On September 27, 1976, 40 years ago, the residents of the La Bomba neighborhood demonstrated by blocking the Gran Via—one of the main access roads to Barcelona—to demand their relocation to the apartments in the nearby el Gornal housing estate (L’Hospitalet).
A few weeks ago, we visited Francisca Vintró, who was a social worker in the neighborhood and actively participated in that neighborhood mobilization. Francisca still kept some of the projectiles used by the General Reserve Company of the Armed Police—known as “los especiales de Valladolid”—to repress the residents in a glass jar, and she donated it to us for the archive of the Interpretation Center of the City from the Shack (CICdB).
The jar contains a rubber bullet, a gas canister, and a pellet, along with a ribbon with the colors of the senyera on which the word “LIBERTAD” (FREEDOM) can be read, handwritten. On the outside, two labels with raised letters read:
«27
DE
SETEMBRE
7
DE
OCTUBRE
LA
BOMBA
1.976»
And “BARRIO DE LA BOMBA” (LA BOMBA NEIGHBORHOOD) over the colors of the senyera and the flag of Andalusia respectively.
Francisca’s involvement—which we will discuss more extensively on another occasion—in the neighborhood protests of La Bomba, gives a good account of a historical moment in which the work of social workers was not to manage cases and distribute aid, but to collaborate with the residents in the organization of the neighborhoods and in their struggles.