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Cerbère-Female orange handlers on strike
At the beginning of the 20th century, goods on trains transiting through the border-station of Cerbère had to be transferred by train “dockers”. For delicate oranges, the work was entrusted to women. Badly paid for a difficult job, they went on strike in 1906. It was the first exclusively female strike action in history. It lasted for nearly a year.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Cerbère was a quaint town with a population of 1,300 inhabitants. It enjoyed an active business economy due to its proximity with Spain. It had a customs office to control goods and a police station to suppress smuggling. The French southern railway company – La Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi – and the Spanish railway company from Tarragon to Barcelona and France – Compañia de los Ferrocarriles de Tarragona a Barcelona y Francia joined up on 21 January 1878. But there was a problem. France and Spain did not have the same gauge. 1.43 metres for France and 1.66 metres for Spain. Why? When the English (quite surprisingly) adopted the European standard at 1.44 metres, the Spanish railway companies bought their old stock of rails and sleepers which were wider…
Was it really a saving? Probably not. This rail size difference forced passengers to change trains at the border. A stop for a snack which was probably quite pleasant, in particular as the view was outstanding over the bay.
But this meant that the goods on the trains had to be transferred. The main product imported from Spain was the orange from Murcia and Valencia. Oranges were exported to other countries from Cerbère. Handling the oranges was a delicate process and their packaging had to be perfect as the voyage was sometimes long, to Russia on some occasions.
This was how the profession of female orange handler was born. The handling activity developed under the control of freight forwarders, forwarding agents and other import-export intermediaries. These companies employed the workforce that was available in the town, mainly women. They were badly paid and had to work in difficult conditions. Paid by the piece, without any electricity, they carried baskets weighing 15 to 20 kg using a lantern. Judge for yourselves: 5,000 people carried baskets over a period of 80 years; they handled a total of 20 million tons of citrus fruit and 15 million tons of other goods.
On 26 February 1906, the women decided to stop working. They wanted the 25% increase that they had been promised since 1903. Their bosses, the freight forwarders, held their ground. They would hear nothing of an increase. They formed a trade union and they called themselves “les Rouges” (the Reds). They lay on the rails, ready to die under the wheels of the train from Perpignan which stopped at barely two metres from their bodies. They slid under the axles. Soldiers from the barracks in Perpignan had to be called in to remove them.
This strike was the first exclusively female action in French history. It lasted for nearly a year until 3 December. The women firmly stood their ground and remained inflexible until their demands were met.
The transferring of goods lasted until 1960. Thereafter, another solution was found – mechanics simply change the axles. This marked the end of the female handler profession. A statue of a woman holding a basket of oranges in the heart of Cerbère is a reminder of this little-known event in the Class Struggle. It is studied today by historians from the angle of the Gender Struggle. Whether it involved a class or gender, it was a mighty struggle!
