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This session presents a research documentary that explains how Catalonia underwent a unique process of collectivization, exploring one of the most extraordinary episodes of our most recent history: the expropriation and collective management of firms by their workers between 1936 and 1939. Worker organizations took over barbers’, workshops, cinemas, and companies as big as General Motors, Campsa, Hispano Suiza, Aigües de Barcelona and Damm. Some 80% of industries and services were collectivized in one of the most innovative and radical—at the root—transformations of the 20th century. This documentary was partially financed by crowdfunding and has a creative commons license.

We are currently gripped by an economic crisis of vast proportions and do not know what the outcome will be, or when. We are hearing increasing talk of collective economy or an economy of solidarity as possible alternatives. The screening will be followed by a debate to analyse the situation of cooperativism today in our country and, with the aid of participating experts, find out just how viable it is.

19.00 Presentation and screening

 Economia col·lectiva. L’última revolució d’Europa (Collective economy. Europe’s last revolution), Eulàlia Comas, 2013, 65’

 20.25 Debate with Eulàlia Comas, Antoni Castells i Duran (Doctor of Economy, author of Les col·lectivitzacions a Barcelona 1936-1939), Joan Ullés i Bascompte (collectivist of Terrassa’s Taller Confederal Número 1) and Lluís Rodríguez Algans (economist, cooperativist and member of ICEA (Institut d’Estudis Econòmics i de l’Autogestió).