The industrial belt that encircles Barcelona is called «El cinturón rojo» because of the political color, mostly left-wing, of its population. The fact is that these populations and the labor movement that developed there from the 60s, and especially during the transition, have been decisive for the political and social history of the city and the country in general. One of the focal points of this belt is, without a doubt, the Baix Llobregat. The radical transformation of this territory in the last 50 years has been spectacular. It went from being the vegetable garden of Barcelona to being the industrial reserve of the metropolitan territory. In the Baix Llobregat the population increased by 380% in 25 years, from 1950 to 1975. As one of the interviewees says «what was experienced in England, France and Germany, in the industrial revolution, in more than 100 years, in the Baix Llobregat lived compressed into 20». Thousands of job seekers came from all over the state. Most of the new arrivals were from Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia and the living and urban conditions were poor. Only the neighborhood struggles returned dignity to the space in the form of schools, clinics, traffic lights… The documentary focuses on the labor struggles in the region during the last stage of the Franco regime, from 1970 until the arrival of the first democratic elections, in 1977. Struggles that faced Franco’s repression seriously worried the government, so much so that even a Franco minister went so far as to say «Spain has two problems: ETA and Baix Llobregat» . This work by Luis Campo Vidal, financed by the Utopia foundation and which has not been seen either in cinema or on TV, does not aim to summarize old battles, but to convey how far you can go through collective organization, and to recover a inescapable part of our recent history.
In the subsequent colloquium, in addition to the director’s participation, we had the president of the Utopia foundation, Francesc Castellana, and the general secretaries of CCOO and UGT in Catalonia, Joan Carles Gallego and Camil Ros.
Data sheet
Title: El cinturón rojo
Screenplay and direction: Luis Campo Vidal
Production: Sagesse SL
Director of photography: Jeremi Delaveau
Edition: Marcel Cifré
Year: 2017
Duration: 72′