For centuries, the increase in the goods needed for subsistence, or scarcity, rebellion and protest have led to a large number of citizens. Oppressed people have always been willing to provoke confrontations and disturbances when there is a lack of means to meet basic needs. Well, they have been called hunger riots, and they have often been driven or launched by women. And that is, then and now, the responsibility to feed and dress the family has fallen upon them. Therefore, when there was anguish, it was they who suffered the most.

But some historians have considered this kind of rebellion as a spontaneous, prepolitical and irrational protest. In connection with hunger and survival, in most cases there were no comprehensive political programmes, there were no demands to propose a transformation of the regime.

But the historiographical school of British Marxists overcame this vision long ago. As advanced by George Rudé and E.P. Thompson refined that participants in the hunger riots shared a complex system of values: that it was unfair to enrich themselves disproportionately with minimum needs, especially with food. They called it the moral economy of the crowd.

Poor harvests, plagues or wars were occasionally deficient. In these cases, the lords, the rich traders and the owners of furnaces or mills used to enrich the situation. In some cases, even though the most modest social classes were hungry, they accumulated food to be speculated and more expensive to sell or export and sell abroad. On other occasions, they falsified food, especially bread flour, mixed with non-edible materials. When citizens were starving, angry people came to those speculators and scammers and forced them to open barns and warehouses. But they weren't just looting. The aim was to get food sold at a fair price. That is what the moral economy is about.

To crush these incidents, the authorities used a double policy: bread and wood. On the one hand, they were taking steps to silence the squid, ensuring the food supply and the fair price. On the other hand, they penalized the drivers of the rebellion. In Euskal Herria, we have a confrontation that complies with this model. The best known was the Rebellion of 1766. The incidents began in Azkoitia and Azpeitia and struck the whole of Gipuzkoa.

As has already been said, these events have often been regarded as pre-political and spontaneous, perhaps because they were precisely the protests made by women. However, those who believe it deny the agency to subordinate subjects (oppressed and women). That is, they don't recognize the ability to influence history.