An imagined geography: Ideology, urban space, and protest in the creation of Barcelona's "Chinatown", c.1835-1936

International Review of Social History

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 373-397

  Ealham, Chris ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 27844443039     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859005002154     Document Type: Review

References (160)

1. Henri Lefebvre, La production de l'espace (Paris, 1974;
2. [The Production of Space, Oxford, 1991]).
3. For an exploration of this process in relation to Barcelona, see Chris Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona, 1898-1937 (London, 2005)
4. esp. chs 1 and 2. 2. In the 19505, the Francoist historian, Eduardo Comín Colomer, described the area as "intricate and always mysterious"; Historia del anarquismo español, 2 vols (Barcelona, 1956), vol. 2. p. 134.
5. For a brief history of the area, sec Gary Wray McDonogh, "The Geography of Evil: Barcelona's Barrio Chino", Anthropological Quarterly, 60:4, pp. 174-184.
6. See, for instance, Enric Ucelay da Ucelay and Dorsey Boatwright, "La dona del 'Barrio Chino', La imatge dels baixos fons i la revista 'El Escándalo'", L'Avenç, 76 (1984), pp. 26-34;
7. Donald McNeill, Urban Change and the European Left: Tales from the New Barcelona (London, 1999), pp. 25, 31;
8. Maria Amàlia Pradas, "Pistoles i pistolers. El mapa de la violència a la Barcelona dels anys 1920", L'Avenç, 285 (2003), pp. 13-20.
9. This view can be traced to the Chicago School of "urban sociology"; see, for example, Robert Park et al, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behaviour in the Urban Environment (Chicago, IL, 1925).
10. Belying their radical veneer, postmodern perspectives lend strength to this trend. According to Jordana Mendelson, Chinatown "corresponds to Michel Foucault's concept of 'heterotopy', a disordered, abnormal space"; Jordana Mendelson, "Una tarde en Barcelona", in idem and Juan José Lahuerta (eds), Margaret Michaelis: Fotografía, vanguardia y política en la Barcelona de la República (Barcelona, 1998), p. 37.
11. According to Felix Driver, the significance of this "moral geography" is that it "unitefs] [other] discourses on morality, health and space"; Felix Driver, "Moral Geographies: Social Science and the Urban Environment in Mid-Nineteenth Century England", Transactions: Institute of British Geographers, 13 (1988), pp. 275-287.
12. For a more detailed study, see Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin de Siècle (New York, 1989).
13. James Kneale, "A Problem of Supervision': Moral Geographies of the Nineteenth-Century British Public House"', Journal of Historical Geography, 25 (1999), pp. 333-348.
14. See Chris Ealham, "Class and the City: Spatial Memories of Pleasure and Danger in Barcelona, 1914-23", Oral History, 29 (2001), pp. 33-47.
15. El Escándolo, 22 October 1925.
16. Paco Madrid also wrote a book on the area, with the sensational title "Blood in Atarazanas": Sangre en Atarazanas (Barcelona, 1926).
17. Paco Madrid's writings reflected the fact that the big US city was, by the 1920s, increasingly the chronotype for urban growth in Barcelona, where the growing influence of the North American way of life was reflected in the craving for Hollywood movies, North American music, dress, and drinks.
18. El Escándolo, 22 October 1925;
19. Madrid, Sangre en Atarazanas, p. 9.
20. El Escándolo, 13 and 20 May, 15 July 1926.
21. El Escándolo, 13 and 20 May 1926.
22. El Escándolo, 7 and 14 October 1926.
23. See headlines such as "Panic in Chinatown" and "Cocaine! The Secrets of the Drug", in ¡Escádndalo!, 5 September 1933;
24. see also articles in L'Opinió, 26 March, 22 September 1933;
25. La Publicitat, 16 August 1933, 11, 18 April 1934;
26. La Vanguardia, 26 April 1934, 10 November 1935.
27. These images were also propagated through novels, such as Domènec de Bellmunt, L'Angel Bohemi (Barcelona, 1935)
28. and urban travelogues, such as idem, Les Catacumbes de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1930), especially pp. 73-82
29. and Josep Maria Planes, Nits de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1931).
30. ¡Escándalo, 5 September 1933.
31. Guillermo López, Barcelona sucia. Artículas de malas costumbres (Barcelona, n.d.), p. 24.
32. El Escándolo, 20 May 1926.
33. See, for instance, Justicia. Social, 1 August 1931 and 29 April 1933.
34. Solidaridad Obrera, 30 May 1931 referred to the area as a "place of public, moral and material decomposition [pudridero]", and of "degeneration and crime", in which "the shameless pimp, the drunk and the crook are the masters of these streets". It should be noted that the "moral panics" of the anarchists were of a different nature to those of the elites, and centred on the fear that the danger posed by the "bourgeois vices" offered in the Raval's brothels and taverns might corrode working-class revolutionary energies.
35. See also Tierra y Libertad, 5 December 1931
36. Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, CT, 1981).
37. Front, 30 July 1932.
38. Cerdà was a parliamentary deputy for Barcelona during the ephemeral First Republic (1868-1874). See Mercedes Nieto de Sangrenís, La f República española en Barcelona (Barcelona, 1974).
39. Laboratori d'Urbanisme, Treballs sobre Cerdà i Barcelona (Barcelona, 1992).
40. Jaume Artigas i Vidal et al., El Raval. Història d'un barri servidor d'una ciutat (Barcelona, 1980), p. 54;
41. Solidaridad Obrera, 14 May 1931.
42. The number of residents per building in the Raval was approximately twice the Barcelona average. The population of District V, one of Barcelona's eleven administrative districts which essentially corresponded to the Raval, grew from 192,828 in 1900 to 230,107 in 1930; Mercedes Tatjer Mir, "Els barris obrers del centre històric de Barcelona", in José Luis Oyón (ed.), Vida, obrera en la Barcelona de entreguerras (Barcelona, 1998), p. 16;
43. Jaume Aiguader i Miró, El problema de l'habitació obrera a Barcelona (Barcelona, 1932), p. 6.
44. Lluís Claramunt i Furest, La pesta en el pla de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1933), pp. 6-8;
45. Lluís Claramunt i Furest idem, La Lluita contra la Fibra Tifòidea a Catalunya (Barcelona, 1933), pp. 189-206;
46. Nick Rider, "Anarchism, Urbanisation and Social Conflict in Barcelona, 1900-1932" (Ph.D., University of Lancaster, 1987), p. 152.
47. According to one bourgeois literary figure, World War I "brought the nineteenth century to a close in Barcelona"; Josep María de Sagarra, Memòries, 2 vols (Barcelona, 1981), vol. 1, p. 290.
48. Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso's Barcelona (Berkeley, CA, 1992), pp. 111 -112.
49. For a more detailed survey, see Cristina Borderias, "Women Workers in the Barcelona Labour Market, 1856-1936", in Angel Smith (ed.), Red Barcelona: Social Protest and Labour Mobilization in the Twentieth Century (London, 2002), pp. 142-166.
50. According to one local, in World War I, "Barcelona became a haven for all the persecuted agitators from across Europe"; Joan Garriga i Massó, Memòries d'un liberal catalanista (1871-1939) (Barcelona, 1987), pp. 221-222.
51. This was described as the "white slave trade" (trata de blanques); see, for instance, El Escándalo, 14 October 1926.
52. Ealham, "Class and the City", pp. 33-47.
53. Angel Pestaña, Terrorismo en Barcelona (Memorias inéditas) (Barcelona, 1979), pp. 83-96.
54. For a penetrating analysis, see Eduardo González Calleja and Fernando del Rey Reguillo, "Violència política i pistolerisme a la Catalunya de la primera posguerra mundial", L'Avenç, 192 (1995). PP- 34-41
55. Waldo López Rodríguez, Proyecto de Reorganización de la Policia de España (Zaragoza, 1899), pp. 10-11.
56. La policía española
57. cited in Pedro Trinidad Fernández, La defensa de la sociedad. Cárcel y delincuencia en España (siglos XVIII-XX) (Madrid, 1991), pp. 298-309.
58. One analyst of the 19205 reflected that "the classic swindle and the cloudy business deal were the order of the day" in financial circles; José Luis Vila, La vida cotidiana en España durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera (Barcelona, 1984), p. 64
59. For a case study of one such "deviant" entrepeneur, sec Ramón Garriga, Juan March y su tiempo (Barcelona, 1976).
60. Front, 30 July 1932, a dissident communist publication, exposed the existence of upmarket brothels in the Eixample.
61. Solidaridad Obrera, 9 and 11 June 1918.
62. The real identity of the "Barón" remains a mystery. According to one former Barcelona police chief, his name was Friederich Stallmann; Manuel Casal Gómez, La, "banda negra". Origen y Actuación de los pistoleros en Barcelona (1918-1921) (Barcelona, 1977), pp. 27-28. There is also speculation that his original surname is believed to have been Colman or Kölmann. To add to the confusion, his nom de guerre is frequently misspelt. Besides working for German secret services, it has also been claimed that the Barón was employed by either British or French intelligence. After his deportation from Spain in May 1920, he apparently settled in Paris, where he dedicated himself to extortion and blackmail, before changing his identity and disappearing without trace;
63. Jordi Ventura, "La personalitat veritable del baró de König", Serra D'Or, September 1970, pp. 81-84.
64. This was reflected in Jean Genet's 1949 Journal de voleur (The Thief s Journal), inspired by the author's experiences in the area during the interwar period.
65. Pedro Gual Villalbí, Memorias de un industrial de nuestro tiempo (Barcelona, n.d.), pp. 138, 140.
66. According to Garriga i Massó, "Barcelona was the European city which took over from fin de siècle Paris [...] it was the oasis of Europe, where happiness and joie de vivre were possible"; Memòries, pp. 213-214.
67. Abel Rebollo et al. (eds), Barcelona, rebelde. Guía de una ciudad silenciada (Barcelona, 2003), P. 255
68. According to one study of the Raval, the population was of "eminently working-class social composition"; Artigas i Vidal, El Raval, p. 51.
69. This view was confirmed by one resident from the interwar era, "they were workers, colliers, stevedores [...]. There were whores, pimps, hoods, but only the minority"; cited in McDonogh, "The Geography of Evil", p. 176.
70. Figures cited in Tatjer Mir, "Els barris obrers [...]", in Oyón, Vida obrera en la Barcelona de entreguerras, pp. 14, 22, 30.
71. One middle-class observer lamented that "the rebellious masses were masters of the city for eight days"; Garriga i Massó, Memòries, p. 182.
72. Lluís Claramunt i Furest, Problemes d'urbanisme (Barcelona, 1934), pp. 14-18;
73. Carme Massana, Indústria, ciutat i propietat. Política económica i propietat urbana al'Area de Barcelona (1901-1939) (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 22, 126-130;
74. Aiguader i Miró, El problema de l'habitació obrera, p. 14;
75. Front, 30 July 1932;
76. Artigas i Vidal, El Raval, pp. 51ff.
77. Tatjer Mir, "Els barris obrers", pp. 14, 19.
78. One dosshouse was known locally as "the three eights" after the number of daily shifts in the beds; Rafael Vidiella, Los de ayer (Barcelona, 1938), p. 33. In some of these flophouses one didn't flop at all: these consisted of large rooms with a rope in the centre against which workers leaned and slept standing up.
79. Conditions were abysmal in old industrial buildings that were not designed for their new purpose; Manuel Gil Maestre, La criminalidad en Barcelona y en las grandes poblaciones (Barcelona, 1886), pp. 147-157;
80. Paco Villar, Historia y leyenda del Barrio Chino (1900-1992). Crónica y documentos de los bajos fondas de Barcelona. (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 37-41;
81. Joan Busquets Grau., Barcelona. Evolución urbanística de una capital compacta (Madrid, 1992), p. 213;
82. Tatjer Mir, "Els barris obrers", p. 29.
83. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, MA, 2001).
84. De Bellmunt, Les Catacumbes de Barcelona, pp. 35-36.
85. Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope; Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London, 1989), pp. 115, 242, 249.
86. For the impact of social segregation on consciousness, see Richard Dennis, 'People and Housing in Industrial Society", in Michael Pacione (ed.), Historical Geography: Progress and Prospects (London, 1987), p. 191;
87. Richard Harris, "Residential Segregation and Class Formation in the Capitalist City", Progress in Human Geography, 8 (1984), pp, 26-49.
88. See Xavier Cuadrat, Socialisme y anarquismo en Cataluña (1899-1911), Los orígenes de la CNT (Madrid, 1976);
89. Joaquín Maurín, "Pablo Iglesias y el pabloiglesismo", L'Opinió, 22 December 1928.
90. Emili Salut, Vivers de revolucionaris. Apunts històrics del Districts Cinquè (Barcelona, 1938), pp. 147-148.
91. The list is vast. See, for example, Ferran Aisa, Una Història de Barcelona. Ateneu Encicopèdic Popular (1902-1999) (Barcelona, 2000).
92. Solidaridad Obrera, 9 April 1933, 20 March 1934, 15 September 1935;
93. La Revista Blanca., 19 April 1935.
94. Josep Maria Huertas Claveria, "La política en un barri apolític", in Claudio Zulián (ed.), Escenes del Raval (Barcelona, 1999), p. 30.
95. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh, 2000).
96. Salut, Vivers de revolucionaris.
97. Isidre Molas, Lliga Catalana. Un estudi d'Estasiologia., 2 vols (Barcelona, 1972), vol. 1, p. 304.
98. See the pioneering studies by Pere López Sánchez: El centro histórico: un lugar para el conflicto (Barcelona, 1986)
99. and Un verano con mil julios y otras estaciones. Barcelona: de la Reforma Interior a la Revolución de Julio de 1909 (Madrid, 1993).
100. Joaquín Romero Maura, "La Rosa del Fuego". Republicanos y anarquistas: la política de los obreros barceloneses entre el desastre colonial y la Semana Trágica, 1899-1909 (Barcelona, 1989), pp. 210-211;
101. Angel Duarte, "Entre el mito y la realidad. Barcelona 1902", Ayer, 4 (1991), p. 166.
102. On 1909, see Pere López Sánchez, Un verano con mil julios y otras estaciones. Barcelona: de la Reforma Interior a la Revolución de Julio de 1909 (Madrid, 1993);
103. Romero Maura, "La Rosa del Fuego";
104. Joan Connelly Ullman, The Tragic Week: A Study of Anticlericalism in Spain, 1875-1912 (Cambridge, MA, 1968).
105. For a more recent analysis of general strikes in Barcelona, see Angel Smith, "Anarchism, the General Strike and the Barcelona Labour Movement", European History Quarterly, 27 (1997), pp. 5-40.
106. Vidiella, Los de ayer, p. 93.
107. Ealham, "Class and the City", pp. 33-47.
108. Bravo Portillo was known popularly as a "pimp" (xulo); Montserrat Roig, Rafael Vidiella, l'aventura de la revolució (Barcelona, 1976), p. 40.
109. His assassination prompted an outpouring of popular celebrations and parties were held across the city. See Adolfo Bueso, Recuerdos de un cenetista, 2 vols (l'Esplugues de Llobregat, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 126-128.
110. Amàlia Pradas, "Pistoles i pistolers", p. 15.
111. For example, El Liberal, 4 September 1901, spoke of the "close solidarity" of "the worker masses".
112. See K.J. Anderson, "Cultural Hegemony and the Race-Definition Process in Chinatown, Vancouver; 1880-1980", Society and Space, 6 (1988), pp. 127-149.
113. For Driver, "moral geographies" were "part of a process of appropriation (and, hence, regulation) of the spaces of everyday life [...], participants in the reconstruction of urban space"; "Moral geographies", p. 276.
114. David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 321-322.
115. David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference For a discussion, see ibid., p. 320.
116. López, Barcelona sucia, foresaw that an unchecked Chinatown could corrupt youth and result in "the end of Spain"; pp. 54-56, 56.
117. Gual Villalbí, Memorias, pp. 132-136, 169.
118. Paco Madrid, Ocho meses y un día en el gobierno civil de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1932), pp. 143-145, 171-114.
119. El Escándolo, 10 December 1926.
120. El Escándolo, 21 January 1926.
121. López, Barcelona sucia, is the best example of this discourse applied to Barcelona.
122. For Europe, see Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820-1940 (Manchester, 1985), esp. chs 5-7.
123. Before World War I, the Raval was described by one local liberal paper as an "inferno"; L'Esquella de la, Torratxa, 11 April 1913.
124. El Escándolo, 20 May 1926.
125. L'Opinio,́ 18 May 1932.
126. L'Opinió, 22 September 1933, 7 April, 9 August 1934.
127. For instance, Paco Madrid was secretary to various Barcelona civil governors, including fellow El Escándolo writer, Carles Esplá, Marcelino Domingo was a cabinet minister on more than one occasion, while Angel Samblancat was elected to parliament at the start of the Republic.
128. One liberal medical reformer argued that Chinatown had to be demolished on moral and health grounds, an act of "moral and material cleansing" that would end illness linked to overcrowded housing and "nocturnal life in cabarets and other places of doubtful morality"; Claramunt i Furest, Problemes d'urbanisme, pp. 9, 14.
129. A physician by training, Aiguader i Miró had published widely on "the working-class condition" and housing matters; see his El problema de l'habitació obrera.
130. He wrote of the "perversity" of the Raval in Mirador, 23 May 1929.
131. See Justicia Social, 1 August 1931, 13 May, and 7 October 1933.
132. According to the USC, anarchist mobilizations were "the action of the underworld, to which a minority of adventurers of working class origins had descended"; Justicia Social, 29 April 1933.
133. Thus, one conservative spoke of a "network of secret organizations" in this "crime zone", made up of foreign anarchists and "common criminals"; Fernando Barangó- Solís, Reportajes Pintorescos (Barcelona, 1934), pp. 109-113.
134. For similar themes developed in the republican press, see La Publicitat, 10 April 1934.
135. For a classic discussion of this process in 1970s Britain, see Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (London, 1978), who talk of the "mapping together" of "moral panics" into a "general panic" (pp. 218-227).
136. For examples of this language see Justicia Social, 15, 22 July 1933,and L'Opinió 21 August, 2 December 1931, 22 October 1933.
137. Francesc Roca, El Pla Macià (Barcelona, 1977).
138. Nicolau Rubió i Tudurí, Pla de distribució en zones del territori català (Barcelona, 1932).
139. Evidence of Le Corbusiers's increasingly authoritarian stance and his faith in the "strong idea" was his decision to dedicate his 1935 work, La ville radieuse, "To authority";
140. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias (New York, 1987), pp. 236-237.
141. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias Ibid., p. 187.
142. Cited in Salvador Tarragó, "'El 'Pla Macià' o 'La Nova Barcelona'", Cuadernos de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, 90 (1972), p. 29.
143. A. C., June 1937.
144. Jaume Fabre and Josep Maria Huertas, Tots els barris de Barcelona, 7. vols (Barcelona, 1976), vol. 5, p. 65.
145. See Cristian Cirici, "Madrid-Barcelona. El nacimiento de dos metropolis modernas", in Xavier Bru de Sala (ed.), Barcelona-Madrid, 1898-1998: sintancías y distancias (Barcelona, 1997), pp. 147-148
146. Oriol Bohigas, "Una arquitectura a la Catalunya republicana i autònomia", in Bru de Sala, Barcelona-Madrid, pp. 85-93;
147. Josep Maria Rovira, "Los orígines del Plan Macià: entre la ciudad radiante y la ciudad funcional", in Oyón, Vida obrera en la Barcelona de entreguerras, pp. 263-286.
148. A.C., 25 June 1937.
149. GATCPAC, no. 6, 132.
150. David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Oxford, 1985), pp. 63-220.
151. L'Opinió, 16 March 1933;
152. La Publicitat, 16 August 1933.
153. El Escándolo, 13 May and 15 July 1926.
154. Le Corbusier, cited in Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London, 1983), p. 168.
155. According to John Berger, these memories are a resource in the class struggle: "A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history"; Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth, 1972), P.33.
156. See Chris Ealham, "The Myth of the 'Maddened Crowd': Class, Culture and Space in the Revolutionary Urbanist Project in Barcelona, 1936-7", in Chris Ealham and Michael Richards (eds), The Splintering of Spain: New Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge, 2005).
157. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Barcelonas (Barcelona, 1990), ch. 5.
158. McNeill, Urban Change and the European Left, pp. 30-36.
159. Melissa Rossi, 'The Barcelona Model', Newsweek, 2 April 2004.
160. In late February 2004 local resistance to plans to demolish a bar led to clashes between riot police and members of the community and patrons and friends of the bar owner; El Periódico, 27 February 2004. This protest action, and subsequent ones, were organized by the Coordinadora contra 1'especulació del Raval (Co-ordinating Committee against Speculation in the Raval) and Arquitectos sin fronteras (Architects without Frontiers).