Joan Güell: Imperialist

Chapter one had ended with a bang. “Juan” (i.e., ‘Joan’) sails to the island of Santo Domingo with his father, who spends some years winning and subsequently losing a handful of fortunes due to the revolutions taking place on the island at that time. After this, Juan is shipped back to Barcelona to study at the Llotja where he amazes everyone with his extraordinary aptitude and work ethic and graduates at the age of nineteen just in time for his father to return, penniless, from the Americas and promptly die.

“And with this,” Argullol proclaims in his dramatic reading voice, raising his eyes to meet the rapt gaze of his audience, “we can consider that the life of the child ended and here began the life of the man.”

It is in the second chapter that Argullol’s story of Juan Güell changes slightly in tone and becomes instructive. We follow Juan as he sets off alone back to the Americas, but this time he lands in Havana, Cuba instead of Santo Domingo. Over the course of the following few years he would proceed to utterly dominate the island’s markets through a strategy involving economic associationism, a port monopoly, and price-fixing. Along the way, the reader is treated to a gripping lesson on the economics of merchant capitalism. Argullol may as well have titled this chapter “The Juan Güell method for striking it rich.” I can imagine a room full of listeners, caught up in the spirit of the Febre d’Or, leaning forward in their seats to learn the secrets of Güell's success. Argullol lays it out neatly in an account highlighting eight aspects, and I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing this eight-step method below.

1. Step one is hard work and humility. As Argullol emphasizes, “[Juan] felt real horror for idleness and leisure: with the belief that work of any kind and condition always honors man, and with the confidence that hard work and merit would in the end be rewarded, especially to those who give account. He gave no importance to entering a

23 The Catalan writer Narcís Oller would describe this period in his novel La Febre d’Or, published in 1890. (Oller, Narcís. La Febre d’Or. 1890.)

82 house by the front door-- he would enter by the smallest door, if this was necessary, with the assurance that very soon his bosses would put him in a position where he could provide them with more and more useful services. He expected and founded his promotion not on his own recognition of his merit, but rather on how his merit, suitability or competence, aligned with the interest of the owner: this is why, sure of his will and of himself, he was also sure of his promotion.”

2. Step two is ambition. Juan took a modest job in one of the Spanish commercial estates. This would be his first and only employment, but this wasn’t because Joan wasn’t humble, but rather because he possessed ambition. As Argullol writes,

“[G]iven his entrepreneurial and active character, he wasn’t cut out to be a miserable soldier for long, soon he should jump to general, or in other terms, from employee he should soon become the boss.”

3. Step three is saving. “Juan carefully managed his own accounts. This was not normal behavior amongst Joan’s peers, so he took it upon himself to engage them in economic discussion on the use and importance of saving. His friend’s told him that it was less than useless to save such small amounts, and ‘how much richer would he really be with a hundred duros more or a hundred duros less?’ Güell answered that saving was the basis of capital, and that he knew of no other sure means of forming it. The story of Güell’s life has vindicated his claim. At twenty he supported his family, and at twenty-one he had two thousand duros free, available and applicable to what seemed most convenient and productive.”

4. Step four is forming an association. Although two thousand duros seemed to Juan like a meager amount for undertaking any major operation, he was able to solve this problem by forming an association. Between Juan and two of his friends they pooled a total of ten thousand duros, naming Juan director of their society. Now, it was time to put their money in motion and exploit its true potential as capital.

5. Step five is competition. “The young partners with their capital, their ardor and hopes, could consider for a few brief moments the world for their companies; but they saw very soon after that by all the roads it was broken with difficulties and pitfalls.” They were being targeted by their competition. “The old estates of Havana saw a rival in the modest house of Güell, as they saw their rivals in all concurrent businesses, societies or companies; and to avoid it, they associated amongst themselves to try to drown it through suffocation with the isolation they created, taking advantage of the fact that Güell’s association had not yet acquired robustness, rootedness or living conditions allowing them to resist the slightest setback. The young associates were blindsided by this obstacle; they bore it as they could, they suffered losses for it, and the horns of retreat had already sounded to save themselves from the shipwreck as much as possible, when the young man who in his childhood turned Altafulla's victory into defeat, showed once more his merit.

6. At this point in the story, Argullol unveils the sixth step, monopoly, which Juan exploits in an amazing twist of fate for his competitors. “With unprecedented audacity, against all odds, against the merchants of Havana united in strong phalanx against him, [Juan] bought all the existing cargoes in the port, which were soon

83 demanded by those arriving ships, and thus, given that war had been declared and in fair revenge, he achieved the monopoly of the market for four or five years, forcing his enemies to come to their senses, and they ended up asking for peace and a truce as well as an opportunity to participate in the colossal business.” In order to fully appreciate the significance of Güell’s port monopoly, we must consider that the island of Cuba at that time was entirely dependent on the port of Havana, to which supplies were shipped by the Spanish empire and from which cargoes of sugar and tobacco were exported. At that time, Cubans were not allowed to buy from other countries, a situation they called a mercat captiu, or “captive market.” When Güell monopolized the port of Havana, he got the country in an economic choke hold.²⁴ He had something they needed, and they had no other way of getting it.

7. Step seven is price fixing. It is interesting to note that during this entire economic venture Juan didn’t have to produce a single thing. Yet he was still able to make a profit. This he was able to do by manipulating the market through his absolute control of the supply. With no competitors, Juan simply increased the price of the commodities he had bought and his buyers had no other option but to keep buying them.

8. Step eight is victory. “Surprise and also amazement was the response of the Havana market to this operation; the old estates, confident in their force and power, had considered practically dead and almost forgotten the new and hardly fearsome society of Güell and company; In truth it was said that the manager did not do anything for his part that could get them out of error. The unexpected attack and the splendid success revealed the presence of, if not a powerful capital, a fearful will and business genius, and from that day forward the new society was not only welcomed and admitted, but furthermore, the young Güell was elevated to director of the Association of the first and main houses of Havana.”

“Thus considered and thus respected and loved, D. Juan Güell remained in the capital of the Greater Antilles until 1835, when he was thirty-five year old.” With this, Argullol concludes this section of his story. I can only imagine that he must have had his audience in the palm of his hand at this point. Entertaining, informative, and educational-- Argullol shows the mark of a good story-teller, the ability to turn a series of historical events into something much more powerful: a narrative. A good narrative can take on a life of its own. In historiographical terms, we can use actor-network theory to describe the biography of Joan Güell as a dynamic historical actor in its own right.²⁵ It may be nonhuman, but it contains historical agency nonetheless. Framing the book in these terms allows us to ask the following research question: what did it do?

24 “This monopoly allowed him to amass a fortune and probably this experience of the advantages of lack of competition was the seed of his fierce later protectionist convictions and therefore his firm rejection of free trade.” (Farràs, Andreu. (2016). Els Güell. La història d’una de les famílies més influents a Catalunya els últims dos segles. Edicions 62, p. 12.)

25 Latour, Bruno. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford:

Oxford UP.

84 The clearest answer is that it commemorated the life of Joan Güell. As Argullol states in the forward, “[P]art of the program of public celebrations [of the festival of La Mercè] is the placement of the portrait of an illustrious Catalan in the gallery of the Excellent City Hall, thus reconciling the civil and the religious, and adding to that which is joyful and profane, what which diverts and stimulates the living, and gives due reward, glory and honor, to the dead…” The practice of commemoration, of giving “due reward, glory and honor, to the dead” has a long history, and Argullol’s book fits easily into this historical genre. It goes without saying that this type of celebratory historiography can also serve a darker purpose- establishing an official “victors’ account” of past events as part of a cultural strategy of control. The commemoration of one narrative can be used to invisibilize another. Here, the biography of Joan Güell must be viewed critically, and ideally with the added perspective of alternative historical sources with which to cross-reference Argullol’s account. It turns out this is very difficult to do for Joan Güell’s life, particularly for that era when he was a young man making his fortune in Cuba. The temporal and physical distance of those events from this books’ publication would have made it difficult for Argullol’s audience to know if he was making some of this up. These distances make it even harder for me to fact check. Even without alternative sources, it is easy to see how this book functions to paint Joan Güell in an unconditionally positive light.²⁶

This brings us to another thing this book does-- it exonerates Joan Güell of his fortune.

The second half of the 19th century saw the eruption of a class-conscious proletariat in Barcelona, who were not unknown to force themselves into the historical picture through mass demonstrations and protests. In Barcelona’s working class neighborhoods, the socialist ideas of Karl Marx were sure to be found in circulation, including Marx’s central thesis: the idea that capital is built on exploitation, and that capital is typically acquired in the first place either through the exploitation of others through imperialism or else through the inheritance of a predecessors feudal exploits.²⁷ Armed with critical counter-narratives like this, the hostility between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in 1870’s Barcelona was palpable. Now consider the story of Joan Güell. He didn’t inherit his wealth from his father, who died penniless but, rather, saved while working hard as a humble employee. The inverse of this narrative of wealth is that if you are poor it is because you are lazy. This shifts the culpability of poverty onto the shoulders of the workers themselves, exonerating the ‘haves’ from their

26“I have here briefly and simply described the life of a man who, following a method almost as invariable as his kindness, his constancy and his character, dedicated the first hours of the day to the study of economic issues, and to the exercise and practice of industries factory and agricultural the rest of the time. Parco and sober like few, he did not know luxury. However enthusiastic about beauty in all its manifestations. Severe on himself and his family, he was indulgent, liberal, and tolerant of others. His authority and his respectability he did not ever presume, and he imposed incontrovertibly on the force of his own example. Always modest, always affable, always a friend of youth, a constant admirer of merit wherever and whenever it appeared.”

(Argullol y Serra, José. (1879). Biografía del Excmo. Sr. D. Juan Güell y Ferrer. N. Ramírez y Compañía:

Barcelona.)

27 Marx, Karl. (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. (Trans. Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin, 1990.)

85 exploitation of the “have nots.” The narrative of Joan Güell, and others like it, played a role in legitimizing this shift of responsibility. Without wishing to venture further out into speculation regarding how this narrative may have been perceived by its audience, at the very least it is important to realize that Argullol’s story is inescapably political. He is writing to a contemporary audience about contemporary issues of capital and labor.

This brings us to the final point I’d like to make about what this book does-- it monumentalizes the identity of the Barcelonian bourgeoisie. Although the practice of erecting monuments, hanging portraits, and writing commemorative biographies are practices dating back to the beginning of the historical record (and indeed, are the historical record), the case of Joan Güell presents a novelty. It was the first time that an industrialist would be included in the Gallery of Illustrious Catalans. Monuments to military heroes, religious figures, politicians, and celebrated artists were the norm at this time.

Monumentalizing a businessman was an innovation. It is important to realize the type of symbolic ‘work’ that a public monument of this kind does in promoting certain values and ideals in society. The story of Joan Güell was doing this same kind of work, not only by informing about the particular life of one businessman, but by transforming Güell into a symbol of the values and ideals of business in general.

This function of the biography is evidenced most clearly in chapter three of the biography, which we will take a brief look at now.