[Image description: a large group of women in a field, holding weaved baskets and doing the leftist salute.]
LIFE ON A COLLECTIVIZED FARM-TOWN.
Photos from Amposta (Catalonia), 1937.
Context: Amposta is a city in the southern tip of Catalonia. In the 1930s, anarchism was very popular among the working class of Catalonia, organized in the CNT-FAI union. In Amposta, most of the population was affiliated to the CNT, and so, following their anarchist ideals, the union collectivized the land and divided it among the poor farmers, turning the city of Amposta into the Collectivity of Amposta.
[ID: a meeting in front of the Collectivity’s offices. A group of people is meeting in the middle of the street in front of a building with a banner that reads “Offices. General collectivity”.]
The Collectivity of Amposta was organized through a series of committees, among which the Control committee coordinated the different sections, including Farmers, Rice Industry, Fishing Industry, Salt workers, Painters, Builders, Bakers, Cattle workers, Wood, Poultry, Grocery stores and Exchange.
[ID: in the center of an empty street or square, there’s a big pile of rice. A group of women and a few men filling are their woven baskets with rice.]
[ID: a group of men working in the rice fields.]
[ID: a group of people working in the field using a threshing machine.]
[ID: women carrying rice sheaves.]
[ID: men carrying sacks to a carriage.]
[ID: the sewing room. Many women are sewing together in the same room, where they have sewing supplies and at east one sewing machine. In the back there’s three men, not working but talking to some of the women.]
Amposta is just one example, but collectivization took place all across Catalonia, reason why this period of our history is known as “Revolutionary Catalonia”. The workers organized themselves into militias when the fascists in the Spanish army, led by general Francisco Franco, gave a coup d’etat in 1936. Even without the help of any foreign powers (only the USSR sold some old weapons to the Republic that was fighting fascism), the militias resisted for years against the fascist Spanish army, that Franco led with the support of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, who sent troops and tried out on our population the bombings, weapons and strategies that they later used in the Second World War.
The workers’ society came to an end in 1939, when the fascists ultimately won the war and occupied all the territories that still nowadays are under Spanish occupation.
Source: Gràfica Anarquista, by the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona and Observatori de la Vida Quotidiana.
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