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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the role of Catalan industrial engineers in the making of a stateless nation (within Spain) in the interwar period. After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), a home rule for Catalonia was established. In this context, the members of the Barcelona Association of Industrial Engineers developed a techno–nationalist program with the double goal of both making technology Catalan and making Catalonia technological. As an alleged ‘third class’ between the working and ruling classes, industrial engineers sought to use their expertise in scientifically managing the workshop to organize the whole nation. They participated in professional initiatives and official institutions from which they spread the ‘factory ideals’ beyond the factory, such as efficiency, rationalization and statistical monitoring. This paper focuses on the nationalist and technocratic engagement of two leading (and politically diverging) industrial engineers: socialist Estanislau Ruiz-Ponsetí and liberal Josep M. Tallada.
Acknowledgements
I am highly grateful to Waqar Zaidi, Marta Macedo and Jaume Sastre-Juan for their insightful comments of the manuscript. I would also like to thank M. Luísa Sousa, Maria Paula Diogo and Antoni Roca-Rosell for their previous comments. I am indebted to the reviewers and editors of the journal for their careful revision and kind criticisms.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Glick, Einstein in Spain.
2. Sallent-Colombo and Roca-Rosell, “La cena ‘relativista’ de Barcelona,” 81.
3. Campalans, “Nacionalisme i nacionalisme. Un confusionisme perillós” (1923, reproduced in Balcells, Campalans, socialisme català), 309–312; his thought on Catalonia “as our only vehicle of universality,” p. 130–132; and Coll et al., Quatre enginyers industrials, 89–109.
4. Translations of quotes into English are mine.
5. In general terms, Catalan nationalism did not vindicate the independence from Spain at that time. Catalan nationalism mainly asked for home rule and, in some cases, pushed for a Catalan state within a Spanish Federal Republic.
6. About the concept “techno-nationalism” as part of “the politics of engineers” and something more than an “ideology of the state,” see: Zaidi, “The Janus-face of techno-nationalism,” 64. See also: Edgerton, “The contradictions of techno-nationalism and techno-globalism,” 1-6; Antoniou, Assimakopoulos and Chatzis, “The national identity of inter-war Greek engineers,” esp. 255; and Saraiva, “Inventing the technological nation.” “Techno-nationalism” has also been applied to refer to the economic nationalism that is engendered by the technological private sector: Low, “Displaying the future.”
7. Edgerton, “The contradictions of techno-nationalism and techno-globalism.”
8. I use the term “stateless nation” to refer to a “nation without a state,” as current literature about Catalan nationalism does. In this sense, the word “stateless” has here a completely different meaning than in “stateless person” and in “stateless peoples,” as James C. Scott has named the communities which “deliberately placed themselves at the state’s periphery.” Furthermore, “without a state” has not to do with its use in “societies without a state,” as Pierre Clastres defined “primitive societies.” See: Álvarez Junco, Los dioses útiles, 213–234; Scott, The art of not being governed, 8; and Clastres, Society against the state.
9. See, for example: Meer, “The nation is technological”; Kohlrausch and Trischler, Building Europe on expertise, 21-28; Kostov, “Les ponts et chaussées français et les pays Balkaniques”; Karvar, “Les élèves roumains de l’École polytechnique”; and Myllyntaus, “Foreign models and national styles.” The cases of Asian, Middle-East and North-African nations before being post-colonial nation-states have been more explored, for instance, in Bassett, “MIT-Trained Swadeshis,” and Karvar, “L’idéal technocratique des ingénieurs.”
10. In order to have in mind to what extent (and to what extension) stateless-nations and regions asking for political autonomy are relevant within (and across) European states today, it could be worthwhile to check the number of parties (43) involved in the European Free Alliance (EFA). Member parties are from the Basque Country, Aragón, Catalonia and Galicia in Spain; Corsica, Brittany, Alsace, Savoy and Occitania in France; Aosta Valley, South Tyrol, Friül and Veneto in Italy; Lusatia, Silesia, Moravia, Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria and Frisia in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and Netherlands; Scotland, Cornwall and Wales in the UK; Carinthia in Austria; Flanders in Belgium; Rijeka in Croatia; and Åland in Finland. Other nationalist and autonomist movements also exist in Europe, such as in Northern Epirus, Asturias, Russian Latvia and Chechnya. “Member Parties”, European Free Alliance, http://www.e-f-a.org/whos-who/member-parties (accessed 2 November 2018).
11. Fischer, Technocracy and the politics of expertise, 21-30 and 144-197; and Nolan, “Productivism and Technocracy in Historical Perspective.”
12. About the concepts (and legacy) of “technocratic internationalism,” see: Schot and Lagendijk, “Technocratic internationalism in the interwar years.”
13. Schot and Lagendijk, “Technocratic internationalism in the interwar years,” 197–199.
14. Fischer, Technocracy and the politics of expertise, esp. 21-22 and 181–197.
15. Schot and Lagendijk, “Technocratic internationalism in the interwar years,” 199. Other works exploring the entanglement between nationalism, internationalism and technocratic politics in the interwar period: Picon, “French engineers and social thought”; Antoniou, Assimakopoulos and Chatzis, “The national identity of inter-war Greek engineers”; Somsen, “Science, fascism, and foreign policy”; Zaidi, “'Aviation will either destroy’”; and Edgerton, Britain’s war machine. For the next decades in France, see: Hecht, The radiance of France.
16. Among the broad literature on nationalism in Catalonia and Spain, see, for instance: Mar-Molinero and Smith, Nationalism and the nation in the Iberian Peninsula; Álvarez Junco, Los dioses útiles; Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa; and Moreno Luzón and Núñez Seixas, Ser españoles. About the presence of engineers and technicians in the birth of Catalan nationalism: Marfany, La cultura del catalanisme. On the Portuguese case, see: Macedo, Projectar e construir a nação.
17. Roca-Rosell, “Professionalism and technocracy”; and Camprubí, Engineers and the making of the Francoist regime (despite the point that “the engineers who figure in this book could hardly be called politically neutral technocrats,” as the author suggests).
18. About the concept of “Silver Age” applied to the development of physics in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century, see: Sánchez Ron, “La Edad de Plata de la física española”. An essay on science, politics and democracy which especially deals with twentieth-century Spain: Gómez, Balmer and Canales, “Science policy under democracy and dictatorship.”
19. I use the concept “non-state engineer” in contrast to “state engineer” as it is broadly used in current literature. The latter concept applied to the case of France, which was the main institutional reference for Spanish engineering during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, in: Picon, “Engineers and engineering history”; and Picon, “French engineers and social thought.” It could be worth to recall that, beyond the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the grandes écoles, non-central or non-state engineering schools in Nancy, Metz, Mulhouse, Lille, Nantes, Grenoble and Toulouse had a strong influence in the making not only of France, but also of several Eastern European and Maghreb countries, such as Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and Morocco. See, for instance: Grelon and Birk, Des ingénieurs pour la Lorraine; and Birk and Grelon, Un siècle de formation des ingénieurs électriciens. Some seminal works are: Nye, “The scientific periphery in France”; Nye, Science in the provinces; Fox and Weisz, The organization of science and technology in France; and Weisz, The emergence of modern universities in France.
20. Valentines-Alvarez, Tecnocràcia i catalanisme tècnic a Catalunya.
21. About the relevance of factory workshops and other “ordinary and ugly” spaces in the process of nation-building (despite being “epistemic peripheries” in the history of techno-nationalism), see: Macedo and Valentines-Alvarez, “Technology and the nation,” 974. In another (but complementary) direction, Gabrielle Hecht has highlighted the co-construction of Frenchness and the “beauty” of high-tension power line towers and nuclear power plants, in: Hecht, The radiance of France, 40-42.
22. Scott, Seeing like a state, 11-52. On the different ways of “seeing like a state” (and, we could add, of seeing like a factory), see: Coronil, “Smelling like a market.”
23. “Banquete de homenaje,” 79.
24. Ibid., 79.
25. Hochadel and Nieto-Galan, Barcelona.
26. In Spain, industrial engineers were high-ranked professionals trained in a wide range of engineering fields, such as mechanical, metallurgical, chemical, electrical and structural engineering (along with other areas such as political economy, industrial hygiene, labour law and statistics). In this sense, “industrial engineering” does not refer to the branch that gathers management, process and systems engineering, which was mainly developed in the second half of the twentieth century.
27. Lusa-Monforte and Roca-Rosell, “Historia de la ingeniería industrial,” 29–30.
28. Silva, “The engineering profession in Spain.”
29. Lusa-Monforte, “Debates sobre el papel de las matemáticas.”
30. Martykánová, Los ingenieros en España y en el Imperio Otomano, 171–222.
31. Kline, “Construing ‘technology’ as ‘applied science’”; and Schatzberg, “Technik comes to America.”
32. Pestre, Science, argent et politique, 51-64. See also the classic books: Hughes, American genesis; and Noble, America by design.
33. Fuster, Nicolau and Venteo, La construcció de la gran Barcelona.
34. The influence of international architecture styles in the representation of science and engineering in Barcelona and Madrid has been explored in Hochadel and Nieto-Galan, Barcelona; and Lafuente and Saraiva, “The urban scale of science.”
35. The new divisions were the Economics and Sociology Division, and the Training and Occupational Hygiene Division, both created in 1933. The other divisions were Mechanics, Construction and Railways, Chemistry and Metallurgy, Electricity, and Professional Action. “Estatuts de l’Associació.”
36. Schot and Lagendijk, “Technocratic internationalism in the interwar years,” 208. See: “Actes de la Junta Directiva,” 13 May 1931 and 3 September 1934; “Congreso de Psicotécnica Industrial de Utrech,” 7 November 1928, Arxiu Històric de la Diputació de Barcelona (AHDB) folder 4186/110; and “Conferencias sobre 'organización científica del trabajo' y ‘tracción eléctrica’,” 7 February 1928, AHDB folder 4186/110.
37. “Els enginyers industrials davant l’Estatut de Catalunya.”
38. Balcells, Campalans, socialisme català, esp. 163–165.
39. Joaquim Torrens-Ibern, “Qüestions d’ensenyament tècnic,” Arxiu Centre de Recerca d’Història de la Tècnica/UPC (A-CRHT/UPC), [s.n.]; “Actes del Consell Assessor (ETSEIB),” 19 January 1934, Arxiu Històric de l’Escola T. S. d’Enginyeria Industrial de Barcelona (AhEIB); “Ponencia sobre un estatuto de la Universidad Industrial de Barcelona,” [1933-1934], A-CRHT/UPC, 6. See: Lusa-Monforte, “La Escuela de Ingenieros, de la Dictadura a la República,” 103-106, 219-229; and Roca-Rosell, “The Autonomous Industrial University.”
40. The statutes of the Federation (approved on 4 April 1932) in “Crònica de l’Agrupació.”
41. “Actes de la Junta Directiva,” 6 May 1931, Arxiu de l’Associació/Col·legi d’Enginyers Industrials de Catalunya (A-AEIB).
42. Some examples in: Butlletí del Sindicat General de Tècnics de Catalunya (1920-1923), Lluita: òrgan de la Federació d’Empleats i Tècnics del Comerç i de la Indústria de Catalunya (1931–1936), Portantveu. Butlletí de la Federació d’Alumnes i Ex-alumnes de l’Escola del Treball (1931–1937, 1938), Butlletí de l’Associació de Directors d’Indústries Elèctriques i Mecàniques del I.E.M.A. (1930–1938), Indústria catalana (1933–1935), Butlletí del Departament d’Agricultura (1936–1938), and A.C. Documents d’Activitat Contemporània (1937).
43. About Fabra’s career as a professor of sciences in engineering schools and academies, and the possible influence of this career in his works in linguistics (including the interest of coping with scientific terminology in his dictionary), see: Garriga et al., Pompeu Fabra i Poch, enginyer; and Coll et al., Quatre enginyers industrials, 58.
44. See, for example, the work by politician, scientist and expert in animal husbandry Rossell Vilà, Diferències entre catalans i castellans.
45. Pi-Sunyer, L’aptitud econòmica de Catalunya, 71.
46. Ibid., 79.
47. Authorities pointed an accusing finger at anarcho-sindicalists in the context of the radicalization of the class struggle in Barcelona. However, the death of the engineer was related to a war crime by German agents in charge of destabilizing the Catalan industries that collaborated with Allied powers in the context of the First World War. Monés, Formació professional, 158.
48. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The invention of tradition; and Harrison and Johnson, National identity.
49. Soler, Ensaig sobre la màquina catalana.
50. Valentines-Álvarez and Sastre-Juan, “The failed Technology Museum of Catalonia.”
51. In Barcelona, non-manual workers and technicians - most of them born in Catalonia - used to group together in Catalan nationalist labour unions and associations, such as the SGTC and the CADCI (Autonomous Organization of White-Collar and Shop Workers, 1903). In general terms, these institutions were cut off from the larger labour unions that gathered the poorest and migrant workers, such as the Confederació Nacional del Treball (National Labour Confederation, 1910). See: Smith, “From subordination to contestation,” 35-43; Durgan, “The search for unity”; Lladonosa, Catalanisme i moviment obrer; Ballester, Marginalitats i hegemonies; Ferré Trill, “Estanislau Ruiz i Ponsetí”; and Ealham, Class, culture, and conflict in Barcelona. About engineering labour unions during the interwar period in other European contexts, see: Hugot-Piron, “L’improbable unité des ingénieurs.”
52. Leitch, De hombre a hombre.
53. McCartin, “’An American feeling’,” 83.
54. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “La democràcia industrial,” 1.
55. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “Constitució i orientacions del SGTC,” 7.
56. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “Els tècnics de la indústria, els conflictes socials i la futura organització paritària,” Ms, [1931?], Arxiu Biblioteca del Pavelló de la República (ABPR-UB).
57. Proudhon, De lacapacité politique des classes ouvrières, 116. See also: Hayat, “Démocratie industrielle.”
58. A classic work is Akin, Technocracy and the American dream. About how this techno-ideology circulated towards (and within) Catalonia, see: Valentines-Álvarez, Tecnocràcia i catalanisme tècnic a Catalunya, 261-280.
59. Smyth, Technocracy, 7-24.
60. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “La FET és una central sindical,” 1.
61. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “Els tècnics de la indústria i els dependents.” Ruiz-Ponsetí’s ideas on the role of technicians in the factory and in labour and social movements were also spread in journals and conferences at the AEIB, technical institutions and beyond. See: Ruiz-Ponsetí, “Els tècnics de la indústria, els conflictes socials.” See also the following documents preserved at the Arxiu Biblioteca del Pavelló de la República (ABPR-UB): “Els tècnics de la industria i les noves orientacions de les lluites socials” [193-]; “Posició de la FET en el moviment sindical català” [193-]; and “Els dependents del comerç i els tècnics d’indústria dintre del moviment social” [193-].
62. See also: Meiksins and Smith, Engineering labour, 256–285; and Reymaker, “Between capital and labour.’
63. Ferrer, “Para todos.”
64. Layret, “La organización científica del trabajo y la resistencia obrera,” 163. See also: Palomar “La organización corporativa y los ingenieros.”
65. The following years, the chief engineer of MTM Josep Serrat Bonastre kept on trying to legitimize the scientific organization of production work. See, e.g.: Serrat Bonastre, “La organización del trabajo para la producción.”
66. For other European contexts, see, for example: Malatesta, Society and the professions in Italy.
67. Garau, “Los ingenieros y la economía,” 445.
68. “I Congrés general d’empleats i tècnics,” 1.
69. Students of industrial engineering got lured by the ambitious USSR technological endeavour during the 1920s and 1930s. The journal of the student association Ergon published an enthusiastic report of a visit to the technological “jewel” of the soviet Five-Year Plans, the Dneprostroi Dam, in: Boyer “En la URSS (II).” Two classical case studies on socialist engineers beyond socialist countries: Werskey, The visible college, and Kline, Steinmetz.
70. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “La socialització de Catalunya”, January 1933, ABPR-UB; Ruiz-Ponsetí, “El desarmament total com a condició per a vèncer la crisi econòmica mundial,” 16 April 1932, ABPR-UB. See: Werskey, The visible college; Somsen, “A history of universalism”; and Somsen, “Scientists of the world unite.”
71. “Diari de sessions. Parlament de Catalunya,” 28 May 1936, 4509, Arxiu del Parlament de Catalunya. An analysis of the Ruiz-Ponsetí’s politics in the parliament, in: Portella Coll, Estanislau Ruiz i Ponsetí, 85.
72. “Actes de la Junta Directiva,” 1 February 1934, A-AEIB.
73. Artal et al., El pensament econòmic català, 167–203; Cendra, El Consell d’Economia de Catalunya, esp. 23–80; and Pagès, War and revolution in Catalonia, esp. 74–92.
74. The decree was signed by the head of the Department of Economy, Joan P. Fàbregas, a member of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederació Nacional del Treball (CNT) who was very influenced by technocratic and Taylorist ideas. See: Valentines, “Engineering the Social Revolution”; Valentines-Álvarez and Sastre-Juan, “The failed Technology Museum of Catalonia.”
75. Ruiz-Ponsetí, Les empreses col·lectivitzades, 10 and 17–18.
76. Ruiz-Ponsetí, “Introducció,” 20–21; and Ruiz-Ponsetí, Les empreses col·lectivitzades, 17.
77. Castells, Desarrollo y significado del proceso estatizador, esp. 115–133; Madariaga, Las industrias de guerra de Cataluña.
78. Comorera,“Informe presentat a la primera Conferència Nacional,” 14. All this in spite of the good results in terms of productivity of the main collectivized industries: Castells, “Revolution and collectivizations in Civil War Barcelona.”
79. Comorera,“Informe presentat a la primera Conferència Nacional,” 21.
80. Tallada, L’organització científica de la indústria (this work was also published in Spanish in 1922).
81. Amar, “La utilización racional de la energía humana”; Rubió, El trabajo humano; and Tomàs and Estivill, “Apuntes para una historia de la organización del trabajo en España.”
82. For one example of the influence of Tallada in other professional groups such as electrical and mechanical engineers, see Barenys Vergés, “Organitzacio científica del treball.”
83. Montoliu, El sistema de Taylor y su crítica.
84. Tallada was a member of the International Association for Labour Legislation, and published several texts on injury insurance and safety in domestic and industrial workplaces, such as Los venenos industriales en el trabajo a domicilio (1911), and Conclusiones de la ponencia del seguro de accidentes del trabajo en la industria (1917).
85. González, Muñoz and Pujolar, El Museu Social, 54–74; and Galí, Història de les institucions.
86. Butlletí del Museu Social 12–61 (1912–1919).
87. Tallada, Demografia de Catalunya.
88. Consell dels Interessos Econòmics de Catalunya, 7–8.
89. Artal et al., El pensament econòmic català, 235–244.
90. Butlletí Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 175 (24 June 1934), 1892.
91. Tallada’s role in this institution regarding the debates about unemployment in Catalonia, in: Conferència sobre l’atur forçós.
92. “Diari de sessions. Parlament de Catalunya,” 16 June 1933, 1869, Arxiu del Parlament de Catalunya.
93. Butlletí de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 7 (10 November 1931), 113–114; and Rubió-Tudurí and Rubió-Tudurí, El plade distribució en zones del territori català, 13–15.
94. Creus, Visió econòmica de Catalunya., esp. 328–329.
95. Tallada, Paraules als joves, 8, 10, 18.
96. Tallada, La crisi d’una civilització, 11, 16; and Tallada, Paraules als joves.
97. This work was published in the Basque Country which was occupied by the fascist army at that time. Many Catalan right-wing engineers exiled to the Basque Country, and a new board of professors of the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineers was constituted in 1937 in the Basque capital Vitoria-Gasteiz. See: Lusa-Monforte, “Depuración y autarquía.”
98. Creus, Paganismo y cristianismo en la economía, 11–12.
99. Lusa-Monforte, “La Escuela de Ingenieros en guerra,” 48–65.
100. About the case of former AEIB engineers Patrici Palomar and Antoni Robert-Robert, see: Camprubí, Engineers and the making of the Francoist regime, esp. 137–157; and Valentines-Álvarez, Tecnocràcia i catalanisme tècnic a Catalunya, 298–303.
101. Camprubí, Engineers and the making of the Francoist regime, 77–136. About the co-evolution of fascist and technological ideologies, see: Saraiva and Wise, “Autarky/Autarchy.”
102. Between 1938 and 1941, these former AEIB members made it explicit in Dyna, the official journal of the Spanish industrial engineers after the Spanish Civil War (published in the Basque Country). See, for example: Creus, “Un plan de vigorización económica de Cataluña,” and Tallada, “Técnica y Economía.”
103. See: Tècnica LIX, no. 208–211.
104. Robert-Robert, “La política econòmica d’Itàlia,” 76.