Mondragon Corporation in Republican Spain?

[The_Persian_Cat]

Hello all,
So, the Mondragon Corporation is one of the largest business entities in Spain, and is involved in a great many sectors (including banking, consumer industry, heavy industry, retail, and (through Mondragon University) education). It's also a federation of workers' cooperatives, with workers receiving a share of both the profits and the decision-making power in the corporation, rather than just a board of directors or shareholders.

Now, the Mondragon Corporation was founded in 1941, the end of the Spanish Civil War. Its founder, however -- José María Arizmendiarrieta -- was a committed anti-fascist, who fought for the Basque Government of the Spanish Republic. He was also an ordained Catholic priest, and he founded the Mondragon Corporation out of a concern for social justice and empowerment of the working classes, especially in the Basque Country (I doubt he'd say he was an outright Socialist, given the politics of both Francoist Spain and the Catholic Church at the time, but he at least had an ideological interest in workplace democracy and working class activism).

But if the Republicans had won during the Spanish Civil War, and Mondragon was still founded in the devastated Basque Country in 1941, how would it develop? What would this mean for relations between the Spanish Republic and the Catholic Church? What would this mean for the Spanish economy? How about Mondragon's or Arizmendiarrieta's impact on Leftist movements abroad? What about Spanish foreign relations and trade?

Cheers, all!!

 

[Mitridates the Great]

Assuming that Arizmendarrieta is not forced into exile for being "from the enemy", in reference both to his position as a Catholic priest and to the fact that the Catholic Church aligned itself with the Francoists (let's say that his Basque comrades spoke so highly of his contribution to the republican cause that no one tried to exile him) would probably not mean any significant improvement or worsening in the relations between the Second Republic and the Catholic Church, because the relationship would already be bad enough due to the previous situation of "the Church aligned itself with the enemies of the Second Republic".

As for what it would mean for the Spanish economy, it would probably make reconstruction efforts easier by already having a cooperative-style corporation that can integrate into various businesses, and at the same time reduce the need for foreign capital (although it could still come in ).

I don't think there will be any significant impact abroad because it's the sort of thing that political leaders tend to ignore as it doesn't involve big guns and armed regiments, so if anything I could see it being denounced as bourgeois degeneration by the International.

As for foreign relations, although it surely helps, it probably weights more whatever the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic is doing (this is a time before the idea that megacorps are the ones that determine the foreign policy of the country, and it is doubtful that a post-civil war Second Republic would want to give so much power to a megacorp...)

Given that Junta's economic support came mainly from very wealthy British and American industrialists seeking to obtain very advantageous contracts, I can see the Republic concluding that giving power to megacorps to influence foreign policy is very dangerous. After all, the coupists gained resources to kill hundreds of thousands of Spaniards simply because a handful of Anglo-Saxon CEOs wanted to continue presenting positive quarterly reports to their shareholders...