Las cigarreras
Conversation between Teresa Lanceta, Nuria Enguita and Laura Vallés Vílchez.
NE-LV Many different voices come together in this publication, as befits a work and a life in which orality has been so important: the gitanas, with their stories and song; the women weavers of the Middle Atlas, guardians of a tradition; the forgotten voices of the Moriscos in the Spanish rug... In the video, Cierre es la respuesta (2011), you capture the voices of the women who worked in the tobacco factory in Alicante. How did you approach them? How did you decide the structure of the film?
TL Before the factory closed and was converted into a culture centre, the city council of Alicante commissioned me to make a visual document that gathered testimonies of the factory while it was still functioning. I saw it as a great opportunity to shed light on an area of industry, peopled by women, that was not being talked about enough. And what was to be but a brief enquiry into the subject, lasting two or three months, turned into a profound exploration of these women’s lived experiences that took a year and a half of intense work.
Las cigarreras is a compilation of the memories, stories and feelings of the women who worked in that Alicante tobacco factory, which I am now editing for the exhibition with the help of the filmmaker Virginia García del Pino. I recorded voices, not images, so that the women could talk more freely, because they were excited to tell the stories of their youth. Images would have brought it into the present, whereas voices are timeless. When the tobacco factory opened in 1801, Alicante was a walled city with a small port. Situated outside these walls, the factory was staffed by women from poor neighbourhoods and nearby farming villages. Those women, through their labour and dexterity, sustained this industry for two centuries, working very long hours. At first, they handrolled the cigarettes on a piecework basis, seated around a table; and then, when industrialisation took over, they operated the machines.
A census from the end of the nineteenth century shows that when Alicante totalled some 23,000 inhabitants, there were over 3,000 women working in the factory, a number that contrasts with the approximately hundred men, junior hands and mechanics. The data suggest that these women’s wages helped to support a large part of the city’s households and that they contributed to the city’s considerable economic growth, which saw the demolition of the city walls, the enlargement of the port and the construction of new neighbourhoods.
So much time spent together meant that the women shared experiences, broadened their horizons and made friendships. Being a cigarrera was not only a job, it was a way of life, rooted in the women’s shared sense of belonging and self-identity. The cigarrera legend was forged by strong characters, hard work and deep solidarity.
‘Working gives you independence; you finance yourself. You have more freedom to do things and you make friends. It was a very good thing, really good. It gave you another perspective on the world. Yes, because it wasn’t just you; it was other things too. Something would happen to someone, and you compared your lot with theirs. I made my best friends there.’
‘The general attitude among the cigarette girls was that you went into work wearing your best outfit and looking great, even if you couldn’t afford to eat. The world was yours! Oh, the power of money! Yes, yes, yes and yes! It was a bit like women’s liberation, except that once inside, behind closed doors, you had to change into one of those boilersuits and then you ceased to be you; you became just another ant. You had to fit in and bow down.’
‘I’ve always said: nobody gave me anything. I’ve worked hard, and so have my closest workmates.’
‘“Doesn’t your mother know there’s a strike today?” All this would happen inside the factory because no one was allowed out until the job was done. They were demanding their rights.’
‘Don’t think they were oppressed because they weren’t. They would lock themselves in there, in Tabacalera, and not come out.’
‘Toniqueta, make sure the kids look nice, we’re on strike today!’
‘For me it was a lovely experience, especially because of the bond amongst the girls. You went to work and whatever they told you to do, you did; but there was real camaraderie, and it was a case of “OK, if a machine is playing up and yours is going fine and you can lend your co-worker a hand, you go down and help her”. Sometimes you would get told off because you weren’t supposed to leave your spot, but all the same we did and we’d help each other out. And if everything was running as it should, it was a shared source of pride; but if something went wrong, we’d buckle down and get through it.’
‘I got my fighting spirit and my social and working-class consciousness from my mother.’
‘When we went to demonstrations or were preparing for one the night before, my son and my daughter would say, “We always have lentils when there’s a demonstration the next day!”’