5. ESPARRAGUERA

From the highway, rising from Martorell, the huddle of houses of Esparraguera stand against the background, on the edge of the horizon, of the imposing mass of Montserrat that penetrates the blue sky with the sharp peaks of its high crests.

The town has about 5,800 inhabitants, and about 2,600 of them are members of the CNT.

Most of the town’s workers are employed in the manufacturing industry. Two factories are devoted to the spinning of cotton thread, the production of fabrics and finished clothing, corduroy, velvet, etc.

One of the factories is that of Juan Montaner y Font, which employs some 160 workers. The other is the renowned Manufacturas Sedó, controlled by the CNT, the most important factory of its kind in all of Catalonia. It has 1,800 employes.

After Industry, the most important sector is the Peasants Section, which is also affiliated with the Confederation. Once the movement began, the peasants enacted the forty-hour workweek, with a fifteen percent increase in wages. Later, they understood that we are not in a situation in which we can reduce the length of the working week, but quite the contrary: we must increase it as much as possible. At the present time there is no fixed workweek, they just work as much as they can. They have confiscated the largest properties in the municipality and work in good conditions, since there is an abundance of water for irrigation. They produce a large quantity of vegetables, and harvest abundant crops of grapes and olives. The latter are used both for local consumption and export.

The bakers have formed a collective, as have the woodworkers. The barbershop workers also plan to form a collective in the near future.

A RETROSPECTIVE LOOK AT MANUFACTURAS SEDÓ—CNT

We shall take the time for a detailed summary of the emancipatory struggles of the workers of the Sedó plant; the tenacious action of the factory workers against the suffocating power of an employer with a feudal concept of society; to relate a full account of the injustices committed by the employer of such a large factory would be a truly arduous task.

He was an old-fashioned, conservative bourgeois in the old style, with an antiquated view of what labor represents. For him, the working class was born for the sole purpose of serving the powerful. The workers had to be docile and submissive to the designs of the master.

On one occasion he, who like most reactionaries was an ardent Catholic, claimed that God had given the workers eyes so that they could see what they were doing at work but never for the purpose of looking face to face with the “master”; never for the purpose of seeking justice with angry gestures.

And because he was afraid that some day his workers would make him pay dearly for his despotism over them, he maintained a squad of the Guardia Civil in his factory. Thus, when extremely justified indignation overwhelmed the spirits of the workers, the Guardia in their shiny tricorn hats pointed their Mausers at the hearts of the unarmed workers, ready to shoot murderous lead. Besides the Guardia Civil, the Sedó factory also had its own vigilante squad, composed of a variety of bloodhound that sniffed out the trade union activities of the workers of the town, always ready to nip in the bud any attempt to harm the interests of the master and lord.

THE SEDÓ FACTORY TODAY

Accompanied by the comrades who are members of the Factory Committee, we visited the spacious workshops and offices of this important factory, which has an iron foundry, an important metallurgical workshop, with a boiler manufacturing department and carpentry shop, all established in the best technical conditions for the purpose of manufacturing the looms and other machines required for the factory’s operations. Furthermore, it channels the waters of the Llobregat River through powerful turbines that can provide the motor force that the factory needs, with an output of up to three thousand five hundred horsepower.

This factory also has, on its compound, a residential area with housing for 260 families. The powerful manufacturers built groups of houses within the precinct of their plant, for the purpose of exercising greater surveillance and control over the workers. They founded cooperatives and even recreation centers, so that contact with the outside world would not mitigate the servility of their family of producers. They tried to enclose the entire course of the lives of the workers within the factory compound.

Now the factory no longer reflects the administrative rigidity that once characterized it. Confiscated by the workers, the latter work in Manufacturas Sedó in an environment of comradery. The situation of the war imposes some restrictions on the production process. Problems with regard to foreign currency prevent the acquisition of the required amounts of cotton, a raw material that is primarily obtained from Argentina. This is why the factory is only working a three-day week.

As for the technicians, they have cooperated effectively in the plant’s economic progress. The comrades of the Committee told us that it is unfortunate that, as a result of the circumstances of the war, production cannot be increased, since, in view of the characteristics of the factory, it could potentially be raised very high, for during normal operations, working a forty-eight hour week, an average of one hundred ten thousand meters of corduroy and two hundred thousand meters of canvas were produced, products that are primarily destined for the markets of South America, Holland, Egypt and Turkey. The factory currently has stockpiled in its warehouses, awaiting shipment, goods valued in the millions of pesetas.

Besides the production of thread and cloth, Manufacturas Sedó also produces 5,000 kilos of calcium carbide per day; and when the flow of water from the Llobregat is high, it can double this output.

LOCAL IMPROVEMENTS

Before July 19, there were about seventy families in Esparraguera who, due to a lack of work, were forced to undergo privation, hunger and despair. Currently, thanks to the spirit of solidarity of the town, liberated from all bourgeois exploitation, the breadwinners of these families have been able to get jobs in one or another local industry. And today, the problem of unemployment has been completely overcome.

As for housing, there are now about 120 confiscated homes. The Municipality is planning to proceed to confiscate all housing. When it does so, the Municipality will collect the rent, and thus obtain a source of income to utilize for public works and for all those projects that are of vital interest to the town.

Before the movement began, there was a building in the town that was to be dedicated as a public library. It was under construction, but the months went by and the work proceeded very slowly. Now, this building, of magnificent proportions, will soon be opened as a library, where young and old may immerse themselves in the cultural essence contained in its vast quantity of carefully selected volumes.

The Municipality is also deliberating with regard to a plan to expand educational services, and increase the number of schools.

In the matter of sanitation and health, the Municipality of Esparraguera is planning to build a large sanatorium on the country estate of Julio Alcalde, a well known rebel who fled to France once the revolutionary events began.

SINCERITY AND DISINTERESTEDNESS

When the Generalitat, after the July events in Barcelona, passed a law mandating a fifteen percent increase in wages, in Esparraguera the view prevailed that such an edict was not advisable. It was claimed that in a revolutionary period restrictions rather than pay increases, which would necessarily have a deleterious effect on the economy, were necessary.

There is a compulsory war tax, adjusted to the economic capacity of each family. This tax varies from five to one hundred pesetas a week. And for those who work forty hours a week in their respective trades, five percent is deducted from their pay to send to the Militias.

From the very beginning of the movement, on the part of the comrades and the townsfolk in general, there has been an atmosphere of peace, and the outbreak of passions that could lead to regrettable results has been avoided.

The comrades who have oriented their activities in harmony with the organization seek at all times to suppress those morbid influences that lead to demoralization, which could create a corrupt attitude, one that is antithetical to the revolutionary morality that tends to transform consciousness; the revolutionary morality that dignifies the human personality. So they have sought to uproot vices; to isolate anything obnoxious that remains of the moral order of the bourgeois regime. Vices, regardless of their type, adulterate the conduct of individuals, making them descend into the abyss of degradation. This is what, with their healthy opinions, the comrades of Esparraguera have sought to avoid.

A PRIEST AND SOME MONKS WHO WERE CAPABLE OF EMBRACING DIGNITY

In the first days of the revolution, the people, understanding the retrograde and reactionary nature of religion, burned the church. Of the three priests who once lived in the town, two made haste to flee far away, but one, certainly the youngest of the three, remained in the town, hiding in a house. He was discovered by the comrades; then he told them about the pressure his family put on him that finally led him to take up the career of a man of the cloth.

Currently, stripped of his black vestments, symbolic of obscurantism, the former priest is employed in the Department of War and is one of the most active and enthusiastic comrades working for the revolutionary cause.

In the residential colony in the Sedó compound there were some monks who were employed as teachers, teaching the religious instruction that has been so harmful for human progress. Another monk worked as a doctor’s assistant in the Sedó infirmary.

Now, having put aside their monkish cowls, the first two monks are working in the Municipal Hospital; and the other monk at Sedó is still working as an assistant in the factory infirmary. Experiencing the new reality, which was so different from what they imagined it would be like, they never tire of saying that they prefer their current condition. In the face and every aspect of these individuals who used to be monks in the Sedó plant, we have noted a youthful spirit and a feminine grace; signs that we hope will be accompanied by a clear understanding of what the revolution represents for everyone. An understanding that will be translated into enthusiastic collaboration, forgetting the past.