Part 3 - Collective Labor in the Provinces of Catalonia

1. TARRASA

THE FACTORIES OF TARRASA

Close to the city, the mountain, the cyclopean pile of San Llorenç del Munt, casts its imposing silhouette. On the plain, an army of smokestacks.

In Tarrasa, a town with some forty thousand residents, the manufacturing industry predominates, in which some fourteen thousand workers are employed, eleven thousand of whom are members of the CNT and the rest affiliated with the UGT.

Almost all the factories are working at full capacity. There are plenty of factories devoted to spinning wool (acortiments) and weaving fabrics, which are especially dedicated to working to supply war materiel. A forty-hour workweek is in effect, although when it is necessary to increase production due to the impact of the war, the workers work overtime, Saturdays and Sundays, without pay.

As for the technicians, they work the same number of hours as the other workers. The distinctions and privileges of the different categories of workers have been erased.

In the Manufacturing and Textile Trade Union, fund-drives are frequently held and large quantities of money are sent to the Militias. In addition, this Trade Union has spent a large amount of money for the purpose of acquiring wool that the workers transform into jerseys for the militiamen. When the workers are idled in their usual manufacturing jobs, they report to the Trade Union to be assigned jobs making jerseys for the militiamen.

Almost all the factories are subject to the authority of Control Committees, except the factory known as “Tarrasa Industrial”, which has been confiscated by workers who are sympathizers of the Confederation.

IN THE “TARRASA INDUSTRIAL” FACTORY

Invited by the comrades of the Factory Committee, we visited the numerous departments of this factory devoted to the manufacture of woolens and worsted fabrics, dyeing, pretreatment of fabrics, threads, finished articles, etc. The wool arrives raw and leaves in the form of finished products.

This factory employs some 340 male and female workers. They work for the most part in war-related industrial production, manufacturing various types of “khaki” cloth, destined for tarps and trench coats. Every day they produce two thousand meters of the former and some one thousand five hundred meters of cloth for the latter.

They work forty hours a week, although when necessary they work overtime without pay.

The manufacturing process proceeds normally from an economic point of view, and even has a tendency to surpass previous levels of production. The workers devote themselves to their jobs with a great deal of enthusiasm. Every month, the factory holds a general meeting of all the workers; this meeting makes all the decisions with regard to the operations of the factory.

As a result of the situation we face, it is unavoidable, as the comrades who accompany us explain, that there should be difficulties with regard to the acquisition of raw materials, and sometimes they must be replaced with similar substitutes.

For their part, the workers of the “Tarrasa Industrial” factory send to the Militias five percent of their total wages.

As for the technicians employed in the factory, they willingly collaborate in the collective labor that, now that they are free of the employer’s tutelage, all the workers perform with a common accord.

THE “SUN AND LIFE” COMMUNAL FARM

About two kilometers from the town, in what was previously known as “Can Parellada”, in a huge building that looks like a country mansion or the home of a great lord, the “Sun and Life” communal farm has been established, where the work is done collectively, under the control of the Peasants Trade Union.

Twenty workers are employed on the farm; among them we have met some excellent comrades who, for years now, have cooperated with the greatest interest in the confederal orientation of the local proletariat. They were employed prior to the revolutionary movement in the manufacturing industry, where besides receiving a higher wage than what they get in their new occupation, they also worked fewer hours and the work was much less exhausting than the work they are doing now. Understanding the importance of agriculture for the consolidation of the new stage that we are traversing, they did not hesitate to place their intelligence and their enthusiasm as tried and tested militants at the service of agriculture. And now they work from dawn to dusk on the farm’s 600 hectares, divided between forest and cultivated land. Because it takes a lot of work to make the land ready for cultivation and sowing, these comrades even work on Sundays. They know that the revolutionary work undertaken with arms in hand on the front lines has no holidays, and they know that they cannot have any holidays either in the revolutionary work that is being carried out in the rearguard with the tools of labor.

The farmland was in poor condition and the work is daunting; yet these inspired workers sow wheat, grow fodder, and till the soil with the help of two magnificent tractors, attempt to extend the area of the irrigated land, manage the woodlands, and tend the stables for the goats and cows.

There are also several other farms in the vicinity of Tarrasa that have been collectivized by the Peasants Trade Union, affiliated with our Trade Union Confederation.

THE “NEW LIFE” NEWSPAPER

In one of the offices of the magnificent local headquarters in a building confiscated by the Local Federation of Trade Unions, the editorial staff of the “New Life” newspaper has been installed, which is now a daily rather than a weekly paper.

We have spent some time in conversation with the comrades of “New Life” who are occupied in the production of this daily newspaper. The paper is distributed in the evening and the comrade editors are preparing the latest edition, proofreading articles, fact-checking, taking great care to present this excellent local newspaper, which is subsidized by the organization, in the best possible way, both with regard to typography as well as with regard to doctrine.

THE WORK OF SOCIALIZATION

Rents have been reduced by fifty percent, and the Construction Industry, which has been socialized, controls the collection of the rents.

The Construction Industry pays wages to all its members, on the condition that if they do not have any work in their usual occupations, they must apply to the Peasants Trade Union so that they may be employed in agricultural work.

The entertainment industry has been totally socialized.

Some difficulties arose during the attempt to socialize the bakeries. Not everyone was happy with the innovations; sometimes, although they tried to arrange things with the best intentions, they set up obstacles to the progress of those whom their reforms were meant to benefit. The situation was finally normalized and today the bakeries are thriving in their new structure.

The busses that serve the urban routes have been confiscated by their employes, who are affiliated with the CNT. When these busses were the property of a capitalist enterprise, the stockholders complained about being saddled with a considerable deficit. Now that the workers are in charge, the enterprise is in the black and the workers are constantly sending money to the Militias.

LIGHT WHERE THERE WAS ONCE DARKNESS

Tarrasa, which is a city of ancient lineage, contains some very old convents and churches. The religious illusion, as in every city, has its zones of influence, whose centers are focused on the churches and the convents, veritable snake pits of obscurantism, where the darkness of ignorance spreads and produces the greatest damage to consciousness. Now the light of freedom and culture has dispelled the sinister impact of religion.

The buildings that were once convents, have now been transformed, opened to the air and to the light they once lacked, into schools.

The most important church in the area is now used as a garage for trucks and all kinds of cars that have been confiscated by the comrades of the CNT.

As for the church of San Pedro, with its Gothic architecture, built between the 12th and the 14th centuries, due to its antiquity and the beautiful architecture of its interior, upheld by elegant columns and arches of masterful harmony, which have preserved it from the destructive effects of the centuries, it is currently being preserved in order to be used as the site of the Regional Museum.

THE FIGHTERS AT THE FRONT

A town such as the one we are now considering, which has a brilliant revolutionary tradition; a city like Tarrasa, which has witnessed the blood of its sons spilled in struggles against government oppression, in conflicts for the emancipation of the proletariat, cannot but send a strong contingent of its sons to the front ranks of the antifascist struggle. And from the first days of the movement more than eight hundred of its men fought courageously, with arms in hand, until the reactionary forces were defeated.

This is how we saw the working class of Tarrasa, in this town that has known how to free itself of parasites, of those who were the most intransigent enemies of the proletariat.