Within the demographic and structural context provided by an industrializing city, Gijón's working classes interpreted and shaped the contours of their everyday existence. These contours delineated the culture of working-class life in the city. This culture was characterized by a segregated sociability: a series of networks and linkages rooted in the social and residential gap between rich and poor residents of the city. These networks then formed the building blocks for a working-class community that could potentially unite the city's poorer residents. The community was not monolithic or static, as it was often divided by gender and by neighborhood. Nevertheless, when viewed from the outside, it was clear that the members of this community shared more than they differed in their way of life. On some basic level, the culture of working-class life gave the poorer residents of the city a common ground that set them apart from their wealthier counterparts. As a local teacher wrote in 1906, “Where can they meet each other in order to develop friendships and mutual respect? Not in school, nor in the street, in the workshop, the factory, in sum, nowhere.”

The common ground was both spatial and social, based, on the one hand, in residential segregation and, on the other, in activities that derived from one's social position in the city. Arguably, residential segregation had a greater impact on sociability in working-class neighborhoods, because wealthier residents had the mobility to establish long-distance ties. Thus, working-class networks were rooted more firmly in the neighborhoods in which they lived.