-syndicalist organization.
In a way, Mateo Morral embodied the contradictions of a transitional era in the formation of revolutionary positions within the working class. He was part of a workers' movement that was moving toward broader and more strategic forms of organization, but still carried the weight of insurrectionary conceptions inherited from the 19th century. His assassination expressed both the accumulated rage against the regime and the political limitations of a strategy incapable of replacing the organized force of the masses.
Memory, popular culture and the red thread of history
The figure of Mateo Morral left a profound mark on the political and cultural imagination of the first third of the 20th century. His name appeared in popular songs, novels, newspaper articles, and café conversations. For some, he was a bloodthirsty monster; for others, a tragic rebel confronting a brutal regime.
Pío Baroja met him in Madrid's bohemian circles and left behind some ambiguous and contradictory reflections on him. Ramón María del Valle-Inclán dedicated verses and literary references to him, laden with symbolism. Even popular legend came to intertwine his figure with almost mythical tales of conspiracies, clandestine cafés, and wandering revolutionaries.
During the War and Revolution of 1936, libertarian groups invoked his memory as an example of resistance against the monarchy. There are references to proposals to rename public spaces in his honor, including initiatives to dedicate streets in Madrid to him, such as Calle Mayor itself, which was briefly renamed in his honor.
Over the decades, the Franco regime and official historiography attempted to reduce him once again to the stereotype of the irrational terrorist. However, the contemporary recovery of working-class memory has allowed us to view his figure from more complex and less propagandistic perspectives. Mateo Morral was not only the man who threw a bomb at Alfonso XIII. He was also a product of a generation imbued with enormous revolutionary hopes, the expansion of working-class culture, and the conviction that the world could be radically transformed.
Remembering that history today does not mean romanticizing individual violence or idealizing all the strategic errors of the past. Historical memory cannot become an uncritical sanctuary. Indeed, one of the fundamental lessons of the libertarian movement is the need to connect any revolutionary vision with real processes of popular organization.
Isolated explosions may generate a momentary impact, but they are incapable of replacing the patient construction of working-class, union, and community networks. Wherever anarchism managed to take deep rootin unions, cooperatives, cultural centers, rationalist schools, or grassroots organizationsit succeeded in opening up far broader historical possibilities than those offered by desperate, however legitimate, individual action.
Even so, it would also be unfair to look down on those who gave their lives convinced they were fighting against a criminal and profoundly unjust system. The history of the working class is full of defeats and contradictions, but also of immense courage in the face of seemingly invincible structures of domination.
There is an invisible thread that connects those who built workers' schools more than a century ago with those who today organize housing unions, strike funds, mutual aid networks, or labor disputes. The forms change, the contexts transform, but the need to build collective power from below remains.
In the face of empty nostalgia or the fetishization of violence, recovering figures like Mateo Morral should help us draw useful political lessons for the present. Anarchism has historically provided fundamental tools: mutual aid, self-organization, internationalism, direct action linked to popular needs, and the conviction that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. But it has also shown limitations when it substituted collective strategy with isolated gestures incapable of sustaining lasting revolutionary processes.
One hundred and twenty years after the attack on Calle Mayor, perhaps the best way to honor the memory of those who fought before us is not to mechanically repeat their methods of combat, but to recover their organizational determination, their will to transform reality and their absolute commitment to the oppressed of their time.
Because the history of the working class is not a museum of dead heroes; it is much more than that. It is a chain of experiences, defeats, and lessons that continues to resonate in the present. And in that collective memory, the same question that echoed through the streets of Barcelona and Madrid at the beginning of the 20th century still beats: how to build the necessary strength to overthrow a world based on exploitation and build another founded on freedom, equality, and mutual support. We are building the answer right now.
Ángel Malatesta, a member of Liza Madrid
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/05/31/mateo-morral-flores-para-su-majestad-y-polvora-contra-la-restauracion/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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