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La lucha por Barcelona: Clase, cultura y conflicto 1898-1937
¿Por qué Barcelona se convirtió en la capital indiscutible del movimiento anarquista europeo en los años que precedieron a la Guerra Civil? En este libro se analiza la protesta social, el conflicto urbano, las culturas de clase y la represión en uno de los centros revolucionarios más importantes del siglo XX. Chris Ealham investiga las fuentes del poder anarquista en la ciudad, colocando a ésta en el centro de la vida política, cultural, social y económica de España entre 1898 y 1937. Durante este periodo, una variedad de grupos sociales, movimientos e instituciones competían entre ellos para imponer su propio proyecto urbano y político en Barcelona: las autoridades centrales luchaban para retener el control de la ciudad española más rebelde; los grupos nacionalistas deseaban crear la capital de Cataluña; los industriales locales querían construir una urbe industrial moderna; las clases medias urbanas peleaban por democratizar la ciudad; y, mientras tanto, los anarquistas buscaban terminar con la opresión y explotación a la que estaban sometidos los obreros de la ciudad. Todo ello desencadenó un torrente de conflictos, con frecuencia violentos, por el control de la ciudad, tanto antes como después de la Guerra Civil. Nos encontramos así ante una obra de gran importancia en el campo de la historia española contemporánea que llena un vacío importante en la literatura actual.
384 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2004
8 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
Chris Ealham
17 books14 followersChris Ealham currently lives and works in Madrid, where he teaches History at Saint Louis University. Previously, he taught at the Universities of London, Lancaster, and Cardiff.
He is a specialist in Spanish labor history and movements, especially those of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist inspiration. His work, which has been translated into Castilian, Catalan and Italian, includes Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937 (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), and (co-edited with Mike Richards), The Splintering of Spain: Cultural History and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). He also writes in the Spanish anarchist and daily press on topics ranging from soccer to urban planning.
He is a specialist in Spanish labor history and movements, especially those of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist inspiration. His work, which has been translated into Castilian, Catalan and Italian, includes Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937 (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), and (co-edited with Mike Richards), The Splintering of Spain: Cultural History and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). He also writes in the Spanish anarchist and daily press on topics ranging from soccer to urban planning.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 4, 2011
Excellent book. I'm going to have to re-read this one a few times. Anyone interested in Spain, anarchism, politics, direct action, the repercussions of actions...needs to read this book.
July 22, 2020
Ealham nos presenta un libro en el que se nos explica la fisonomía de Barcelona desde finales del 19 y los primeros 40 años del siglo XX, fisonomia marcada por la expansión industrial, la superpoblación de la ciudad (más trabajadores de los que puede asumir) y el descontrol que esto supondrá en el crecimiento de la misma.
En ese contexto, y de una manera enormemente documentada, el autor nos situa el mundo obrero, en los barris, en contraposición de la patronal y la burguesia, y nos invita a entender cómo estos dos mundos reciben, pierden, ganan y sufren a partir de los distintos eventos politicos y sociales de la ciudad y del pais.
La aparicion del poder anarcosindicalista y las distintas vertientes, el anarquismo de acción y su filosofia, el hambre, los alquileres, chabolismo, huelgas, los incontrolados, los asesinatos, la prensa, la revolucion y la sublevación en Barcelona en junio del 36... Toda una materia siempre contada en espiral: ampliándose la información en cada capitulo, volviendo una y otra vez a lo mismo (quizás el mayor error del libro) para dejarnos claro que no es un libro de historia típico, sino una guía del papel del sector obrero y su herramienta del anarcosindicalismo como esperanza.
Este es el mejor acierto del libro: dejar la cámara en las barricadas y no en la historia aburrida de nombres y periodos.
En ese contexto, y de una manera enormemente documentada, el autor nos situa el mundo obrero, en los barris, en contraposición de la patronal y la burguesia, y nos invita a entender cómo estos dos mundos reciben, pierden, ganan y sufren a partir de los distintos eventos politicos y sociales de la ciudad y del pais.
La aparicion del poder anarcosindicalista y las distintas vertientes, el anarquismo de acción y su filosofia, el hambre, los alquileres, chabolismo, huelgas, los incontrolados, los asesinatos, la prensa, la revolucion y la sublevación en Barcelona en junio del 36... Toda una materia siempre contada en espiral: ampliándose la información en cada capitulo, volviendo una y otra vez a lo mismo (quizás el mayor error del libro) para dejarnos claro que no es un libro de historia típico, sino una guía del papel del sector obrero y su herramienta del anarcosindicalismo como esperanza.
Este es el mejor acierto del libro: dejar la cámara en las barricadas y no en la historia aburrida de nombres y periodos.
October 5, 2008
I used this while translating a biography of Durruti (Abel Paz, Durruti and the Spanish Revolution). Very helpful!
March 13, 2010
excellent book
September 11, 2010
"Anarchism and The City," decodes Barcelona's urban landscape for reasons behind the unlikely rise to power of anarchist elements in those years preceding the Spanish Republic and the civil war that consumed it.
Chris Ealham brings an urbanist's tools to this interesting proposition, positing sometime insightful, other times idealistic, explanations to questions about the Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo's (CNT) season of sway over Europe's then-most productive city.
Academic in style, "City," serves up enough good stuff to offset the loss of momentum resulting from the historian's job of stringing evidence from various sources and affixing them to each other with footnote glue.
Ealham documents the geographic reordering of Barcelona as undesirable immigrants from the south of Spain swelled its working class in an era when the city was considered "Europe's factory."
Viewed as something "other" (the author proposes), as fomenters of vice and carriers of disease, this surging class of workers was subjected to a bourgeois reordering of the urban terrain that isolated and marginalized.
Ealham's view is that, left unto themselves, the working class folk of Barcelona wove themselves into a collection of tight units clear on what the issues facing them were and how to address them.
For a while, the anarchist policy guys showed real prowess in organizing neighborhoods, winning their loyalty to the CNT unions' causes, and channeling a universal resentment against the existing order.
Then they put that existing order to work for them:
"Making full use of improvements in the transport system and the growing availability of bicycles, and backed by the Barcelona CNT's paper, Solidaridad Obrera, which played an essential auxiliary role, advertising union meetings, talks and social activities across the city, the local federation would receive feedback from, and send instructions to, the comites with the great speed. This enabled the CNT to respond swiftly to events on the ground and generally mount a more sustained and coordinated opposition to capitalism."
A big policy winner for the CNT was embracing the despised Andalusian and Murcian migrant laborers, and other groups not found on the industrial shop floor.
"Ever ready to mobilize beyond the factory proletariat," Ealham writes, "the radicals applauded street gangs as a vanguard force in the fight against the police."
Harassed ambulant street vendors and the unemployed alike also responded when the
CNT called for action; action that transcended the workplace and transformed the streets.
The union and its minions expanded public space, cultivating working class interaction that produced a dense web of community relations only a civil war could sunder.
As its title suggests, this is about the CNT in Barcelona, even though the union's influence stretched well-beyond Catalonia's borders. There the organization thrived under the conditions so painstakingly detailed by Ealham, and did so in its own way.
Resorting to violence didn't hurt.
The author quotes one source as saying, "This was an original type of criminality that was typically Barcelonese. The anarchist robbers of Barcelona are nothing less than the Catalan equivalents of Al Capone...Today it is the fashion among all thieves, pickpockets and swindlers to pass themselves off as anarchists."
"Anarchism and The City" was published by AK Press, an anarchist imprint, and Ealham, while maintaining a balanced tone throughout, is okay with the idea that, at some point, a people being exploited have the right, are obligated by the dictates of survival, to kill the guy who is killing them.
It's a chicken-or-the-egg quandary. For Ealham, the question of whether the anarchists and their constituency had any choice in the matter of violence is worthy of a deeper consideration.
In his examination of how the loosely structured union federation interacted with the working class barris, the relation to and impact of the Federacion Anarquista de Iberia (FAI) upon the CNT, and how shadowy associate groups used the gun to "appropriate" banks and erase political enemies, Ealham's efforts are first-class.
It's fascinating stuff that renders Spanish anarchism more understandable, if not completely dispelling the notion the rank-and-filers were a little nutty, or appear so thanks to their disparate ideas for reorganizing society.
Noting that the anarchist revolution was the first of its kind in the automotive era, the author observes how workers were seized by an "irrationality" after appropriating the cars of the merchant and capital classes.
"But revolutionary motoring possessed its own logic," Ealham writes. "In the first instance, the destruction of cars reflected a desire to usher in a new set of spatial relations as well as resistance to the attempts by the local and central Republican authorities to impose a new urban order of controlled consumption, consisting of new rules of circulation and traffic lights designed to improve the flow of capital and goods."
Or not.
Rather than ushering in new spatial relations the armed workers may have just been having a crazy time in cars. It happens, you know.
He observes that, "On the day after the birth of the Republic, as a gesture of solidarity, the Barcelona CNT declared a general strike that affected all branches of industry apart from the essential food and transport services."
The Republic/Spanish Civil War epoch is akin to a family fight and the multi-sided affair can tug at one's loyalties depending upon which side's version is being aired.
Read the well-written diaries of Republican leader Miguel Azana and savor the portrait of a rational, intelligent and literate man burdened with allies and governing copartners bent on overthrowing the enterprise he's been elected to lead.
It's hard to imagine Azana viewing the general strike as a gesture in solidarity.
While sympathetic, Ealham is not so blind as to ignore the fact that, as anarchists and their allies launched a revolution in red Asturias they hoped would catch on throughout Iberia, "Francisco Ascaso, 'Nosotros' member [an anarchist affinity group] and secretary of the Catalan CRT, issued a call to the Barcelona proletariat to return to work from a radio station controlled by the Spanish army."
My revolution, not yours, you see.
The anarchists thrived for a season as the CNT, FAI and related groupings were wonderful at forging a cohesive culture and strategy for the beleaguered barris residents. But Ealham lifts the lid on the corner committee meeting and details the inner-workings, the feuds, and fault lines that hampered the movement.
Ealham spends less time on the CNT's temporary reign over the streets of Barcelona after fascist generals rose up to destroy the Republic. And he does well in eschewing too detailed a rendering of those events, because that is much-tilled terrain.
The real triumph of "Anarchism and The City" is its fulfilling the title's pledge. Showing how a metropolis's geographical configuration, industrial bent, and raw social arrangements made a bed comfortable enough for some very unique individuals to sleep in.
Chris Ealham brings an urbanist's tools to this interesting proposition, positing sometime insightful, other times idealistic, explanations to questions about the Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo's (CNT) season of sway over Europe's then-most productive city.
Academic in style, "City," serves up enough good stuff to offset the loss of momentum resulting from the historian's job of stringing evidence from various sources and affixing them to each other with footnote glue.
Ealham documents the geographic reordering of Barcelona as undesirable immigrants from the south of Spain swelled its working class in an era when the city was considered "Europe's factory."
Viewed as something "other" (the author proposes), as fomenters of vice and carriers of disease, this surging class of workers was subjected to a bourgeois reordering of the urban terrain that isolated and marginalized.
Ealham's view is that, left unto themselves, the working class folk of Barcelona wove themselves into a collection of tight units clear on what the issues facing them were and how to address them.
For a while, the anarchist policy guys showed real prowess in organizing neighborhoods, winning their loyalty to the CNT unions' causes, and channeling a universal resentment against the existing order.
Then they put that existing order to work for them:
"Making full use of improvements in the transport system and the growing availability of bicycles, and backed by the Barcelona CNT's paper, Solidaridad Obrera, which played an essential auxiliary role, advertising union meetings, talks and social activities across the city, the local federation would receive feedback from, and send instructions to, the comites with the great speed. This enabled the CNT to respond swiftly to events on the ground and generally mount a more sustained and coordinated opposition to capitalism."
A big policy winner for the CNT was embracing the despised Andalusian and Murcian migrant laborers, and other groups not found on the industrial shop floor.
"Ever ready to mobilize beyond the factory proletariat," Ealham writes, "the radicals applauded street gangs as a vanguard force in the fight against the police."
Harassed ambulant street vendors and the unemployed alike also responded when the
CNT called for action; action that transcended the workplace and transformed the streets.
The union and its minions expanded public space, cultivating working class interaction that produced a dense web of community relations only a civil war could sunder.
As its title suggests, this is about the CNT in Barcelona, even though the union's influence stretched well-beyond Catalonia's borders. There the organization thrived under the conditions so painstakingly detailed by Ealham, and did so in its own way.
Resorting to violence didn't hurt.
The author quotes one source as saying, "This was an original type of criminality that was typically Barcelonese. The anarchist robbers of Barcelona are nothing less than the Catalan equivalents of Al Capone...Today it is the fashion among all thieves, pickpockets and swindlers to pass themselves off as anarchists."
"Anarchism and The City" was published by AK Press, an anarchist imprint, and Ealham, while maintaining a balanced tone throughout, is okay with the idea that, at some point, a people being exploited have the right, are obligated by the dictates of survival, to kill the guy who is killing them.
It's a chicken-or-the-egg quandary. For Ealham, the question of whether the anarchists and their constituency had any choice in the matter of violence is worthy of a deeper consideration.
In his examination of how the loosely structured union federation interacted with the working class barris, the relation to and impact of the Federacion Anarquista de Iberia (FAI) upon the CNT, and how shadowy associate groups used the gun to "appropriate" banks and erase political enemies, Ealham's efforts are first-class.
It's fascinating stuff that renders Spanish anarchism more understandable, if not completely dispelling the notion the rank-and-filers were a little nutty, or appear so thanks to their disparate ideas for reorganizing society.
Noting that the anarchist revolution was the first of its kind in the automotive era, the author observes how workers were seized by an "irrationality" after appropriating the cars of the merchant and capital classes.
"But revolutionary motoring possessed its own logic," Ealham writes. "In the first instance, the destruction of cars reflected a desire to usher in a new set of spatial relations as well as resistance to the attempts by the local and central Republican authorities to impose a new urban order of controlled consumption, consisting of new rules of circulation and traffic lights designed to improve the flow of capital and goods."
Or not.
Rather than ushering in new spatial relations the armed workers may have just been having a crazy time in cars. It happens, you know.
He observes that, "On the day after the birth of the Republic, as a gesture of solidarity, the Barcelona CNT declared a general strike that affected all branches of industry apart from the essential food and transport services."
The Republic/Spanish Civil War epoch is akin to a family fight and the multi-sided affair can tug at one's loyalties depending upon which side's version is being aired.
Read the well-written diaries of Republican leader Miguel Azana and savor the portrait of a rational, intelligent and literate man burdened with allies and governing copartners bent on overthrowing the enterprise he's been elected to lead.
It's hard to imagine Azana viewing the general strike as a gesture in solidarity.
While sympathetic, Ealham is not so blind as to ignore the fact that, as anarchists and their allies launched a revolution in red Asturias they hoped would catch on throughout Iberia, "Francisco Ascaso, 'Nosotros' member [an anarchist affinity group] and secretary of the Catalan CRT, issued a call to the Barcelona proletariat to return to work from a radio station controlled by the Spanish army."
My revolution, not yours, you see.
The anarchists thrived for a season as the CNT, FAI and related groupings were wonderful at forging a cohesive culture and strategy for the beleaguered barris residents. But Ealham lifts the lid on the corner committee meeting and details the inner-workings, the feuds, and fault lines that hampered the movement.
Ealham spends less time on the CNT's temporary reign over the streets of Barcelona after fascist generals rose up to destroy the Republic. And he does well in eschewing too detailed a rendering of those events, because that is much-tilled terrain.
The real triumph of "Anarchism and The City" is its fulfilling the title's pledge. Showing how a metropolis's geographical configuration, industrial bent, and raw social arrangements made a bed comfortable enough for some very unique individuals to sleep in.
October 31, 2021
Very interesting read for those looking to learn more about anarchism in Barcelona. However, as one should expect from a book published by an anarchist publishing collective (AK press), it is hardly critical of the anarchist movement. There is some criticism of the way the CNT certain handled things, but anarchism as an ideology is left quite uncriticised.
All in all a good read, which left me wanting to learn more about the anarchist movement in Barcelona.
All in all a good read, which left me wanting to learn more about the anarchist movement in Barcelona.
August 17, 2020
Obviously a very pro-Anarchist take on the movement that happened before and during the Spanish Civil War, but still did a decent job of critiquing the movement and bringing up flaws where it seemed fit. A large part of your enjoyment of this book will be your stance on the violence of the bourgeois and capitalists on the working class and the reaction that it caused, if you see oppression of the proletariat as a form of violence worthy of retaliation then this is the book for you!
June 22, 2014
The Anarchist uprising in Barcelona is the holy grail for anarchists. They love talking about it and just how well they were able to manage things for those couple months until just about everyone else brought holy hell upon them.
What Chris Ealham tries to do here is take us through life and the events in Barcelona all the way through the anarchist revolution. In fact, only 30 pages of this 200 page book is dedicated to the anarchist uprising, and everything else is the chaos that led up to it. And chaos is a good word here, because as you can imagine, life in Barcelona was relatively complex from 1898-1937. Apparently well researched (there are about 130 references 20 pages into the book), Ealman shows that the attempt to make Barcelona such a cultural and industrial Mecca led to a large influx of workers which the city was not prepared to handle (economically or in its infrastructural). With so little to go around, the poor were left to fend for themselves and organize things at a local level and through solidarity with others in a similar position. And so, politically, Barcelona became a very leftist city, which is one of the reasons labor/union/socialist/Marxist/anarchist ideas because so prevalent. Also, the largest union in Barcelona (the CNT) and to some extent the leading anarchist organization (the FAI) and their role in respect to the political and economic life of Barcelonans are also frequently addressed in this book.
However, my problem with this book (aside from the horrible design of tiny font AND crowded pages, which makes this book difficult to read) is that it covers a lot in a very haphazard way. Ealham has made a very academic study in this book (which also makes Anarchism and the City read more like a long thesis than a book for the layman) and introduces a lot of verbiage (and insists on using the original Catalan spelling, which is distracting), and instead of sticking with events in a certain (even smaller) time period, he constantly runs back and forth between different points in history and different organizations' perspective which creates a very confusing read. I kept forgetting whose perspective in what time period we were dealing with. In addition to that, Ealham focuses entirely on events on Barcelona and does not address what outside forces influenced decision making or affected events. As such, the reader gets no perspective on what is driving events outside of Barcelona. Events in Barcelona from 1898-1937, as one would expect, were very chaotic, and add to that Ealham's non-linear approach to telling the story and you end up with an even more chaotic book.
Anarchism and the City obviously needs to be reread over and over again to be truly appreciated, but honestly, there has to be a more effective way to tell a story, isn't there?
What Chris Ealham tries to do here is take us through life and the events in Barcelona all the way through the anarchist revolution. In fact, only 30 pages of this 200 page book is dedicated to the anarchist uprising, and everything else is the chaos that led up to it. And chaos is a good word here, because as you can imagine, life in Barcelona was relatively complex from 1898-1937. Apparently well researched (there are about 130 references 20 pages into the book), Ealman shows that the attempt to make Barcelona such a cultural and industrial Mecca led to a large influx of workers which the city was not prepared to handle (economically or in its infrastructural). With so little to go around, the poor were left to fend for themselves and organize things at a local level and through solidarity with others in a similar position. And so, politically, Barcelona became a very leftist city, which is one of the reasons labor/union/socialist/Marxist/anarchist ideas because so prevalent. Also, the largest union in Barcelona (the CNT) and to some extent the leading anarchist organization (the FAI) and their role in respect to the political and economic life of Barcelonans are also frequently addressed in this book.
However, my problem with this book (aside from the horrible design of tiny font AND crowded pages, which makes this book difficult to read) is that it covers a lot in a very haphazard way. Ealham has made a very academic study in this book (which also makes Anarchism and the City read more like a long thesis than a book for the layman) and introduces a lot of verbiage (and insists on using the original Catalan spelling, which is distracting), and instead of sticking with events in a certain (even smaller) time period, he constantly runs back and forth between different points in history and different organizations' perspective which creates a very confusing read. I kept forgetting whose perspective in what time period we were dealing with. In addition to that, Ealham focuses entirely on events on Barcelona and does not address what outside forces influenced decision making or affected events. As such, the reader gets no perspective on what is driving events outside of Barcelona. Events in Barcelona from 1898-1937, as one would expect, were very chaotic, and add to that Ealham's non-linear approach to telling the story and you end up with an even more chaotic book.
Anarchism and the City obviously needs to be reread over and over again to be truly appreciated, but honestly, there has to be a more effective way to tell a story, isn't there?
July 23, 2014
La historia del anarquismo español es algo que en las asignaturas de historia de secundaria se reduce a mencionar de pasada cuando hubo algun disturbio de importancia, y no hablemos de la revolución obrera durante la guerra civil, que para la inmensa mayoria no existio. Gracias a una obra minuciosa como esta, con una perspectiva desde fuera pero centrada en la vida proletaria, tenemos una perspectiva mas objetiva de lo que fue la segunda republica, excesivamente mitificada por algunos, y también sobre lo importante que fue la solidaridad vecinal a la hora de presentar resistencia al capitalismo.
August 30, 2010
good stuff. It started a little dry, but once you get into it, it's a decent read on how the spanish anarchists and working class movement was able to build such a strong force and revolutonary spirit during the spanish civil war/revolution. Through lots of mistakes, hard-fought battles over 40 years, and dedicated people, basically.
September 29, 2011
Really interesting read on Barcelona, specifically, during the lead up to the Spanish Civil War. Pretty objective and a good study on urban culture and relations that could even be pertinent to today. I enjoyed this thoroughly as I do with most AK Press books, as well as the Spanish Civil War.
November 14, 2010
Amazing book, shows how the real movement of the proletariat for liberation never fits into some neat sectarian blueprint.
June 25, 2015
Interesante a nivel histórico. Sobradamente rigurosa. Exageradamente tendenciosa.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews