It only took one film to bring the story of Manolo Vital and the hijacking of his bus in Torre Baró, the most forgotten neighborhood in Barcelona, back to where it deserved to be. But not even the most awarded film of the Goyas has served to reveal that before Manuel Vital it was a woman who made the same gesture in Barcelona, hijacking a bus to get public transport to reach the homes of the less fortunate.
She is Maruja Ruiz Martos, a neighborhood activist from the Prosperitat neighborhood, who in 1976, two years before Vital, organized the hijacking of a bus as a protest measure to demand public transportation for her neighborhood. However, her story has been practically forgotten, and that is why we tell it to you.
Nou Barris, the forgotten neighborhoods
During the 50s, 60s and 70s, many of the neighborhoods of the Nou Barris district grew uncontrollably with the massive arrival of migrants from all over Spain. Many of these neighborhoods, such as Roquetas, Vallbona or Torre Baró, did so through self-construction. Others, such as La Prospe, experienced a combination of this phenomenon together with shantyism and the construction of large blocks of apartments from the Porcioles era.
This sudden growth and the government’s unwillingness to address it caused many of these neighborhoods to live without basic rights such as transportation or basic services such as health care or access to running water (such as Roquetas, where residents built their own plumbing).
Maruja Ruiz, the activist of La Prospe
It was in this context that activist neighbors such as Manolo Vital in Torre or, two years earlier, Maruja Ruiz, constantly demonstrated to gain access to these rights. In the case of La Prosperitat the struggle focused on the 12, the bus that did not reach the neighborhood with the excuse that it could not climb its slopes.
After two assemblies, Maruja Ruiz convinced about fifty neighbors to hijack the bus and take it to the neighborhood, demonstrating that the problem was not physical, but political. From this point on, the bus lines began to transport the people of Prosperitat.
Later, this struggle would be repeated with the hijacking of bus 11, this time with the aim of demanding housing for the inhabitants of the shantytowns that were in the neighborhood. The elders of the area still remember, in fact, the substandard housing that occupied what is now the Ángel Pestaña square, the core of the area. Bus 11 would reach the City Hall to demonstrate, and its demonstrators, including Maruja Ruiz, ended up at the Via Laietana police station. Of course, the shanty-dwellers would end up having their homes.
It was not their only struggle. Maruja, “a lifelong communist”, as she defines herself, also participated in other social struggles such as the opposition to a toxic asphalt plant or the lockout at Motor Ibérica for labor rights. Today, she is still active in the Prosperitat Neighbors Association and in the neighborhood’s Gent Gran Association, transmitting her experience to the new generations.
Her commitment went all the way to the end. In 2011 she refused the Medal of Honor of the City of Barcelona awarded by then Mayor Xavier Trias, arguing that she could not accept recognition from a government that was cutting back the rights she had fought for.
This act and her commitment show that the real struggle is always from the bottom up and that women’s history always needs one more effort to be told. Hopefully, someday, a film will also be made about bus number 12.
Her story, by the way, can be seen in the 1976 Swedish documentary, Mujeres en Lucha, where anti-Franco women from different areas of Spain talk about their experiences in the struggle against the dictatorship and where the testimony of Maruja Ruiz appears, among many others.