Barcelona

V

Barcelona’s Economy

The modern economy of Barcelona was built on two pillars: commerce (both regional and international) and industry, particularly textiles. Both sectors continue to be important. The industrial belt around the city contains the largest concentration of textile factories in Spain. Local products include metalwork (especially machinery and precision instruments), chemicals, glass, paper, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and printing.

However, as in the rest of Europe, industrial production declined in relative importance in the late 20th century. Many industries moved farther away from the city center, and in some cases, out of the metropolitan region altogether. Barcelona's economy responded by shifting its focus to the service sector: About 30 percent of the city's gross value added was in industry and construction, and 70 percent was in services. Other important industries and services include telecommunications, administration, culture and arts, health care, and tourism.

Barcelona is the leading center of roadways and transportation in northeast Spain. It is connected to the rest of Spain and France by a major interstate toll road, as well as an extensive network of commuter and long-distance trains. Its airport, located south of the city in El Prat, was rebuilt from 1988 to 1992 and services national and international traffic. Express train service to Valencia, southwest of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, began in 1997. Public transportation within the city is subway and bus; a large part of the historic center is a pedestrian zone closed to vehicle traffic.

VI

Government and Contemporary Issues

Every four years, voters in Barcelona elect a city council composed of 41 members. These council members choose a mayor from the lists of candidates proposed by the leading political parties. As the city's chief executive and administrative official, the mayor presides over both the civic government and the Confederation of Municipalities. The confederation is an umbrella organization for coordinating urban planning in the greater Barcelona area. The powers and jurisdictions of both municipal and metropolitan bodies are limited to some degree by the Catalan government, which oversees a wide range of policy issues, including regional transport, and land and water use.

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Barcelona experiences many of the same problems of other modern European cities. Drug abuse and high unemployment are particularly pronounced among younger and poorer residents. Although crime rates are low by American standards, they nevertheless have risen in recent decades. In addition, the city’s financial resources have not kept pace with the growing demand for the broad range of services provided by the municipal government.

Barcelona also faces typical environmental challenges, such as controlling air pollution—caused largely by heavy automobile traffic—and maintaining adequate water quality and waste disposal. Starting in the mid-1980s, the city began to invest heavily in local infrastructure, especially in the inner and outer highway belts, to address many of these threats to the quality of urban life.

VII

Barcelona’s History

Archaeological evidence points to prehistoric settlement in the vicinity of Barcelona. The city itself was founded by the Romans about 15 bc as a small walled city, or what the Romans called a colony—a kind of fortified camp. Its location on the Via Augusta, the main overland trade route linking the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of the Roman Empire, assured Barcelona’s prosperity as a center for commerce. By the early 400s ad, Roman control over the city fell to the Visigoths, who established Barcelona as one of the leading cities of their kingdom. The Visigoths surrendered the city to the Moors, Muslim conquerors from North Africa, in 713, but the Islamic presence lasted less than 100 years.

In 801 Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, conquered Barcelona and incorporated it into the Carolingian Empire. Under Carolingian rule, several counties were created; each was governed by its count. The city and its supporting region became the self-governing county of Catalonia, or Barcelona. In the 800s Wilfred the Hairy, the count of Barcelona, ruled over the city and much of the present-day region of Catalonia. The period of Wilfred’s rule is traditionally recognized as the beginnings of the Catalan nation.

Due to Barcelona’s role as the leading Carolingian fortress south of the Pyrenees Mountains, as well as its favorable position for local and maritime trade, the city began to expand beyond its Roman walls beginning in the late 900s. The breakup of the Carolingian Empire in 843 had ensured greater autonomy for the counts, who emerged as virtually independent rulers of northeast Spain. The authority of the counts was lessened when the king of Aragón united Aragón with Catalonia through the creation of the Aragonese-Catalan confederation in 1137. This made Barcelona a part of Aragón, although Catalonia continued its own language, customs, and laws. Thereafter, the city gained in commercial and political importance as a Mediterranean trading and shipping center.

With its flourishing commerce and industry, Barcelona grew rapidly. By the mid-1300s, it boasted about 50,000 inhabitants. Two new sets of city walls had to be built to accommodate the growing number of residents, many of whom were peasants from the nearby countryside who migrated to the city in search of economic opportunities. However, urban expansion ended abruptly around 1350. The sudden outbreak of the Black Death plague caused not only the deaths of thousands of citizens, but also the beginning of a prolonged population and economic downturn. Political conflict, ranging from popular protest against the merchant oligarchy to participation in the Catalan civil wars of the late 1400s, delayed Barcelona's recovery.

In 1469 Ferdinand of Aragón married Isabella of Castile, creating the basis of a Spanish nation that absorbed Barcelona under a broader, Hispanic monarchy.

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the city tenaciously defended its rights and privileges as an independent polity and even led the so-called War of the Reapers, an ill-fated movement to secede from the monarchy in 1640. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), Barcelona again took the lead in resisting the centralizing monarchy in Madrid. Its surrender in September 1714, however, marked the end of its centuries-old role as the most prosperous and independent city-state of Mediterranean Spain.

Ironically, that political failure gave way to economic success. During the 1700s Barcelona emerged as Spain's leading industrial city. In particular, the dramatic growth in factory-style production of calico, brightly colored, stamped cotton cloth, led the city to triple its population, from about 30,000 in 1715 to more than 100,000 in 1800. Rapid economic expansion increased Barcelona's wealth and helped consolidate power in the hands of a new middle class. It also brought numerous problems. Housing conditions for the city's working classes were dismal. Poverty was widespread, especially during the French occupation of Spain in the early 1800s and the political upheavals of the late 1800s.

Industrial Barcelona soon assumed its place as economic capital of Spain, in contrast with the political and administrative capital, Madrid. It also confirmed its long-standing role as the center of Catalan culture, especially in the wake of the Renaixença, or rebirth of Catalan language and literature, which started in the 1830s. Barcelona also underwent architectural renewal as the city expanded beyond the old medieval walls beginning in the 1860s. By the time of the 1888 Universal Exposition, Barcelona was a showcase for modern architecture. The exposition also introduced early works by the most prominent local architect, Antoni Gaudí, whose many buildings were designed in a highly personal art nouveau, or modernist, style. Gaudí’s works have become the most renowned symbol of the emerging middle-class city.

By the early decades of the 20th century, Barcelona was home to a wide range of groups and parties across the political spectrum. Drawing on its strong regional and working-class traditions, the city was known as 'Red Barcelona' because of its leftist politics. It was a mecca for supporters of a Spanish republic that opposed the central monarchy, as well as Catalan nationalists of all ideological persuasions. Above all, the city was famous for its anarchist movement (see Anarchism). With the largest urban anarchist movement in the world, the city experienced frequent violence between workers and groups representing the ruling classes, such as employers and the Roman Catholic Church. Protests against the Church’s power began with anticlerical riots in the so-called Tragic Week of 1909.

In July 1936 General Francisco Franco led a military uprising against Spain’s elected democratic government, known as the Second Republic. This event triggered the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), as Franco’s troops failed to capture Barcelona, Madrid, and a few other areas in Spain. Catalonia as a whole came under the control of anarchists and workers, many of whom supported a government led by leftist Catalan nationalists. Barcelona and Madrid were the leading centers of Republican resistance to Franco’s insurgents. Both cities were subjected to aerial bombing and suffered food shortages and other privations throughout the war. Moreover, factional rivalries between parties within the Republican coalition led to open fighting in the streets of Barcelona. During these so-called May Events of 1937, approximately 500 people were killed and the anarchists lost their power.

Franco's forces finally conquered Barcelona in January 1939. The fall of Madrid shortly thereafter began 36 years of Franco’s right-wing military dictatorship in Spain. Throughout this period, Barcelona was a center of worker and student resistance. Franco banned regionalism, which meant that public use of the Catalan language, as well as traditional folk dances and other Catalan cultural expressions, were illegal. During the late 1960s and the 1970s a resurgence of Catalan nationalism brought demands for autonomy, the greater use of the Catalan language, and the restoration of Catalan political institutions.

The death of Franco in 1975 opened the door for these changes as a period of transition to more democratic rule began. In 1977 the Generalitat, the Catalan government, was restored. The following year Spain’s new, post-Franco constitution allowed autonomous communities or regional governments within Spain. Barcelona once again became the political capital of Catalonia. The city achieved world recognition in 1992, when it hosted the Summer Olympic Games. This event culminated an ambitious program of urban planning and renewal, which converted Barcelona into one of the world's centers of architecture and design.

Whether Barcelona's future will be as buoyant in the 21st century remains to be seen. The city and its people confront many of the same problems that other modern metropolitan centers face. Sustaining growth and good quality of life within a rapidly changing, postindustrial economy is a formidable challenge for any city. Still, Barcelona brings to this struggle many strengths, not the least of which is the remarkable spirit of citizenship and civic pride that has long been one of its major resources.

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