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Barcelona food retailing and public markets, 1876–1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

NADIA FAVA ,
MANEL GUÀRDIA  and
JOSÉ LUIS OYÓN
NADIA FAVA
Affiliation:
Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
MANEL GUÀRDIA
Affiliation:
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
JOSÉ LUIS OYÓN
Affiliation:
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
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Abstract

This article is a contribution to comparative research between specific urban markets trajectories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and it aims to juxtapose southern European food market experiences, particularly the Barcelona case, with west European ones. Like other big cities in southern and central Europe, Barcelona consolidated a sturdy polycentric system of district markets between 1876 and 1936, just when such markets were beginning to decline in ‘first comers’ cities of Britain and France. In the inter-war period, the market halls of southern European cities played a prominent role in the everyday food trade and as functional and socializing centres in neighbourhoods. They were poles of dense residential and kinship relations for stall vendors, especially women vendors, and foci of a large part of the food retailing business in many neighbourhoods. Barcelona's particular historical circumstances made the public covered market system a fundamental element of neighbourhood commerce and a long-term urban asset.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Special Issue 3: Markets in modernization: transformations in urban market space and practice, c. 1800 - c. 1970 , August 2016 , pp. 454 - 475
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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14 A useful summary of British and North American studies on this subject may be found in Dennis, R., Cities in Modernity. Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930 (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

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16 Addresses of men and women stall holders have been mapped from Libro Registro Mercado del Born, Institut Municipal de Mercats de Barcelona (IMMB) Archive.

17 For a comparison with journey-to-work patterns of the inter-war working-class world, see Oyón, J.L., La quiebra de la ciudad popular. Espacio urbano, inmigración y anarquismo en la Barcelona de entreguerras, 1914–1936 (Barcelona, 2008)Google Scholar, ch. 5; Oyón, J. L., ‘The split of a working-class city: urban space, immigration and anarchism in inter-war Barcelona, 1914–1936’, Urban History, 36 (2009), 86–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Municipal Barcelona Contemporary Archive, Padrón de habitantes, 1945; Mercado Central de Frutas y Verduras, Indicador (Barcelona, 1948)Google ScholarPubMed.

19 Miller, ‘Las reinas del mercado’, 321. These establishments outside the market hall mostly had male proprietors. In 1932, the shops that showed the largest proportion of female proprietors were: egg shops, 55%; salted fish shops, 35%; small game shops, 33%; grocery shops, 26%; low tax-rate food shops, 24%, and children's clothing shops, 22%, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón (ACA), Matrícula Industrial, 1932 (Industrial and Commercial Tax Register).

20 For recent food retailing mapping around municipal markets, see Pla especial d'equipament comercial alimentari de la ciutat de Barcelona (PECAB) (Barcelona, 1990); Carreras, C. (ed.), Atlas comercial de Barcelona (Barcelona, 2003)Google Scholar.

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23 Guàrdia and Oyón, ‘La formació’, 24–8.

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25 J. Benson and G. Shaw, ‘Conclusion’, in The Evolution of Retail Systems, 200; Baics, G., ‘Is access to food a public good? Meat provisioning in early New York City, 1790–1820´, Journal of Urban History, 25 (2012), 1–26Google Scholar; Baics, G., ‘Time and space: structures of urban household provisioning’, 11th International Conference on Urban History (Prague 29 Aug. – Sep. 2012)Google Scholar. To be more precise, Barcelona's picture would be similar to that of the end of the period studied by Baics with a century time span difference.

26 Shaw, G., ‘Recent research on the commercial structure of nineteenth-century British cities’, in Denecke, D. and Shaw, G. (eds.), Urban Historical Geography. Recent Progress in Britain and Germany (Cambridge, 1988), 236Google Scholar–42.

27 Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict, and Ealham, ‘La lluita pel carrer’. The photographs by Margaret Michaelis and Gabriel Casas are magnificent witnesses to the street commerce in the Raval district.

28 Administrative Municipal Archives of Barcelona, Municipal Acts-Plenary, 26 Jul. 1955, fol. 120v, and Municipal Acts-Plenary, 28 Apr. 1956, fol. 54: ‘We currently have 24 market halls. . .and in relation to Barcelona's one and a half million inhabitants they are insufficient to attend to the population since the proportion is of less than one market per 50,000 inhabitants, whereas a healthy supply policy advises the allotting of a maximum of 20,000 inhabitants to each market. For diverse circumstances. . .the supply system in our city cannot be compared to other systems of large European and American cities. For this reason, considering the difficulties which would be entailed by the construction of the large number of market halls required by the public, this insufficiency should be solved by means of private markets, that is to say, by providing access and channels to private initiative as an element of collaboration in the municipal activity.’

29 Administrative Municipal Archives of Barcelona, Municipal Acts-Plenary, 2 Feb. 1967, fol. 156.

30 Administrative Municipal Archives of Barcelona, Municipal Acts-Plenary, 4 Aug. 1966, fol. 79 et seq.

31 Tarragó, M., ‘An axis of the “Barcelona model”’, Barcelona Metròpolis, 86 (2012), 59Google Scholar.