Manteros (Spain)
| Manteros đȘđž | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Location: Spain | ||
| Definition: Informal street vendors disposing their merchandise on a blanket | ||
| Keywords: Spain â Informal economy â Informal employment â Trade â Second hand â Flea market â Entrepreneurship â Fee avoidance | ||
| Clusters: Informal entrepreneurship | ||
| Author: Horacio Espinosa | ||
| Affiliation: Observatorio de AntropologĂa del Conflicto Urbano (OACU), Universidad de Barcelona | ||
By Horacio Espinosa, Observatorio de AntropologĂa del Conflicto Urbano (OACU), Universidad de Barcelona
| From the Spanish âmantaâ (blanket), manteros are street vendors that offers souvenirs, football t-shirts, footwear, souvenirs, sunglasses and other goods to customers in a public space. In the last decade, this commercial activity has been practiced by Senegalese migrants. In wolof language they are known as modou-modou, which stands for informal traders or migrant workers (Zubrzycki 2016). |
Top Manta is another vernacular way to name these street vendors. More in use from the 1990âs to the 2010âs it is a word game between "manta" and the pirated CDâs âtopâ hits that manteros used to sell. In the video of the song "Santa Claus" by the Senegalese rapper and ex-mantero Lorey Money, the sale of pirated records and DVDs is referred to as "top manta". In the same video, the rapper shows another iconic element of the mantero sale: a cord device used to secure the merchandise inside the blanket. In this way, the blanket becomes a bundle that the mantero can carry on his back, allowing him to escape the police. Lorey Money refers to this action as âdoing the Santa Claus".
In the 1930s, during the government of the second spanish Republic, - manteros was practiced by Spanish people, that frequently clashed with the police in a 'fight for the street' (Ealham 2011: 203). In the 1990s, African immigration to Spain consisted mainly of North Africans, mostly Moroccans, whereas the sub-Saharan community saw Spain as a transit point to traditional destination countries such as France, Germany or the United Kingdom (Robin 1996: 57). Yet, by the early 2000s for Senegalese and Sub-Saharan migrants Spain had become "a migratory destination comparable to Germany, the United Kingdom or France" (Sow 2004: 235). As the new poor, in lack of a work permit, Senegalese migrants are drawn to informal activities as street vending.
In Barcelona, most manteros are identified and known to police forces, that can go as far as monitoring them from the moment they leave their homes to reach La Rambla, the tourist heart of the Catalonian capital. Still, without any real integration policies, Spanish authorities limit to prosecute street vendors through the work of police patrols. Moreover, ad hoc regulations are aimed at limiting their mobility. For example, by prohibiting the introduction of âlarge packagesâ into the subway, hence blocking their access to the main means of transport (Diario Izquierda, April 20 2016).
If they overcome this barrier, manteros then need to find a spot to sell their products. To this end, street vendors carry out preliminary explorations verifying the presence of the Guardia Urbana, Mossos dâEsquadra (Autonomous Police of Catalonia) or plainclothes police officers (secretas). If they feel unsecure, they will wait on different platforms and passages of the Catalonia metro station for the right moment to display the blanket, or what De Certeau calls âkairosâ, term that can be translated as the appropriate or opportune moment (1980: 96).
The Guardia Urbana van, or la lechera (âmilk truckâ) in street slang, is used to circulate in the middle of the pedestrian walkway of La Rambla with the intention of "running over" the manteros. They reacted by pulling the cord to transform the ambu (âblanket" in Wolof language) into sare (the package). They got up and surrounded the van, stood at the rear of the vehicle and then unfolded the blanket again. Repeated several times, this scene became a sort of choreography of the urban conflict in La Rambla. In Barcelona , the role of the police has a cosmetic character and the presence of the manteros is incompatible with the carefully designed image of Barcelona (Espinosa 2017, 2021).
On the 2nd of October 2015, at the Santa MĂłnica art center of Barcelona, a group of about eighty manteros organised the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes de Barcelona (Popular Union of Street Vendors of Barcelona). The organisation was founded as a reaction to the death of the Senegalese street vendor Mor Sylla in the tourist area of Salou (Tarragona). Officially, the street vendor "fell" from a balcony while being chased by the Catalan regional police (Mossos d'Esquadra) in an operation "against piracy".
According to the Catalan police force, between 2011 and 2015 the Mossos d'Esquadra had invested 28,000 hours of work in prosecuting street vendors. When questioned about the death of Mor Sylla, the Minister of the Catalan goverment justified the fact by declaring that the prosecution of street vendors was indispensable because their activity "puts the Welfare State at risk" (El Diario, 26 August 2015).
On 15 March 2018, the mantero Mame Mbayé was killed in a police chase in the Madrid neighbourhood of Lavapiés. His death was followed by a day of riots against the police. The politicisation of street vendors was natural and even a mantero has reached institutional politics, as in the case of the election to the Madrid Parliament of the former mantero Serigne Mbayé Diouf in the ranks of the political party Podemos.
The "defence of public space" has been one of the classical arguments used to justify police harassment against African manteros, not only in Spain, but also in Argentina (MarcĂșs and Peralta, 2021) or Italy (Molinero and Avallone, 2020). On the 25th of May 2015, the director of the conservative newspaper La Vanguardia Marius Carol wrote an editorial in which he described the public space as "the greatest conquest of democracy", quoting Aristotle to justify his discourse in its defence from destructive forces, in this case the street vendors, that he described as âterrorists of public spaceâ (La Vanguardia, 25 May 2015). These elements testify that in Spain and other countries there is large a part of the public opinion opposing manteros and their survival strategies.
References
Carol, M. 2015. âEditorialâ. Diario La Vanguardia, 25 May: 2
De Certeau, M. 1980. La invenciĂłn de lo cotidiano, Tomo 1: Artes de Hacer, desarrollo. MĂ©xico, D.F/Guadalajara: Universidad Iberoamericana/ITESO
Ealham, C. 2011. âLa lucha por la calle: la venta ambulante, la cultura de protesta y la represiĂłn en Barcelona (c. 1930-1936)â, Ayer. Revista de Historia ContemporĂĄnea. 81/2011 (1), 173-205
Espinosa, H. 2017. âEl mercadillo rebelde de Barcelona. PrĂĄcticas antidisciplinarias en la ciudad mercancĂaâ, Quaderns-e de l'Institut CatalĂ d'Antropologia, (22 (1)), 67-87
Espinosa, H. 2021. âInformal appropriations in the face of the state of exception. Ethnographic snapshots of the right to the cityâ, AIBR - Revista de AntropologĂa Iberoamericana, 16(2), 266-297
MarcĂșs, J., & Peralta, M. A. 2021. âLa calle en disputa. Narrativas sobre los usos legĂtimos e ilegĂtimos del espacio pĂșblico en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, AIBR. Revista de AntropologĂa Iberoamericana, 16(2)
Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. 2020. âEl trabajo ambulante: entre derecho a la ciudad y represiĂłn. El caso de la resistencia de los trabajadores senegaleses en la ciudad de Salernoâ, MIGRACIONES, 48 (2020)
Robin, N. 1996. âLa multipolarisation de la migration sĂ©nĂ©galaiseâ, in Mung, M. (dir), MobilitĂ©s et investissements des Ă©migrĂ©s, Maroc, Tunisie, Turquie, SĂ©nĂ©gal, ParĂs: L'Harmattan: 48-64
Sow, P. 2004. âPrĂĄcticas comerciales trasnacionales y espacios de acciĂłn de los senegaleses en Españaâ, in EscrivĂĄ, A. y Ribas, N. (coord.) MigraciĂłn y Estudios sobre remesas y otras prĂĄcticas transnacionales, CĂłrdoba: CSIC: 235-254