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General Union of Workers (Trade Union, Spain)

Unión General de Trabajadores

Description
1930's Regional Flag

See also:

Description

The same photo that included the vertical flag of Comisiones Obreras had lots of placards showing the logo of the Andalucian branch of the trade union confederation Unión General de Trabajadores. These, of course, are not flags. But the two cloths with the same logo that are visible in that photo are.

Browsing the web, the site of the spanish UGT is to be found at http://www.ugt.es/ where the symbol of the confederation is displayed as white on red. The "Unión Territorial" (Territorial Union) of UGT-Andalucía also has a website at http://www.ugt-andalucia.com/ and there is shown the respective logo, a bit different from the one of the main organization.

The logos, in general, consist of the sigla UGT over a pair of shaking hands. This, incidentally, is basically the same logo of the Portuguese UGT (more on that later). The main logo is plain, but in Andalucia the logo appears in a fancy 3-D arrangement, filled with perspective and dégradés. It also includes the word "Andalucía," in white, inside a white ring. In the flags, however, the name of the region appears outside the ring.

I made an educated guess about the colours in the flag, making them identical to those in the logo as seen in these two fragments of the big photo, each showing one flag.

Now, the Portuguese UGT is kind of a "reformist" trade union federation, assembling trade unions close to the Socialist Party and to the Social-Democratic Party, usually more "soft" in the relations with the governments and the bosses than the larger and older CGTP-IN.

I have no idea if in Spain the same kind of relationship exists between UGT and CCOO, nor do I know if there is some international organization of centrist trade unions, but the similarity in the symbols and name between both iberian UGTs strongly suggests a close relationship between the two.

Anyway, if there is not an international organization, then the Portuguese UGT basically copied the Spanish one, since our confederation was created in the 70's (of this century) while the Spanish one exists since 1888.

Jorge Candeias, 30 Aug 2003

Also exists as white logo in red disk on white or defacing an Andalusian flag.

UGT is historically linked to PSOE and CCOO to Left United, but in fact they are both close to the ruling party (indiferent who is it) and their relations are only go together to receive official subventions. Currently they are in fact yellow unions and their leaders start to have difficulties with the workers that, in last months, for at least three times, received them with stones.

Jaume Ollé, 29 Aug 2003

Andalusia Branch

image by Jorge Candeias, 30 Aug 2003

Madrid Branch

image by Eugene Ipavec, 05 Oct 2010

The flag of the Madrid branch of the Union General de Trabajadores (UGT), seen in the anti-austerity protest some months ago.

Eugene Ipavec, 05 Oct 2010

1930's Regional Flag

image by Eugene Ipavec, 05 Oct 2010

Civil-War era UGT flag, under glass in a museum display. "Las Ventas con Peña Aguilera" is a municipality in Toledo.

Eugene Ipavec, 05 Oct 2010