This article assesses street trade by unemployed workers in the Barcelona area in the years immediately before the start of the Spanish civil war. This practice, along with offi cial responses to it, tell us a lot about the repressive nature of the state, as well as highlighting sharp social confl icts between commercial sectors and the unemployed during this period. Equally, the experience of the street traders, who were embraced by the anarchists as a sector from within the dispossessed, provides us with an example of the fl exibility of anarchist mobilising strategies. Initially, it might seem incongruous that anarchists should defend a form of trade, which, along with the state, was seen by the anarchists as a major scourge of humanity. However, the street traders and their readiness to assert their right to the streets provided the anarchists with a radicalised social constituency.Street trade plays an important role in everyday life across the contemporary world, 2 including Spain, where it is the near exclusive preserve of the new dispossessed of immigrants from Africa and South America. As such, this phenomenon has inevitably aroused much interest among sociologists and political analysts. 3 Yet street trade remains understudied in its historical dimension. 4 Historically, this activity was a relatively common practice in societies in the throes of capitalist economic transformation and which were accompanied by abrupt trade cycles and inadequate public welfare services. 5 In the nineteenth century, we have the example of the costermongers in Britain and the trolley vendors in New York. In this article, street trade by the unemployed in the Barcelona area during the years immediately before the Spanish civil war is studied. As will be seen, the experience of the street traders throws into sharp relief the repressive nature of the Spanish state and its underdeveloped welfare functions. Offi cial responses to this practice also highlight the sharp social confl icts between commercial sectors and the unemployed during this period.