La religión de las clases populares rurales vizcaínas en los albores de la insurrección carlista : entre el anticlericalismo espontáneo y el catolicismo riguroso

Abstract

After a superficial balance of the historiography related to Spanish anticlericalism, the rehearsal tries to formulate a new methodological and theoretical practice for the analysis of such a phenomenon in a geographical space (the Basque), which has repeatedly and topically been branded as religiously immovable. In this sense, the study of the interpersonal conflicts between parishioners and the parish net-work, at the beginning of the Carlist insurrection in 1833, witnesses the conformity of a model of “popular and rigorous Catholicism”, which settled in quite well specially in rural areas, in wchich spontaneous anticlerical demostrations were paradoxically projected as resorts to the “rechristianisation” and “refolklorisation” of the catholic collective imaginary, and as a proper constitutional and ideological frame-work to normalise social relations of some rural communities that were being subjected to permanent collapse and loss.