Read the text and answer the questions.

“ Jornaleros” from Andalusia.

Although Andalusia is still one of the most underdeveloped areas in Europe, it has undergone a great advancement during the last decades of the 20^th Century. Even though, the conditions of the population in the rural areas of Andalusia and a great part of Spain have been historically very hard. The most renamed poets, as Antonio Machado, F.G. Lorca or Miguel Hernández wrote expressive poems describing the situation of the “jornaleros” or temporary peasants, and other thinkers, politicians and philosophers, as the founder of the Andalusian national movement, Blas de Infante, who wrote the hymn of Andalusia, had an important commitment with the andalusian farmer’s context.

Most descriptions of Andalusia begin with the landownership system, as the most powerful forces in the region have for centuries been the owners of the large estates, called latifundios. These wide expanses of land have their origin in grants of land made to the nobility, to the military orders, and to the church during the Reconquest (Reconquista); and in laws of the nineteenth century by which church and common lands were sold in large tracts to the urban middle class. The workers of this land, called jornaleros, were themselves landless. They had nothing: no land, no money, no future. Somedays, if they were lucky, they worked and could earn some money. Other days they hadn´t any job and, thus, nothing to eat.

This economic and cultural system produced a distinctive perspective, involving class consciousness and class conflicts as well as significant emigration. In contrast to the much smaller farm towns and villages of northern Spain, where the land was worked by its owners, class distinctions in the agro-towns of Andalusia stood out. The families of the landless farmers lived at the poverty level, and their relations with the landed gentry were marked by conflict, aggression, and hostility. Most of the land was property of the andalusian aristocracy, who possessed large amounts of land, and, in most cases, did not even want to cultivate them. Millions of Spaniards had been living in more or less absolute poverty under the firm control of the aristocratic landowner. 

Since the 20^th Century the workers’ movement spread out. The Anarchist movement, which aims the communal property of the land flourished among the andalusian farmers. The Second Spanish Republic tried to execute a land reform, in order to distribute land among the workers. These reforms, along with anticlericalist acts, created strong opposition. The victory of the National Army, commanded by Franco, who supported the landowners, spoilt this project.

The growing economic and social, although dispersed and not homogeneous in the region, fundamentally start in the years seventy coinciding with the arrival of the Democracy, and it will be intensified by the strong increment of the agroindustrial, tourist sector and of services. In 1981 the Statute of Autonomy is approved, after the Andalusian movement of autonomy.

1. Explain why the conditions of andalusian farmers without land were so hard.
2. Who were the owners of most of the lands in Andalusia. Why?
3. Explain in English the following words: Latifundio, Poverty, Class conflict.

Fecha de entrega: antes de 8 de Mayo a las 15:00h.