left to act as (roughly "lone tigers"); attempts at mass organization, as in the Pact of Union and Solidarity, had some ephemeral success but were destined to failure. Six people died in June 1896 when a bomb was thrown at the Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona. Police attributed the act to anarchists who met with the severest repression. As many as 400 people were brought to the dungeons of the castle of Montjuich in Barcelona. International outrage followed reports that the prisoners were brutally tortured: men hanged from ceilings, genitals twisted and burned, fingernails ripped out. Several died before being brought to trial, and five were eventually executed. The Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo assassinated the Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas in 1897, in part as retaliation for the repression in Barcelona. The anarchist idea was propagated by many periodicals like started by Fermín Salvochea. Salvochea is considered one of the earliest pioneers in the propagation and organization along anarchist lines. Rise of the CNT The anarchist movement lacked a stable national organization in its early years. Anarchist Juan Gómez Casas discusses the evolution of anarchist organization before the creation of the CNT: "After a period of dispersion, the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region disappeared, to be replaced by the Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region.... This organization then changed, in 1890, into the Solidarity and Assistance Pact, which was itself dissolved in 1896 because of repressive legislation against anarchism and broke into many nuclei and autonomous workers' societies.... The scattered remains of the FRE gave rise to in 1907, the immediate antecedent of the [CNT]." There was a consensus amongst anarchists in the early 20th century that a new, national labor organization was needed to bring coherency and strength to their movement. This organization, named the (CNT) was formed in October 1910 during a congress of . During this congress, a resolution was passed declaring that the purpose of the CNT would be to "hasten the integral economic emancipation of the entire working class through the revolutionary expropriation of the bourgeoisie...." The CNT started off fairly small, with about 30,000 members across various unions and confederations. The national confederation was split into smaller regional ones, which were again broken down into smaller trade unions. Despite this many-tiered structure, bureaucracy was consciously avoided. Initiatives for decisions came largely from the individual unions. There were no paid officials; all positions