It was Teresa’s dissatisfaction with their miserable life in La Vall that impelled the family to migrate to Barcelona.16 In his letters to Teresa, her brother Nelo assured her of the abundant work for alpargateros in the Catalan industrial behemoth, of its superior quality of life, and, importantly, he offered to pay for the family’s passage north. Teresa quickly convinced her husband to accept the project and, testimony to the precariousness of life in La Vall, just a few days later José and his father left ‘with a blanket and a sack’ with their clothes for the port at Burriana en route to Barcelona.17
The cheapest way of reaching Barcelona was by boat, a veritable adventure for José, then just three and a half years old. He could not have appreciated that this was a journey into the eye of a social and political vortex, the beginning of an odyssey of discovery and struggle that would take him across two continents, two oceans, and six countries in the course of a life that resembled that of the Quixote: the idealistic dreamer, ever poised to confront injustice and tyranny throughout a semi-nomadic existence. Nor would he have grasped the irony that on his journey his main protection from the autumn night chill and sea winds was a red-and-black checked blanket;18 these were the colours of the CNT, the revolutionary union formed a year earlier in the city that lay ahead of José, a union whose future would soon become deeply entwined with his.19
1.2 Barcelona
Barcelona changed José’s life irrevocably. He was overwhelmed by the contrast between the parochial, insular world of La Vall and the seething cosmopolitanism of his new city. Approaching the port of Barcelona, he observed ‘the sea of houses’ of the working-class districts hemmed in by the surrounding mountains and hills and the chimneys sprouting up from the city’s industrial neighbourhoods, projecting black smoke into the sky. Ashore, the frenetic rhythm and noise of the port startled his senses, as dockers and carters unloaded ships and distributed produce on the quays. Flanked by trams and the few cars in circulation at that time, the new arrivals made their way to uncle Nelo’s house, in nearby Cruz de los Canteros Street, in Poble Sec, an inner city neighbourhood nestled between Montjuïc mountain and the urban frontier of the Paral.lel, a long avenue that was home to a myriad of theatres, cafés, cabarets, and taverns and which epitomised the city’s modernity. Eminently working-class, Poble Sec had a large Valencian population, consisting of an overwhelming majority of poor migrants crammed into overcrowded housing. With an illiteracy rate of over 50 per cent,20 one historian described Poble Sec as a ‘slum district’.21 Daily life for inhabitants was structured by the rhythms of industrial capitalism: before and after work, the streets were packed with workers making their way to and from the factories in the contiguous industrial district of Sants or the nearby La Canadiense, the city’s most important hydroelectric plant.
José’s father soon found work in the espadrille workshop of a childhood friend in Sants, where valldeuxenses were a sizeable minority.22 In keeping with prevailing patterns of working-class immigration, the Peirats arrived in instalments: once José and his father were settled, they were joined by his mother and two sisters. The family was now united in a city that was deeply divided and marked by conflict – the most recent being the 1909 urban uprising known as the ‘Tragic Week’ (‘Semana Trágica’), a week of anti-conscription street protests punctuated by barricades, attacks on factories, and the burning of religious property.23 Poble Sec was an important focus of the uprising, and insurgent crowds assaulted every religious building in the neighbourhood, from churches and convents to Catholic schools.24 In the repression that followed, the security forces killed 104 civilians, injuring 125. Over 2,500 people, for the most part trade unionists and left-wingers, were imprisoned. Seventeen death sentences were passed, five of which were carried out in the nearby Montjuïc fortress, which cast a dark shadow over Poble Sec.
Working-class Barcelona was left traumatised. José was exposed to this collective trauma: he overheard his uncle talking with friends in the evenings about the colonial war in Morocco, the urban uprising, the prisoners, and the executions; he also heard satirical songs vilifying the authorities and politicians.25 Uncle Nelo, who gradually fathered anarchist ideas in the mind of his young nephew, communicated popular anticlerical myths to José, telling him how priests had used cannon to defend a church from attack.26 At weekends, when the family escaped the city for the cleaner air of Montjuïc to make a paella below the fortress, Nelo told him of the sacrifice of Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, the anarchist educator executed after being charged with ‘moral responsibility’ for the uprising.27 Through Nelo, José discovered new words like ‘trade unions’ and initials like ‘CNT’ – the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo periodically rented the Paral.el’s theatres for meetings and rallies and had held its first national congress in Barcelona just weeks before his arrival.
Barcelona was the capital of Spain’s labour movement, which was shaped by a buoyant anti-state culture. From around the 1900s, the city’s long anarchist tradition laid the basis for a rising anarcho-syndicalist movement, which saw revolutionary industrial unionism as the best method whereby workers could seize control of the capitalist economy. There are complex reasons for the powerful lure of anarcho-syndicalism in the city.28 There was a popular perception that the state, which possessed limited welfare functions in comparison with England and Germany, was a negative, repressive force in social life. This, combined with a conflictive industrial relations context, militated against reformist trade unionism and fostered direct action struggles. Since the advent of industrialisation, employers had been implacably hostile to any checks on their authority in the workplace; they opposed even a token union presence in the factories and rallied to destroy labour organisation by sacking militants wherever possible.29 The ‘hunger pact’ (pacto del hambre) or ‘lockout’ – whereby union activists were excluded from the workplace – was another of their weapons. Yet the determination of local workers to improve living conditions ensured labour organisation endured the employer offensive. For elites and authorities alike, the ‘Red subversion’ of the ‘unpatriotic’ proletarian enemy within had to be crushed by the military, which played the role of domestic policeman. While some sections of the bourgeoisie viewed the central state as an anti-Catalan force, industrialists recognised the Madrid government was a vital ally in their struggle with local workers. The bitterness of the social war, and the scant prospects for moderation, saw the unions adopt increasingly radical and aggressive tactics – a situation that allowed for a strong influence of anarchist and later anarcho-syndicalist ideas. Barcelona’s unions were bolstered by untrammelled urban growth during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With the arrival of thousands of migrants from the poor and depressed rural areas of Spain, by 1910 the city’s population was close to 600,000. Like the Peirats family, these newcomers came in search of dreams of what José later termed the ‘Catalan California’.30 The limits of the ‘Barcelona dream’ were manifest: the vast wealth generated by local industry remained in the hands of the few and economic incertitude was the norm for the city’s workers, particularly the migrants.
These first years in Barcelona were punctuated by economic insecurity and personal tragedy. This would have had an immense impact upon José, who was a very sensitive boy, well attuned to the sufferings of his parents, relatives, and neighbours. Like most working-class families, the Peirats moved in search of better or cheaper accommodation. After Poble Sec, they resided for six years in Badalona Street, in Sants, a district which, like much of proletarian Barcelona, had high levels of tuberculosis, glaucoma, and other health problems related to poor diet and bad housing. Peirats was deeply affected by the deaths, in quick succession, of a baby sister and a younger brother.31 He was further shaken by the imprisonment of uncle Nelo, who was detained in a police swoop on Montjuïc as he foraged for snails and firewood on common land. In keeping with the arbitrary practices of the authorities, Nelo was interned for a couple of weeks, first in the Montjuïc military fortress, and later in the Modelo prison, Barcelona’s main incarceration centre, before being released without charge. Members of the Peirats clan, José included, visited him in jail daily, bringing him much-needed food and cheer. The sight of his favourite uncle incarcerated surely nourished his growing awareness of the injustices surrounding him.
The environment within the Peirats household was relatively liberal. The unrestricted parental authoritarianism that stifled the developing spirit of many children at this time was largely missing. While there was a domestic hierarchy, it was not