(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #247 - Read Chris
Ealham, "Barcelona against its inhabitants" (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation]
This is a small book very exciting for all those interested in the right to the city and
urban struggles today! This is the first French translation of the analysis of the
anarchist historian Chris Ealham and it is a small independent publisher and self-managed
Toulouse who publishes it. Another good reason to be interested in this book. ---- It
consists of two parts: the first deals with the formation of the Central People's Raval
district in Barcelona between 1835 and 1936 and the second specifically examines the
revolutionary period in Barcelona in 1936 and 1937. ---- In the first part, Chris shows
how Ealham form a working class neighborhood in the center of Barcelona, the pace of
private speculation and parcel of jam to house the workforce required for the emerging
industry.
From the 1920s the Raval knows first disaffection because of the looseness of the
industry and the construction of more modern working class neighborhoods on the periphery.
Do not remain in the poorest neighborhood, sailors, dockers and all high urban underclass
in color.
The neutrality of Spain during World War II also attracts revelers bourgeois and
adventurers who find in Barcelona a new capital of fun and debauchery after Paris. The
Raval is both miserable, animated cabarets, dance halls and a major prostitution but still
one of the crucibles of the Catalan labor movement, marked by the anarcho-syndicalism
(around the CNT and FAI) .
All this explains the construction of a negative myth of the area, known as the Barrio
Chino (Chinatown, which, despite the absence of Chinese, although racist stereotype mark
applied to the lower classes). Forged by the small liberal bourgeoisie (then opposed the
conservative monarchist bourgeoisie) adept hygienism and urban reform, negative myth has
been passed down many historians today. Chris Eahlam seeks to deconstruct and is based on
a reading of the archives to counter these historians bearers of their class performances
and show the significant political structuring of the area and the emancipatory
perspectives that it was a carrier. This is particularly clear in the second part of the
book develops what the author calls "revolutionary urbanism ', ie the recovery /
reorganization of bourgeois city mobilized by and for the working class.
Contrary to popular thesis of a revolution led by a rabid crowd and incoherent, the author
shows the consistency of this revolutionary urbanism. Needless barricades held each by a
neighborhood committee that impede traffic and mark the bourgeois workers' control of the
city, the recovery of the high places of the bourgeois city turned into soup kitchens,
medical centers, libraries and housing for undocumented shelter. The revolutionary
urbanism disrupts the bourgeois city whose development serves the efficiency of capital
accumulation, and reorganizes according to the needs of the working class, from a
perspective of empowerment (a real right to the city in action) . It is implemented by
local committees and unions (such as the construction union, which itself takes the
initiative to build new schools) without centralization.
Unfortunately, even before the victory of Franco, this revolutionary planning runs out due
to the reconstruction of the central government by the Republican forces, with the direct
support of the CNT and against the local government worker.
A book that gives weapons to counter the reformist pseudo-justifications of major urban
projects of today (even the name of a right to the city rogue) and food for thought on
revolutionary strategies in the urban field.
Anne Arden (friend of AL)
Chris Ealham, Barcelona against its inhabitants - 1835-1937, working-class neighborhoods
of the revolution , Toulouse, Collective of publishing trades, 2014, 97 pages, 11 euros.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Chris-Ealham-Barcelone-contre
