“Quintos”, Fugitives and Deserters. Galicia, 1808-1890

Abstract

Of the various obligations that the modern State imposes on its citizens, military service turned out to be the most burdensome and the most hated by young men and their families. In the local communities of northwestern Spain, dodging conscription, legally or illegally, became a habit closely related to emigration and to the more than secular tendency ― now turned into a necessity ― to keep the State as far away as possible from local resources, in this case from their youngest and most vigorous arms. This article provides new data to assess in greater detail the dimension of this phenomenon and explores its social derivations, considering how the state authority turned an individual crime into a collective sanction (it is the community that responds for runaway young men by providing as many others as substitutes), delegating to local government institutions the responsibility of guaranteeing the annual flow of new blood to fulfill the country's military needs and opening cracks in neighborhood collectives through the grievances and inequalities that this unveils and generates. It also provides the government elites' vision on the matter, mediated by economic, political and social variables, in addition to the military ones. The money collected through the reemptions from military service became a considerable imput in the annual revenue forecast, although it was not always invested correctly or destined to the initially envisaged objectives. From a political perspective, the underlying theory is that of turning the armed service into another example of equality before the law, which, however, was categorically denied in practice, largely due to the considerable reservations about universalization expressed by the same political actors debating the issue in Parliament. Their outlook was marked by a stark classism and a liberal and paternalistic elitism, which did not hesitate to differentiate between the working class, who supposedly benefited from the service, and the wealthy, who would have nothing to gain from their stay in the barracks.