From Assemblies to Institutions and Back Again? Cycles of Democracy and Representation in the Spanish Labour Movement

ABSTRACT Despite growing interest in union renewal, worker voice and new forms of labour organisation, industrial relations scholarship has paid limited attention to assemblies as an organisational form in their own right. This article argues that assemblies constitute a historically recurring democratic repertoire through which workers negotiate the relationship between participation and representation, rather than a residual or transitional stage in the development of trade unionism. Drawing on a historiographical analysis of the Spanish labour movement from the early 20th century to the present, the article examines the changing role of asamblearismo (assembly‐based decision‐making) across successive political and institutional contexts. The analysis traces the evolution of assemblies from the anarcho‐syndicalist tradition of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), through their reconfiguration within clandestine workers' commissions under Francoism and their displacement following the institutionalisation of trade unionism after democratisation. It then examines their persistence within radical unions and social movements and their renewed prominence in labour struggles among precarious workers, where assemblies coexist with selective engagement with trade unions and formal institutions in hybrid forms of representation. The article makes three contributions to industrial relations scholarship. First, it conceptualises assemblies as workers’ organisational repertoire whose historical evolution has remained largely absent from debates on union democracy, worker representation and labour revitalisation. Second, it demonstrates that the relationship between assemblies and institutional representation is cyclical rather than linear, with participatory practices repeatedly re‐emerging when institutional arrangements struggle to accommodate new worker subjectivities and forms of employment. Third, it shows how historiographical analysis can enrich industrial relations theory by revealing the historical continuity of organisational forms frequently presented as contemporary innovations. The Spanish case, therefore, offers broader insights into the democratic foundations of worker representation under conditions of institutional change and labour market fragmentation.