William F MacAlevey
Sinopsis
The aim of this book is to shed light on a hitherto relatively neglected area of Spanish social history. It centers on the effects of industrialization, the growth and diversification of Legal Professionals, above all lawyers, their demographic and geographic distribution in the Casco Viejo and Ensanche of Bilbao between 1841 and 1911. Moreover, the analysis concerns the emergence of a professional ‘Ideal’ of Liberal Professionals and contrasts the English, Chartist lawyer, W.P.Roberts: the Pitman’s Attorney and the local Bilbao lawyer, Vicente Martinez. My research into the exceptionally abundant primary sources shows the existence of an elite group of lawyers or ‘lawyer intelligentsia’ in tandem with a much larger ‘proletarian’ group of lawyers.