"A magnificent, revelatory history of a city of slums
and a proletariat of hope. The best book that I've read in the last
decade."
—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, and
Buda's Wagon
Between 1898 and 1937, competing interests from the national
government, the regional industrialists, and the working class, fought for
control of Barcelona. The social realities of Barcelona—as Spain's economic,
cultural, social, and political capital—provided a perfect backdrop for battle
over the urban future. Chris Ealham explores these complex and often violent
relationships, utilizing an innovative blend of history, urbanism, sociology,
and cultural studies. No other work digs this deep into the composition of an
urban working class movement—and certainly not with such a sympathetic eye for
the aspirations of its anarchist denizens.
Scrupulously researched and well written, this is the finest
study of working-class anarchist life and culture since Paul Avrich's The
Haymarket Tragedy. Not only a study of working-class Barcelona, Anarchism and
the City is the story of anarchists organizing themselves where they lived, and
of the militant culture they were a part of and helped to create. Ealham's book
draws on a marvelous array of sources, and offers a picture of anarchism in
Spain that is both groundbreaking, honest, and, yes, inspirational. This is the
history of the barris coming alive in your hands. Put simply, no future study
of anarchism can ever ignore this book, which comes closer than any other
English-language work in understanding what anarchism and its practice meant to
Spanish working-class people at the time.
-Barry Pateman, Associate Editor at the Emma Goldman Papers
and editor of Chomsky on Anarchism
Chris Ealham currently lives and works in Madrid, where he
teaches History at Saint Louis University. He is a specialist in Spanish labor
history and movements, especially those of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist
inspiration. His work has been translated into Castilian, Catalan, and Italian.
He also writes for the Spanish daily and anarchist press on topics ranging from
soccer to urban planning. Chris is currently writing a biographical study of
Jose Peirats (1908-1989), a prominent Spanish anarchist activist, historian,
journalist, and former secretary-general of the CNT.
Click here to download this book in pdf.
