Valmeline’s red coats (Tarragona, 1974). Workingwomen, strikers and role models of the labour movement

Abstract

Along the last years of Franco’s dictatorship, social and political conflicts extended beyond main industrials areas of Spain and took strength also in the outlying regions, where low intensity conflicts had been characteristic until then. On August 1974 Tarragona burst into the Spanish strike scene as the second province in number of non-worked hours. The main reason was the conflict in Valmeline’s textile company. Leaded by young workingwomen, that conflict overtook the factory-frame and moved into the city, achieving a local dimension and becoming a public order problem. The strike in Valmeline became a local emblem for workers’ mobilization in the years to come. It was a female-construct role model, which was adopted by most of the androcentric labour movement in Tarragona.