This project recounts a history of Metro companies in the city of Barcelona; that wants to serve as the first step for an investigation about the social history of the workers of the same.
In the importance of Metro companies for the city, it is not necessary to insist, because the value of their assets, the volume of business and the importance of the externalities they generate make them a key element in the structuring of the urban space. On the other hand, despite its importance, only works that prefer the anecdote to the analysis have been published on them, with exceptions being that of the engineer Carles Salmerón (1992) and that of the geographer Carme Miralles (2002). The absence of published economic studies that served as a starting point for a social study of work explains why this research.
In order to carry out a history of the company (at least in its essential aspects) the chosen sources have been the “memorias de empresa” (Accounting reports). The use of this source conditions the results of the investigation in an important way, since it is still an official version of what is happening in the company. Until the 60s the memories are little more than a simple yearbook of what happened, from that moment, which coincides with the great expansion of the network of meters, the memories are more generous in information, analysis and data. In any case they constitute an essential source that in the future will be able to complete with another type of documentation.
This project focuses on two main types of issues: Firstly, from where did the capital necessary to build and modernize such an expensive business come from? and secondly, what have been the economic results of the Metro companies throughout its history?
Obtaining resources is one of the keys that explains the existing metro offer in Barcelona, its absence or influx determine whether the network grows or not. From the outset, it should be noted that the railway transport business will never generate benefits capable of financing possible expansions, so that metro companies will be forced to seek external resources. In this respect the two companies created in the twenties, the “Gran Metropolitano” and “el Transversal” will respond in different ways. The Gran Metropolitano, which is a totally private company, owned by banks and owned by Tranvías de Barcelona, resorts to the issuance of obligations, the result will be a debt that devours annual profits and a stagnant line in its mileage until after the municipalization. “El Transversal”, born on similar dates with the never fulfilled vocation of rail link, is since its founding a company decisively participated by the City of Barcelona, to finance the initial project will resort to the mediation of the consistory as a guarantor or lender although that it will not avoid the legal problems with the “obligacionistas”. The private underground transport companies, with a great financial weakness and unable to grow, will be municipalized in the 1950s and merged in 1960; before them two very different experiences, on the one hand the collectivization 1936-39 and the nationalization of “El Transversal” 1940-42. The political will to provide Barcelona with an authentic metro network that facilitated the surface circulation of the growing private automobile fleet resulted in the approval of the “Ley de Regulación del Transporte de Barcelona” (1957), from then on the State would cost the infrastructure works. The superstructure (all necessary to convert some tunnels part of a metro network) was in the hands of the municipality, which chose as a means of rapid financing the issuance of obligations through the company. In the mid-seventies the system that had allowed a rapid growth of the metro network begins to show weaknesses, on the one hand the State, in full political change, limits its investments, and on the other the company drags an impressive financial debt, aggravated by the appearance of negative exploitation results.
The crisis will be saved thanks to the extraordinary contributions of the City Council, to the assumption by the Generalitat in 1980 of all spending on superstructure and infrastructure and the subsidy by the State of the deficit appeared. It will be these years of significant reforms, on a path towards the global integration of urban transport not only in Barcelona but throughout the metropolitan area, steps such as the appearance of the joint venture of Metro and Buses (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona) the birth of the coordinator Entitat Metropolitana del Transport and consortium Autoritat Metropolitana del Transport, are milestones in this path of integral management. The study of the exploitation results, or in other words of whether there are profits or losses in the annual management, has revealed that the great change occurs in the middle of the seventies, until then the annual results had always been positive, starting from from that moment one enters into constant deficits. Although there is this clear division, shorter periods of time can be established where specific explanatory keys work.
In conclusion, the economic history of the company helps to explain a multitude of aspects that affect work: its organization, the intensity of the technification of tasks, the evolution of hiring or salary and social policies of the company. In turn, the issue of “work” is one of the keys when determining ordinary costs and quality in the service. Now there is a framework that complements future research on the social history of work in the Barcelona Metro; Now we know when the company acts as a labor demand, what are its wage policies or technological innovation. The following steps in the investigation would have to guide a socioprofessional identification of the urban railway collective, a systematic approach to the organization of work, the reconstruction of the labor and training trajectories of the workers, the determination of the income levels of the workers, as well as towards its insertion in the city, given its predominantly immigrant origin, and the articulation of its associations with the Barcelona labor movement
