Looking to access paid articles across multiple policy topics Interested in policy insights for EU professional organisations “Europe could die,” French President Emmanuel Macron warned in a much-awaited speech on the future of the EU at Sorbonne University on Thursday (25 April) stressing the importance of an industry ‘Made in Europe’ particularly in sectors like energy and digital although it Incorporates the expertise of the author/producer and may offer interpretations and conclusions the European bloc must "stop over-regulation change our rules and better protect our interests." [EPA-EFE/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / POOL] Telecoms is one of the "primary reason[s] for Europe's declining competitiveness," according to a draft of Letta's report seen by Euractiv finance and business ministers from France and Italy are set to sketch out plans for a sweeping “omnibus” law to cut requirements for businesses on Monday (8 April) turbo-charging industrialists’ demand for a European Industrial deal Maruja was an activist who did the same as Manuel Vital although two years earlier and in Prosperitat It only took one film to bring the story of Manolo Vital and the hijacking of his bus in Torre Baró the most forgotten neighborhood in Barcelona But not even the most awarded film of the Goyas has served to reveal that before Manuel Vital it was a woman who made the same gesture in Barcelona hijacking a bus to get public transport to reach the homes of the less fortunate a neighborhood activist from the Prosperitat neighborhood organized the hijacking of a bus as a protest measure to demand public transportation for her neighborhood experienced a combination of this phenomenon together with shantyism and the construction of large blocks of apartments from the Porcioles era This sudden growth and the government’s unwillingness to address it caused many of these neighborhoods to live without basic rights such as transportation or basic services such as health care or access to running water (such as Roquetas It was in this context that activist neighbors such as Manolo Vital in Torre or constantly demonstrated to gain access to these rights In the case of La Prosperitat the struggle focused on the 12 the bus that did not reach the neighborhood with the excuse that it could not climb its slopes Maruja Ruiz convinced about fifty neighbors to hijack the bus and take it to the neighborhood demonstrating that the problem was not physical the bus lines began to transport the people of Prosperitat this struggle would be repeated with the hijacking of bus 11 this time with the aim of demanding housing for the inhabitants of the shantytowns that were in the neighborhood the substandard housing that occupied what is now the Ángel Pestaña square Bus 11 would reach the City Hall to demonstrate ended up at the Via Laietana police station the shanty-dwellers would end up having their homes also participated in other social struggles such as the opposition to a toxic asphalt plant or the lockout at Motor Ibérica for labor rights she is still active in the Prosperitat Neighbors Association and in the neighborhood’s Gent Gran Association transmitting her experience to the new generations Her commitment went all the way to the end In 2011 she refused the Medal of Honor of the City of Barcelona awarded by then Mayor Xavier Trias arguing that she could not accept recognition from a government that was cutting back the rights she had fought for This act and her commitment show that the real struggle is always from the bottom up and that women’s history always needs one more effort to be told a film will also be made about bus number 12 Her story, by the way, can be seen in the 1976 Swedish documentary, Mujeres en Lucha where anti-Franco women from different areas of Spain talk about their experiences in the struggle against the dictatorship and where the testimony of Maruja Ruiz appears Historical narratives from the time of Spain’s Transition to Democracy have sometimes ignored the role of social movements and particularly the importance of women in residents’ and workers’ movements The four life stories we present exemplify how women activists are marginalised because they belong to the working class A demonstration by the cleaning staff of the Hospital de Bellvitge organized by the trade union Comisiones Obreras to demand improvements to working conditions; Via Laietana Paqui Jiménez played a prominent role in one of the landmark workers’ struggles of the final period of the Franco regime: the Harry Walker strike chairperson of the La Prosperitat Casal de la Gent Gran (a day-care centre for older persons) was one of the organisers of a lock-in by women and children at the church of Sant Andreu de Palomar in solidarity with their husbands and fathers who were on strike at the Motor Ibérica factory Llum Ventura is a councillor for the district of Ciutat Vella and one of the founders of the association Les Dones del 36 (The women of 1936) which has worked to commemorate the women of the Spanish Civil War one of the most ignored and badly treated labour collectives of our time are represented through the testimony of Rosmery It was 1970 and our bus was travelling along Virrei Amat the women who worked at the Harry Walker factory had gone on strike I had collected the addresses of all my striking workmates and I was so scared that the papers with their addresses on would be found that I decided to hide them in my knickers we’re being followed.” Willy became so nervous he got off the bus and left me on my own We all have moments of panic and by then the police had already arrested one or two of our colleagues So I stayed on the bus until the very last stop seeking refuge at the home of some priests who were friends of mine I was so scared when I got off that bus on Via Júlia: the bloke who was following me nearly caught me who played a leading role in one of the landmark strikes of the final years of the Franco regime Ana’s real name is Paqui Jiménez and she was born in Baeza (Jaén) in 1946 For decades now she’s been living in a small flat in L’Esquerra de l’Eixample where she’s recalling those times in a calm One street away from Via Júlia lies the Casal de la Gent Gran (a day-care centre for older persons) for the La Prosperitat neighbourhood I ask her how many times she had ended up in police custody but I was always released… The day we protested about the bogus building on Via Favència we were put in a cell with two blokes who were suffering from withdrawal symptoms and he was scared out of his wits because he’d been arrested; he was crying and everything One of the junkies was banging his head against the wall and shouting… That neighbour who was with me must still be around here I think… I never heard any more from him!” Maruja Llum Ventura is a councillor for the district of Ciutat Vella and was born in Poble-Sec “I was born into a family of anarchists: always on the losing side I had a tough childhood; I was almost entirely ignored as a little girl But one day a relative of ours who ran a hairdressing salon in the neighbourhood started calling on me to help her wash hair a district councillor for Ciutat Vella and one of the instigators of the project to preserve the historical memory of the role of women during the Spanish Republic and Civil War through the Les Dones del 36 association.Photo: Albert Armengol Llum Ventura opened another salon called La Mar It was a small space with a little library for the women of the neighbourhood and Llum offered information on how to get an abortion: “Once a month would come to perform clandestine abortions.” like those of all the hotel’s chambermaids sheets and towels makes your nails as sharp as knives If you get distracted and they rub against your skin you’d cut yourself Rosmery’s boss runs a tourist apartment and gives her just half an hour to clean it from top to bottom She doesn’t even have time to complain: “In high season We hardly get to see our own families; we get home just in time to have dinner and go to bed and up again the next day to go to work” she pushes up her glasses and takes a much-needed moment’s pause “It’s like slavery: we don’t have a life.” Rosmery has had to stop working because she suffers from epicondylitis (an injury more commonly known as tennis elbow) but she has barely two months of unemployment benefit remaining If it were not for the help of the Las Kellys chambermaids’ association Rosmery would be left completely defenceless Her injury has not even been recognised as a work-related condition The historical narrative of Spain’s Transition to democracy has for a long time ignored the role of social activism and the historical significance of women as regards community-based and workers’ struggles The life stories of these four women are just a small sample of an enormous perverse reality; that of the double (and even triple) marginalisation of working women The official narrative has locked them out of its memory because they belong to the working class The fingernails of the women working in the Catalan textile industry must have been as sharp as those of today’s chambermaids “The Industrial Revolution happened in Barcelona because of women” After the introduction of the steam engine factories began to modernise and the whole structure of Barcelona changed kitchens had only one door and space for only person: a woman Domestic work was unpaid and the husband’s wage was not enough to feed the family The woman would have to work in the home and in the factory a woman living in Sants would patch up her family’s tattered clothes and not charge for it but she would also get up at five in the morning to go to work at the Güell Ramis y Cia textile factory – the Vapor Vell the largest textile factory in Spain at that time – and she would weave and weave for twelve hours for a meagre wage even less than what a man would earn for doing the same job The factory was in operation from 1846 to 1890 and three-quarters of its employees were women where he monopolised the entire textile market of Havana There are unconfirmed suspicions that part of his fortune came from the slave trade It’s no surprise that activist groups in Sants which were behind the conversion of this and other old factories in the neighbourhood into public amenities have covered over the street name of Carrer de Joan Güell and replaced it with Carrer de les Dones del Vapor Vell (Women of the Vapor Vell) The struggle to turn the spotlight away from the upper classes to the working classes in the historical narratives on the construction of Barcelona often starts with a comprehensive and egalitarian review of street names It has never been easy for women to balance their two working lives (domestic and paid employment) with an active role in social movements As well as the obvious problem of having the time many male factory workers did not like the idea of working alongside women They felt that the job was being degraded by the fact that a woman was doing it and that this led to lower wages a historian: “These things were happening right when jobs were in short supply There were attempts to expel them from the employment market they were prevented from working as apprentices and there was never any question that their wages should be much lower.” women were also not helped by the opinions of some of the socialist and anarchist intellectuals of the second half of the 19th century Proudhon saw the home and domestic work as a woman’s natural place It’s worth saying that this was not the general view of revolutionary thinkers and that Friedrich Engels put forward much more acceptable ideas in his book The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State: “The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.” A large demonstration through the centre of Barcelona According to data collected by Isabel Segura and presented in her book Dones de Sants-Montjuïc itineraris històrics (Women of Sants-Montjuïc: historical itineraries) in 1905 Barcelona’s textile industry as a whole employed over 5,000 men almost 16,500 women and just over 5,000 children in poor working conditions and with working hours that often did not even comply with the labour laws in force since 1873 when the working day was set as eleven hours a day The year 1905 was also the year that textile worker and anarchist Teresa Claramunt (Sabadell Consideraciones generales sobre su estado ante las prerrogativas del hombre (Women General thoughts on their condition in the face of the prerogatives of men) one of the groundbreaking texts of feminist anarcho-syndicalism in Spain set up Spain’s first feminist organisation the Autonomous Women’s Society of Barcelona (SAMB) Arrested as a result of the attacks on the Corpus Christi procession of 1896 Claramunt went into exile in England until 1898 although she was never officially convicted of any crime In 1902 she took part in the February general strike and was again arrested during Tragic Week ( a week of violent clashes between the Spanish army and the working classes) Teresa Claramunt died on the eve of the 1931 municipal elections and was buried on 14 April 1931 the same day that the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed “Liberate married women from the workshop” The Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship halted any signs of women’s progress were passed in 1938 and promised to “liberate married women from the workshop and factory” Marriage was declared to be “once only and indissoluble” according to another of the basic laws that underpinned the dictatorship Abortion and disseminating contraceptive practices became a criminal offence in 1941 and maternity was seen as a biological and Christian duty head of the women’s section of the Falange political party from 1937 to 1977: “Women’s real duty to the Nation is to form families with a solid foundation of austerity and joy families in which they foster all that is traditional.” And if women wanted to work the battered economy of the post-Civil War period could not afford for millions of women to not work – the textile industry was one of several that had collapsed – and plans to “liberate women from the workshop” were to fall by the wayside years that district councillor Llum Ventura remembers as “the time of hush Demonstration outside La Trinitat women’s prison to demand that the nuns of the order of Cruzadas Evangélicas de Cristo Rey be replaced by professional prison guards; that prisoners be allowed to read legal texts speak in their own language and wear their own clothes; along with other demands It’s not the first time that Ventura has worked for the local authority one can see the nostalgia in her eyes as she recalls her time as an independent councillor under Pasqual Maragall: “I was much further to the left but I accepted the position so I could work on projects like commemorating the women of the Spanish Civil War known as Les dones del 36 [the women of 1936]” she visited women who were members of the Communist party the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) but she was particularly keen to make contact with an anarchist woman as her mother and aunt had been (also called Llum) “I had to tell the people in the CGT [the anarcho-syndicalist trade union the General Confederation of Labour] that my name was Llum and that my mother’s was Llibertat and that the commemoration project could not go ahead without a female anarchist.” So it was that she met Concha Pérez a libertarian and anarchist who had been held for several months at the women’s prison on Calle de la Reina Amàlia: “It was through that project and that I returned to my libertarian roots and values.” The “hush Memories don’t last if they are not passed on Ventura and the women of ’36 set up an association and went into primary and secondary schools keeping the memories alive and passing them on to the younger generations They gave a talk on Montjuïc for the twentieth anniversary of the first Catalan Women’s Conference held at the University of Barcelona in 1976 To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of that conference the City Council set up a project called “En moviment[s] 40 anys i més… 1976-2016” (In Movement(s) The project will continue until July and it includes exhibitions events at Cinefórum and the publication of a text written by historian Cristina Borderías the project commissioner: “The project came about because we have a local government that is more open to these issues and because we have seen a growth in the feminist movement The initiative has been well-received by feminist groups which is not always the case with projects launched by the authorities There is a stronger connection now between the feminist movement and the city administration” The pro-democracy and anti-Franco activism of the women of that time remains solid even if the memory of what they did has been left to one side political parties and community associations but they were denied access to management roles and not given any representation in these organisations” Borderías explains in the book written for the “En Moviment[s]” exhibition It was this commitment that drove Paqui Jiménez and her colleagues at the Harry Walker automotive company to go on strike during the dictatorship at a time when such action was completely illegal Paqui Jiménez explains in detail: “The carburettors would come and There were almost twenty of us women working on a production line It was really tough: when I went to the toilet my legs would buckle from the effort I’d had to put in We’d work from 6.00 in the morning until 2.00 in the afternoon they’d work on the shift and get splashed with this kind of oil that burned your hands The bosses would put the most strong-minded women there I didn’t want to go there.” Paqui grimaces a lout who treated woman like pigs… I would stand up to him I scared him and in the end he would take me off the shift.” the masculinisation of women was a constant a historian specialising in the role of women in the workers’ struggles organised by the Workers’ Commissions (CC.OO.) at that time “Women were victimised when they suffered as a result of the working conditions but when they took a strong role in an actual conflict they were masculinised and seen as male workers.” This was done out of fear that the male workers would not accept women as comrades in arms “They kept on increasing the amount of work we had to do to get the bonus” The management threatened to sack some particularly militant colleagues and it was then that we set up the Harry Walker’s workers committee and went on strike I remember getting up at three in the morning to go and throw leaflets down into the entrance of the Santa Eulàlia metro station we’d throw them down and run off to get to work at the factory for 6 am I could always say that I had gone to work.” one of the women who organized the protest by the wives of Motor Ibérica workers now Chairperson of the Casal de la Gent Gran de la Prosperitat a day centre for the elderly.Photo: Albert Armengol Historian Cristina Borderías explains that it was through the workers’ struggle that many women discovered “the limitations of individual action and the need to mutually support each other” Paqui Jiménez is more explicit and recalls that when she got into those circles “her eyes were opened as big as saucers” unity and cooperation: “You have no idea how much one has to lose!” “I get goosebumps just thinking about you having to go through what we did… Goosebumps!” “My husband spent thirteen years working at the Motor Ibérica plant [which produced vehicles and machinery] and they fired him for leading a strike the same year people were asking for the labour amnesty So I spoke at the neighbourhood assembly and said that I could mobilise the wives of the workers” so in the end we decided to stage a sit-in.” To mobilise the women the only trade union allowed in Franco’s Spain “I went to the union and I told the men that we’d have an assembly with the women we decided to lock ourselves in (the women and the children) What’s now the town hall of the Sant Andreu district and we thought it would be a good thing to have it so close just in case one of the kid’s got ill Maquinista and Fabra i Coats factories were also really close by So it was easy for people to follow the sit-in.” a large group of wives of workers at the Motor Ibérica factory staged a sit-in at the church of Sant Andreu de Palomar together with their children in a show of support for the strike their husbands were holding They were forcibly removed by the police after 28 days.Photo: Pilar Aymerich it’s impossible to stop the flow of memories was very wary because the CNT people [the anarcho-syndicalist trade union the National Labour Confederation] had also locked themselves in there at one point and had left the place like a pigsty I promised him that we would fix anything that we broke because I thought we’d get thrown out the day after No-one imagined that we’d last 28 days.” More than 250 women and children took part “We’d block the door with statues of saints to stop the police coming in at night.” But “We knew that something was cooking when they opened up the factory and the bastard strikebreakers went back to work” hesitates for a moment and finally says: “Bah it doesn’t matter anymore if anyone knows” we started tolling the bells to summon people and the square filled with people who came to stop the eviction I told my workmates that we should wear our Motor Ibérica jackets with nothing underneath I had been fined by Motor Ibérica for wearing their work clothes without being a member of staff so I guessed that the police would tell us to remove our jackets who had boobs like melons… when the police came through the courtyard at three in the afternoon they shouted: ‘Remove your jackets!’ But when they saw those boobs they changed their minds and shouted ‘Put on your jackets!’” At this point Maruja Ruiz cannot contain her laughter and loses track of the story Can you imagine fifty-odd eighty-year-old grannies dressed as rats With little tails and everything… we’re going on the neighbourhood parade.” Maruja descends the stairs of the day-care centre nimbly and purposefully “We spent seventeen years fighting to get this day-care centre They were going to put up a block of flats on this site and we would dismantle the crane every night I think Josep Porcioles was the mayor at the time…” Dates and names get a little mixed up in her head because she’s more interested in the stories than the figures “When Jordi Pujol [the then President of the Catalan Regional Government] came to open the day centre The historian Isabel Segura explains that “there is no division between the neighbourhood association movement and the feminist movement because the feminist movement was directly involved in the demands for improvements to the neighbourhood Women organised themselves into networks: that’s why they were not so boxed into solid structures other activists joined them and in the end it would end up being the men who were the public face of the demonstrations.” too often the women who have taken part in social movements in Barcelona have found the enemy within their own ranks society was much more chauvinistic than it is now and the people who took part in these actions were also very sexist They were part of society and they reproduced its models” Not all of them truly defended an equal society even if they were good at paying lip service to it she twice went to sleep at a flat in Besòs and there was one guy who’d move in on me and touch me If you want to be a fighter for workers’ rights you have to be sexually liberated.’ And I’d say: ‘I’ll liberate myself when and with whom I want But don’t think you can come and grope me in the middle of the night then that’s what I am and that’s the end of it.’” The living room is pervaded by the smell of the stew she cooked a little while ago The former Harry Walker employee seems sad when she remembers these situations it seemed like there was no other option but to just lump it…” If these things happened between colleagues one can only imagine the behaviour of the police under General Franco and said that you should be at home cleaning…” It was a learning experience for Paqui Jiménez “I learned about the unity of the working class Really important ideas that people don’t think about nowadays Working-class consciousness gave me the strength to carry on There was great camaraderie in the factory although there were one or two scabs too… Once one of them got five kilos of paint thrown over her head: I felt bad about that she was as thick as two short planks stuck together “I discovered what it meant to be a woman in that society that we had the same rights as anyone else I gave all my wages to my mum and I could see that if I wanted to leave home That was the biggest liberation I’ve felt in my life It wasn’t easy for Maruja Ruiz: “Because I was always hither and thither some people thought I was a prostitute and that’s what they told me when I brought male colleagues to a clandestine meeting for the first time.” One of the workers at Motor Ibérica tried to make his wife leave the sit-in “She had seen what solidarity meant and she cried as she told us that she was not leaving.” She didn’t leave and her husband reported her to the police for abandoning their children or maybe a predictable one: he ended up giving the children back to his wife because they were too much work Rosmery only has two months of unemployment benefit left and she worries about how she will feed her children in the future a member of the Las Kellys chambermaids’ organisation points to outsourcing services as one of the biggest problems that apartment chambermaids have to face “The fact that they are not on the hotel’s payroll excessive workloads and reduced workers’ rights.” marginalised because they are working class have very few resources to improve their working conditions and because they are scared to ask for sick leave Prozac and ibuprofen to treat the impossibility of resting as they should or of having the family life they deserve are spending their days making beds and moving mattresses.” “Barcelona is an all-year tourist destination How is it possible that all these chambermaids have temporary or zero-hours contracts The only explanation is that the business owner knows full well that the worker will end up getting ill because of the working conditions she’s subjected to” “In our association we have several cases of workers who have been sacked for taking sick leave or chambermaids on zero-hours contracts who are told on one day not to come back for the next: these dismissals cost very little for business owners” The social movements of the Transition period fought for a more just and equal city there is not a trace of justice or equality and website in this browser for the next time I comment The first kiosks were built in Barcelona in the mid-19th century either to sell products or shelter musical performances the first newspaper kiosk was the initiative of an evening paper born in 1888: El Noticiero Universal newspaper kiosks spread throughout the city The last few years haven’t been kind to sellers of printed press new ways of getting information– are causing many to shut down the sector and the administration are taking on a necessary reconversion There are about 50 interior gardens open to the public in the Eixample And in each block interior we find this reduced microcosm each with its own particularities and features But they all have certain things in common: spaces for leisure use their imitation of nature and their perceptual isolation which facilitates neighbourhood socialising Climate change and air pollution have driven the world’s great cities towards a change in paradigm After a century of cars ruling the streets the largest metropolises are starting to restrict their use science was a man’s affair in Barcelona until very recently in the gallery of names of illustrious academics in the Paranimf of the University of Barcelona which only includes one woman: 17th-century philosopher Juliana Morell we find that women have in fact been involved in the scientific and technical life of the city in many different ways the historical establishments – neighbourhood cinemas and other first - run downtown cinemas – came up time and again against the challenge of survival and over and above the overpowering creeping commercialism alternative circuits have been established that have allowed new experiences for cinema-lovers while preserving the best of the traditional ones Food waste is a global problem which can be fought by means of better laws and social projects in addition to individual and household initiatives The Model prison has since been emptied of its prisoners for the residents in this part of the city it represents both an opportunity and a danger as they watch to see what sort of restoration will be given to this large chunk of their neighbourhood following four decades of calls for the prison’s closure in order to make way for amenities