'The Struggle for the Streets': Unemployed Hawkers, Protest Culture and Repression in the Barcelona area (c. 1918–1936)

Abstract

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.

The only solution is revolution: the Spanish Confederación Nacional de Trabajo and the problem of unemployment in Republican Spain, 1931–1933

“…In general, the author focuses on the radicalization of 'street politics' between the CNT's different factions and dissident communists rather than the programs put forward and adopted by the CNT itself. In another article concerning this issue, Ealham suggests that the CNT combined traditional forms of protest already common to the masses with other more modern forms intended to try to destabilize the Second Republic (Ealham, 2008). This view is supported in this article and developed further: the organization and mobilization of the unemployed was part of a revolutionary strategy put forward by the CNT, which was convinced that the problem was more likely to be resolved by revolutionary change in the entire economic base of society rather than by the possible conquest of improvements for the unemployed within the framework of the Republic.…”

World-View, Locus of Control and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Social Entrepreneurship Endeavour

“…There are many productive activities to be used in operating sustainable livelihood such as agriculture, fisheries, dairy farms, forestry, locally produced products and small-scale economic projects. Most of the activities are performed through informal medium and contribute to the wellbeing of a particular group of people (Ming-Huang 2008;Sookram & Watson 2008;Ealham 2008;and Franck 2011). "Informal sector" refers to the legal as well illegal market-based production of goods and services that escapes detection in the official estimates of GDP (Sookram & Watson 2008).…”