Painting of the market in El Born at the end of the 18th century. Unknown author.
These days the news is increasingly filled with articles about the rising cost of living, and the wildly fluctuating price of eggs in particular seems to be a flashpoint. But in 18th-century Barcelona, it was the price of bread that was making headlines. A municipal proclamation announcing a rise in the price of bread sparked the "Rebombori del Pa"—a revolt that disrupted life in the city for three days and ended in brutal repression.
On February 28th, 1789, the city government issued an edict raising the price of bread. This wasn’t the first time that the price of this staple had been raised over the past six months; in fact, the price of a loaf of brown bread had risen 50 percent during that period. The harvests had been poor across most of Europe for several years, and wheat and grain supplies were chronically low, making it impossible for Spain to import grain from other countries as it was wont to do in times of shortages.
Of course, the upper classes were able to afford the higher prices, but the working classes—who barely eked out a subsistence living in the increasingly overcrowded city—could not. At the time, the city of Barcelona was still contained within its medieval walls, in spite of the fact that the population had increased over 250 percent since the siege of Barcelona in 1714. However, the crown wouldn’t allow the city to expand; this was partial punishment for having chosen the wrong side during the War of Spanish Succession. As a result, living conditions were unsanitary and uncomfortable; disease, poverty and hunger were rife.
A medieval baker with his apprentice. Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Liturg. 99, fol 26 r.
Women Were Fed Up
Local government representatives announced the new prices of bread and other necessities by posting an official notice on street corners and in public squares, as was the custom of the time. However, the people of Barcelona didn’t take this particular proclamation lying down. Specifically, the women—who were the ones in charge of the household budget, the running of the kitchen and the feeding of their families—were outraged that the cost of this essential mealtime staple had now reached levels more appropriate to a luxury item.
Throngs of furious women took to the streets the same day that the edict was announced. They marched from Pla de la Boquería to the Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell, stealing loaves from bread stalls as they went, and setting some of them on fire. Their destination was the Pastim, or municipal bakery, which produced bread for the whole city; when they arrived, they looted its contents and set the building on fire, chanting “fora la fam!” (“Away with hunger!”)
They were the catalyst for a massive protest the next day; on March 1st, thousands of men also joined the riot, and over 8,000 city residents participated in demanding that the prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread, olive oil, meat and wine be reduced. They also demanded the removal of the man who held the office of Captain General at the time: a decorated Spanish war veteran named Francisco Fermin González de Bassecourt, the First Count of Asalto, a title he acquired while helping to defend the city of Havana in Cuba against the British.
At the time of the protests, Asalto had been in his position for eleven years, and was generally respected. He wasn’t a repressive ruler, and was known to support both public and cultural works. However, he was accused by the protestors of participating in grain speculation; in other words, profiting off the shortages caused by the bad harvests, and at the people’s expense.
The palace where he had his residence in the Pla de Palau was surrounded by protesters, with the intent of burning it to the ground. (Ironically, the building had once been the city’s warehouse to store wheat.) Asalto feared for his life, and fled to the Citadel—the city’s massive military complex, which contained the Bourbon army barracks and dungeon, and which stood on the site of what is now the Parc de la Ciutadella—and ordered the mobilization of troops against the civilian population. Multiple cavalry charges were carried out under his orders against unarmed protesters. However, in spite of the troops’ military advantage, the protesters had the numbers: there just weren’t enough soldiers to effectively battle such masses of people.
Engraving of an 18th century bakery, from "The Great Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers” by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert.
A Bread Distribution Monopoly
Protesters also occupied the Cathedral. The alarm "Via fora,” was cried out accompanied by the ringing of church bells which was historically how the city’s population had been called to its defense in times of attack. This enraged the king, as the Bourbons had specifically made the “via fora” cry illegal in Catalunya in 1714. However, the citizens tried to make it clear that they weren’t protesting against the king himself. “Long live the King and death to bad government!" was the traditional cry of protest, but in the case of the Bread Riots, it was adapted to "Visca el Rei, mori lo general!" (“Long live the King, death to the Captain General!). In other words, death to the king’s representative and the ruling classes, who they saw as the puppet masters behind the new bread pricing, and who were accused of speculation and hoarding in order to line their own pockets. The citizens also blamed the municipal authorities, as well as the bread sellers, whom they saw as complicit.
The authorities were seen as culpable due to the unique structure of Barcelona’s bread pricing and distribution. After the food crisis that occurred around 1537, the city government forcibly consolidated all the local bakers and made them work in one place, the pastim, or municipal bakery. The bakers had to provide a portion of all products produced at a fixed rate, which the municipal government sold at a low price in order to keep bread prices down. This measure was intended to prevent excessive price spikes or speculation, and for a time, it seemed to function just fine.
However, the Barcelona City Council decided to privatize the municipal bakery in 1767, putting the power over bread prices into the hands of the bakers’ guild, and the owners of most of the city’s bread stalls: the Torres y Compañia company. Therefore, when prices—which the government had supposedly taken such pains to keep low—went up dramatically, the city’s residents looked accusingly at those who had the most to gain from such measures.
The Bread Riots spread to the nearby towns of Mataró, Sabadell and Vic, which were experiencing similar troubles. Violence continued to escalate, until the government chose to yield to many of the protesters’ demands on March 2nd. Asalto and the Barcelona City Council entered into negotiations with the protesters, with the local Capuchin friars and craftsmen's guilds serving as mediators.
The people’s demands included the following: returning the prices of bread and other necessities to what they had been the previous August; adopting measures to prevent food hoarding and grain speculation; creating a non-profit organization that would subsidize wheat prices; releasing any individual who had been detained during the protests. The government signaled that they were in agreement with these conditions, in return for promises that the rioting would stop. With the violence finally subdued and a solution reached, things in the city seemed to return to normal, and the riots in other cities also died down.
An engraving of Barcelona's Plaça Nova in the 18th century, unknown author.
Royal Backlash and Executions
However, once news of these events reached the court of King Charles IV—thanks to a formal complaint lodged by the Torres y Compañía company—the king was unhappy at the people’s defiance in the face of the authority of his representative, and he went looking for a scapegoat. The king and the President of the Council of Castile* dismissed the Count of Asalto from his post as Captain General, and replaced him with General Francisco Antonio de Lacy y White, a politician and career military man. Lacy was under strict instructions to reverse any agreements that had been made with the leaders of the rebellion, and to deal harshly with its instigators.
Under his iron hand, hundreds of people were arrested, 90 people were sentenced to exile, and six were sentenced to death. The tribunal set their sights on five men and one woman: nicknamed “La Negreta” in reference to her dark complexion, Josefa Vilaret was a mother of two, accused of participating in and even helping start the riots.
According to the historical accounts, the condemned men had come to the city looking for work; they didn’t have strong ties to the local community, but the dark-skinned La Negreta did. Her influence as an activist, leader and organizer amongst the female population made her a threat to the Bourbons’ absolute power, and so they responded with the full might of their military authority. What she symbolized to the people who had protested by her side, and to others who had witnessed it, was more dangerous than her actions had been, so from the crown’s patriarchal, classist and undoubtedly racist view, she was a threat best eliminated.
The repressive vengeance exacted by the government on an ordinary citizen didn’t have the intended effect of tranquilizing the populace through fear; instead, it turned her into something of a folk hero. The six died by public hanging, but the majority of the city’s residents boycotted the executions in protest. Even a few prominent Bourbon supporters, such as noted Catalan writer Rafel d'Amat, Baron of Maldà, spoke out against the injustice of the sentences. In the end, La Negreta’s supposed role as an instigator of the riots was never proven.
An illustration of the Women's March on Versailles, October 5, 1789, Unknown author. Image courtesy of Gallica Digital Library, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
A Period of International Revolution
The year 1789 was important in terms of revolution in other places, too. Overseas, the colonies that would become the United States of America had already rebelled in 1775. By 1789, the French had also had enough. On July 14th of the same year, the citizens of Paris would storm that city’s infamous prison, La Bastille.
These localized people’s revolts were the result of economic difficulties across Europe dating back to the 1772 financial crisis in England and France; these severe economic downturns in two of the most powerful countries in Europe dragged down the economies of all the countries on the continent, including that of Spain. Compounded by years of bad harvest, the end result was hardship that was sharply felt by the poorest classes in Europe and in its colonies. Skyrocketing taxation and other draconian economic measures intended to shore up the British and French monarchies’ spiraling losses only made matters much worse.
England experienced protests in the following years, including the Gordon Riots in 1780, which were aimed against the government’s concession to the powerful Catholic Church. It seemed like revolution was in the air, as working-class people began to question the economic and social structures that had been the centuries-old underpinnings of a post-feudal class system.
*today, the equivalent of the Council of Ministers