Collectivizations: The Trams of Revolutionary Barcelona
If you’ve ever taken a look into collectivization, or leftism in general, you’ve probably come across this image in some shape or form. It’s a tram operating under the control of the Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, or National Confederation of Labor.
Often, this image is posted without very much context. It's presented as a curiosity, or as the main component of an antifascist multi-track drifting meme. But, to those who were there – and those who listened to their tales – this image speaks to the spirit of a revolution.
[Photo of a tramway and street in front of Estacion de Francia, 1930’s]
The modern city is a complicated organism, requiring a robust circulatory system to keep itself alive. Nowhere was this more true than the Barcelona of the early 20th century. With the city cresting just over a million people¹, they needed a solution to get people where they needed to go with speed and efficiency. Here, public transit truly shined.
Barcelona boasted healthy taxi and bus services, two underground metro lines, and even two funicular railways. These, though, all paled in scale and importance to the tramways. Sixty routes darted across the city and its suburbs, carting thousands of people a day to and from its beating heart.
The Belgian financiers of the General Tramways Company, however, had no real stake in the wellbeing of their Catalan workers or customers. They desired only to please the pockets of themselves and their shareholders, and the system suffered greatly for it.
The city’s streets were littered with haphazardly placed power boxes and suspension poles for the overhead electrical wire. The tracks curved around these obstacles to compensate, but the sharp turns strained the poorly-maintained tracks and trams to their breaking point, causing many derailments and collisions. Nearly every tram in the fleet was in some state of disrepair, and many were inoperable – and the garages did not have the ability to fix them.
You see, one of the core problems of the GTC’s model was that the company used too many dissimilar models of tram cabs, most of which were imported. The mechanics, who already had limited access to tools, simply did not have the equipment to perform most critical services to the trams. They had to rely on importing pre-built spare parts that, often, were of such low quality they caused more problems than they solved.
Additionally, the trams operated on a fare zoning system with rates that varied depending on which part of the city you were headed to, as well as the time of day. Working-class neighborhoods were hurt most by this, almost entirely priced out of being able to ride.
The workers of the tramways, most of which lived in those neighborhoods, would often find themselves in that situation. Their jobs were thankless, dirty, and dangerous – and they couldn’t even afford to ride their own trams.
Soon, they sought to unionize – something the GTC’s management refused to abide.
[Photo of militia personnel riding on a truck with “CNT” and “F.A.I.” painted on its side, 1936?]
From ‘33 to ‘36, the workforce and management of Barcelona’s tramways were locked in bitter conflict. Workers attempting to organize faced harsh retaliation, often becoming victims of targeted harassment and violence. Strikes were met with severe police repression and waves of scabs.
Despite their best efforts though, management would not succeed. Of their 7,000 employees, 6,500 would become dues-paying members of the CNT.
A final strike, the bloodiest and most costly of the entire affair, would occur in 1936. A months-long battle raged in the streets during the first half of the year, ended only by the fascist coup on July 19th and the proletarian revolution that followed. Fighting transformed the city into a battlefield that week, but come the 24th the smoke hanging over the city finally began to clear.
After victory was assured and the revolutionary government took root, people returned to work. Upon their arrival, though, they found their former management had vanished, taking the company’s coffers with them.
This economic sabotage, along with the post-battle destruction of the city’s already disheveled street infrastructure, made the prospect of rebuilding seem almost impossible.
With management gone, though, the keys to the castle were up for grabs – and the workers of Barcelona were ready to seize them.
[Photo of union workers painting a slogan onto the side of a collectivized tram, 1936-9?]
Immediately, the disparate companies that had made up the city’s public transit network were impounded, and their assets were expropriated to the CNT. The metro, bus, and tram services collected under their respective unions, and their committees gathered to assess the situation.
Despite the city still being in shambles, it was decided that returning the tramways to full working order was critical. Getting the economy up and running again required freedom of movement – something that, due to wartime restrictions on automobile travel, would be almost impossible without tram service. A general call was issued over the radio for all available engineers, technicians, and manual workers to assemble for the job.
In a mere three days, the people of Barcelona watched the first trams return to active service. In five, 700 newly-serviced trams², painted in the colors of the revolution, were operating throughout the city.
It was a herculean feat, only possible due to the industrial syndication of the CNT and its sister unions. A bunch of disparate trades and organized workplaces would, on their own, be a cacophony of disorganized rabble – but beneath the single banner of the syndicate, they meshed like the gears of a well-timed clock. Gaston Leval, combatant and historian of the Spanish revolution, had this to say on the subject:
[Image of a quote from Collectives discussing the high levels of organization within the industrial syndicate]
Cohesion and the free flow of ideas were ideals baked into the very fabric of the unions. No important decision could be made without the consultation and agreement of all workers involved. Not one voice was discounted, no matter who it came from.
[Photo of a collectivized tram with a graphic painted on its side, depicting stylized workers piercing a swastika with an arrow containing the words “TODOS CONTRA EL FASCISMO” (“All against fascism”), 1936-9?]
It wasn’t enough, though, to put the freshly-oiled and painted trams back on the tracks. No, the transport union had ambitions, and they set to work on fulfilling them immediately.
One of the first things they tackled were the electrical problems. The junction boxes and power poles in the middle of the road were not only interfering with the free flow of traffic, but were also a safety hazard. This was a job for the city's electrical utility union, and they solved the problem with ease. They relocated the boxes and poles to the sidewalk, and built new crosspans extending over the street to suspend the cables.
With the streets freed up, they could now focus on improving the rail infrastructure itself. Fully-electric, automated signals were added, and the city’s serpentine tracks were straightened and relaid – much to the relief of motorists and tram operators alike.
The sorry state of the garages was another hurdle. A lack of tools and parts left mechanics incapable of repairing the city’s fleet of trams. In response, the committee requisitioned the funds to buy state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to bring things back to working order. This allowed the workers to service and refit the fleet, and rebuild the inoperable cabs. Quality spares were also produced en mass, reducing their reliance on imported parts from 85% down to an impressive 10%.
Of course, they weren’t content to stop there. The fleet was comprised of eight different models of cab, all of which came from separate companies with their own proprietary designs. A new model was needed, so they designed one made from local materials with local hands, with ease of assembly and care in mind. They began to introduce these new workhorses to the tramways, with the eventual goal of replacing the entire fleet.
Fares were also reduced – by half.
Rates that once went as high as .40 peseta fell to a flat rate of .20, something that would have been unthinkable under profit-driven management.
Throughout it all, the workers of the syndicate saw the quality of their lives dramatically increase. The transport union gained a healthcare and insurance program, as well as significant pay raises. Before the revolution, ‘peones’, or laborers, made only eight pesetas per day. Traffic controllers received 10, and engineers got 12. Afterward, though, wages were adjusted. Laborers began to earn 15 pesetas per day, while all skilled workers earned 16 – an average increase of about 61% across the board.
These massive improvements weren’t cheap, though. How did the tramways’ bottom line fare throughout all this?
[Image depicts a chart of the tramways’ total monthly income from September through December in 1935 and 1936, shown in 1936 peseta and 2019 euro values. A significant increase in profitability is shown after the collectivization of the service] ³
As it turns out, they were farther in the black under the new collectivized ownership! In September alone, they were up a full 300,000 pesetas over the pre-revolutionary system.
The system had to sustain lowered fares, increased labor costs, a shift to local manufacturing, and a 150% increase in the price of raw materials due to blockade. Yet, in spite of this, profits from the tramways increased by, on average, 12% per month.
It’s only when looking at these figures that one can see the true impact of the capitalist managerial class. The salary of the GTC’s old director alone clocked in at 132,000 pesetas per year (around 300,000 euros today). Factor in the lavish expenditures on corporate offices and highbrow events, and the waste totaled in the millions. Under worker-ownership, the syndicate cut the dead weight of bloated salaries and unnecessary expenses, allowing the tramways to grow and flourish.
Even after paying their massive overhead costs and continuing their ambitious expansion projects, the new tramways were capable of sustaining the entire city’s public transit on their own. There was even enough left over to donate large sums towards the war effort!
Some have argued that this spike in profit was actually due to wartime jobs and restrictions on automobile travel. These did, in fact, contribute heavily to the 62% increase in ridership in the first year of worker-managed service.
This is true... but only in part. Bear in mind that this profit margin is the system operating under enormous economic stress. They were rebuilding a city damaged by war, and revamping massive portions of their infrastructure. These investments were already paying off, but had the city been given the chance to return to a peacetime economy, the tramways likely would have blossomed into an outstandingly successful public institution.
[Photo of transit union workers in front of a collectivized tram, 1936-9?]
At the heart of revolutionary class struggle is the promise of a better tomorrow. It’s what drives us to pick up the torch and carry on the good fight of making that promise a reality.
Often, though, we aren't sure what that tomorrow would look like. We picture the revolution as a single, continuous battle, filled with glamour and glory. In truth, most of the work in a post-revolutionary society is of the most mundane and pedestrian variety.
Perhaps a bunch of trolley workers expropriating their bosses’ equipment and revamping their city’s rapid transit isn’t going to get its own chapter in the history books. But its only through these radical acts of creativity, community, and compassion that we truly build a better world.
¹ I’ve left this figure vague as I don’t really have a true source for the population of barcelona in the 1930′s. The best I could find at the time of writing is this uncited graph on a, frankly speaking, Pretty Sketchy website. If I come across a better source, I will update this accordingly.
² This figure is particularly impressive, considering the number of trams operating prior to the revolution hovered just below 600.
³ Original figures taken from Collectives, conversion and inflation adjustment to euros (rounded to the nearest whole number) made using measuringworth.com’s Spanish currency calculator.
Information derived from Collectivizations: The Constructive Achievements of the Spanish Revolution. Essays, Documents, and Reports by Augustin Souchy and Paul Folgare, The CNT In The Spanish Revolution by José Peirats, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women by Martha A. Ackelsberg, The Collectivized CNT Taxis published by La Révolution Espagnole, Worker Management of the Barcelona Public Transit System, 1936-1939 by Tom Wetzel, and The Evolving Urban Form: Barcelona by Wendell Cox
Photos used from hippostcard.com, libcom.org, and anarchismus.at
Editorial assistance courtesy of John L. Moore