RECUPEREM ELS BARRIS by Slim Art
L'Hospitalet
12.6.2019
From the 8th to the 12th of June we were in Carrer Riera de la Creu (Hospitalet de Llobregat) doing a mural with the artist Slim Art. This is an initiative promoted by Aigües de Barcelona, Aftershare and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council within the framework of #RecuperemElsBarris, the aim of which is to recover the historical memory of the neighborhoods and cities in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
On this occasion, the theme chosen has been the textile industry that was consolidated in this town during the twentieth century and that allowed the city to expand and prosper, laying the foundations of the evolution that would make it what it is today. On the other hand, these textile factories were composed mostly by women and, therefore, this action sought to make visible their work and their crucial role in economic transformation and of the textile industry and the city of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, as the role they played is often omitted.
This way, Slim Art was in charge of making the mural that captured this piece of the city’s history and the reality of the women who worked in the textile factories during the last century. In order to put it into practice, the artist relied on a photograph in which women appeared spinning with industrial looms and different machines used in the textile production of factories, using their characteristic style. similar to oil painting using plastic paint and using sets of whites, blacks and grays to highlight this ancient photography effect. The result has been a work that fits perfectly with the aim of the project: to open a window into the past and recover fragments of the history of the neighborhood.
Finally, during the afternoon of July the 10th, the mural was inaugurated, an event chaired by Núria Marín (Mayor of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat) and Ignacio Escudero (Director General of Aigües de Barcelona) in which they invited to the citizens to gather, discover this new work and share this chapter of the history of the city.
In the video, Slim Art's mural recovering the textile memory of L'Hospitalet: a city that little over a century ago had 5,000 inhabitants and today has more than 260,000, transformed by factories staffed above all by women. The interviewee is Joana Sánchez, who arrived in 1946 aged seven and started at the factory at fourteen, as a spinner, for 90 pesetas a week.
The video in text (abridged) (translated from Catalan)4 min 42 s
The reportOur neighbourhoods are alive and never stop changing, and that is very positive. But so much change means many of the things that defined an era are gradually lost. Today we have come to L'Hospitalet to walk its streets and talk to one of the people who still keep its memory alive. And since the best way not to forget a memory is to make it visible, with the help of an urban artist we will set her story down in a mural.
This is the second most populous city in Catalonia, with more than 260,000 inhabitants, when little over a century ago there were barely 5,000. The rapid industrial development of the early twentieth century turned an agricultural village into the city we know today. At the forefront of that transformation was the textile sector, which drew tens of thousands of people from all over Spain to work in the factories here, very often in precarious conditions.
And most of those people were women. Women who played a key role in the city's social and economic transformation, but who saw their work made invisible. To reclaim their memory, today we are talking to Joana Sánchez, one of so many women whose work helped build L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.
When did you arrive here?
JoanaWe arrived in '46. We left from the port of Cartagena, on a cargo ship. We already had my aunts' letters saying we were going to L'Hospitalet, to Carrer de l'Estrella, in the Sant Josep neighbourhood.
Do you remember how old you were?
JoanaI had just turned seven. There was a whole crowd of us at home: more than twelve people. And more.
How has L'Hospitalet changed?
JoanaOh dear, oh dear. I don't recognise it. I feel in L'Hospitalet like someone who comes in from the countryside and has never seen a city. It has changed for the better, because what is here now wasn't here before; but what was here before — do you know the value I placed on it? Those four little shops.
At fourteen you started at the factory.
JoanaI turned fourteen and off I ran. Day-to-day life was lovely, even though we worked. I have good memories, because it was a very well-mannered factory: they treated you with care.
And what was your job?
JoanaA spinner. They moved me to a new section and that is where the balls of yarn were made: they brought the bobbins from the spinning frames, the bobbins went on and the balls were wound there. You were paid by the week, and it was 90 pesetas.
I got up at half past three and at four I ran out, because we walked and all of us would gather in the street. I had a little alarm clock, but by the time it went off the neighbour was already banging on my ceiling with her broom.
Did everyone work there? It was the big factory.
JoanaThe big factory, and whole families. In those days I was happy, because everything was valued.
The reportJoana, precisely because there is no memory or awareness of this era that was so decisive, we want to show you something. Look over here, step back, and tell us whether this reminds you of anything.
Would you go back?
JoanaGo back and go through what I went through, no. Go back to how we are now, I wouldn't say no, because I was happy.
Abridged version: direct quotes are kept; repetitions, overlapping speech and passages unrelated to the project are left out.
