The following text is translated /
adapted from the site of the Ajuntament (Town Hall) of Barcelona. It provides a
useful guide to the historical background of the Raval.
In Roman Barcelona (Barcino) there
were roads that roughly defined the area of what was to be the Raval district. From
this time to the fourteenth century, the Raval was an open field with
cultivated land, lying next to the city
of Barcelona.
The Monastery of Sant Pau del Camp was the first important nucleus of the
Raval. This church was built before the tenth century, and a small medieval
village grew up around it. The growth of the Raval into the form of a diamond took place between 1268
and 1348. These are the dates of the two rings of medieval walls which extended
the Roman bounds of city. 1268 saw the construction of the second ring of walls
under Jaume I. When further extension was needed, the third and final ring of
walls was built under Peter the Ceremonious, 1348. The 1348 walls remained for
just over 500 years, when they were knocked down to form the Eixample. They can still be traced today by streets
called ‘Ronda’ and the Paral.lel.
Pere el Cerimoniós
decided to construct the third ring of walls to meet the predicted urban growth.
The Raval was now enclosed and part of the city. It was still farmland, and intended to provide
for the subsistence of the population in times of wars and sieges. But the city did not grow as expected
in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century: there were economic
difficulties (the sea trade moved to the Atlantic), political problems (Barcelona
was ruined by the war against Juan II) and adverse social conditions (a demographic
downturn was caused by plagues and epidemics). All of these halted the growth
of the Raval, which remained in essence an agricultural area.
The Raval did, however, become
"the land of monasteries." The large amount of available building land led to the
installation of religious orders during the Counter-Reformation. One convent of
the Raval was the Dominican Convent dels Angels, built by the architect
Bartolomeu Roig in the middle of the sixteenth century. This gothic building,
led into by a modest renaissance facade, is now an exhibition space, forming
part of the cultural complex formed by MACBA and the CCCB in the square named
after it, La Plaza dels Angels, a striking mixture of old and new. “The land of
monasteries” came to an end with ‘La
Desamortización’ in 1837, when many monasteries across Spain were
expropriated and privatized by a liberal government.
In the early eighteenth century, the Raval changed
its character as industries began to settle among the gardens, convents and
guild houses. In 1718 a ban on imported printed fabrics led to the
emergence of the manufacturing industry. Between 1770 and 1840 the Raval was industrialized. From 1750 new streets began to appear
with factories and housing for workers. Guild houses disappeared or were
subdivided into rented tenements to accommodate the many hungry
peasants fleeing the countryside (in particular at the time of a severe agricultural
crisis in 1765-1766). The
factory workers settled in the Raval, closer to their place of work. This
district became the most densely populated in Europe.
Between 1783 and 1785 the ‘Erasme Gònima’ was established - the largest fabric
manufacturer of the period.
The working days stretched from five in the morning until eight at night.
In 1829, according to the Census of Manufacturers, in
the Raval there were 74 textile manufacturers, 657 looms, and 2,443 spinning
machines. Particularly important
was the Bonaplata factory, installed in the Carrer dels Tallers. It employed between 600 and 700
workers and was the first factory in Barcelona to be powered by steam.
The culmination of this process was the facility known as the ‘home-factory’,
where manufacturing plants, institutional representation and the residence of
the manufacturer all occupied the same area. El Raval was the only place within the walls where it
was possible to construct large buildings: outside the walls factories would be
threatened by political instability, such as the Carlists (a political movement
permanently at war with the monarchy), and by common banditry. The Raval was
also well placed as an industrial centre as it offered an easy route to the
port.
Industrialisation was accompanied by
industrial unrest. Low wages, long hours,
the closure of factories as a show of force by the manufacturers, the
removal of charity soup and the prohibition of workers' associations led to a
strike (July 2, 1855), in which workers demanded the right of association and a
ten-hour workday.
Workers' revolts against modern machinery, and various cholera epidemics, helped lead to
the decision to tear down the walls in 1859, thereby allowing expansion outside
the old city, which was both unhealthy and easily controlled by an increasingly
organized labour movement. From the early 1860s, companies moved to the plain outside
Barcelona being developed into the Eixample. In the new model city, the Raval
became a peripheral area, chiefly providing workers’ tenement housing. In the
early twentieth century it continued to have a predominantly working class
population. As such, it
was of wider national importance in the story of organised labour. In 1870 the
first Spanish Labour Congress took place.
In 1871 the largest Catalan union of the time (of textile workers)
joined the First International, and in 1888, the large modern union, the UGT,
was also founded in the Raval.
The Raval was becoming increasingly an area of housing for the poor, in
particular immigrant workers (for example those employed for the world fairs of
1888 and 1929) This working class played an important role during the ‘Semana
Trágica’ (26-31 July 1909), a week of riots during which the Raval was one of
the main centres for the burning of convents and the confrontation with the
army. [Added: The
anarcho-syndicalists played an important part in the organisation of strikes
and revolutionary opposition to the established order. This tradition is still
alive in the Raval today: in 1988, beneath the headquarters of the CNT Union
(Confederación Nacional de Trabajo) a bookshop opened dedicated to anarchist
and socialist publications, with its own magazine, ‘Solidaridad Obrera’
(‘Workers’ Solidarity’). The bookshop is called ‘La Rosa del Foc’(The Fiery
Rose), which was the name coined for Barcelona as parts of it burned in the
‘Setmana Trágica’ a century ago.]
Overcrowding, narrow winding roads, the proximity of the port, and the proliferation
of bars, clubs and brothels, characterized a zone in the south of the Raval
that in 1925 the journalist Àngel Marsà baptized ‘Chinatown’ (Barri Chino). The Civil Car (1936-39) greatly damaged this nightlife
district, and after the war reformation was pursued by other means: the closure
of brothels was decreed in 1956.
The first voices that called for the improvement of the Raval came in
the thirties, during the Second Republic (1931-1936), with the proposals of the
architects of GATCPAC.
The Macià plan offered integrated solutions to the problems of the neighbourhood.
But it
was the bombing of the Civil War which led to the first urban sanitation in the
southern Raval (García Morato Avenue, Avenue of the Drassanes today). During the 1980s, the
Administration promoted a policy of housing improvements, creating open spaces
and opening facilities for the community. This was the 'espinjament' or 'cleaning' programme. The name Chinatown was gradually
replaced by the historical designation ‘Raval’.
- Bars, Gender, and Virtue: Myth and Practice in Barcelona's "Barrio Chino", Anthropological Quarterly , Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 19-33
- The Geography of Evil: Barcelona's Barrio Chino, Anthropological Quarterly , Vol. 60, No. 4, In Memory of Michael Kenny (Oct., 1987), pp. 174-184
