the essential
Serge Conesa has just released a book which recounts the history of the Ranteil cement works and the struggles led during their closure. This work thus sheds light on the different forms that the struggle can take.
Serge Conesa, economist, is linked to the history of Chaux et Ciments de Ranteil, in Albi, through his Spanish immigrant family who worked there. His father was the company's CGT secretary. He told the story of the Spaniards of Ranteil, the second little Spain of Albi in his book: “The challenge of the stone”.
Born in Albi, Serge Conesa, of Spanish origins, on his father's side, and from Tarnes and Aveyron, on his mother's side, is a former student of the Rochegude school, the Balzac college and the Lapérouse high school. He studied economics at the University of Social Sciences of Toulouse. Committed to the transmission of knowledge and experience as well as the defense of the fundamental values of “living together”.
Here, in this new work, he gives an economic and social analysis of the end of the Albigensian lime and cement industry. A real scientific study, which starts from the history of the establishment of these industrial activities south of Albi in the 19th century, on their economic future marked by economic concentration and their completion in 1984 by the giant of the sector, Lafarge.
In the 19th century, local companies manufactured lime and cement from abundant limestone. The Thermes family has a major role in manufacturing and in buying up competing factories. A family capitalism that brings in Spanish labor. The need for lime and cement was high during the Industrial Revolution, the reconstructions after the wars, and the Thirty Glorious Years.
Duty of memory
A member of the Thermes family was the last director of the site, then owned by the Lafarge group, which decided to close Ranteil in favor of Lexos. The CGT has a union monopoly in the factory. From the 1980s, deindustrialization was underway and for Lafarge, the rationalization of national production was linked to its international presence. A small production unit, the Ranteil factory will be sacrificed.
It will not survive, despite the strikes, demonstrations and proposals (in which the author participated) which mobilize the entire local left.
Interesting for understanding the functioning of the economy and the social crises caused in Albigensian. For the author, a duty to remember too.
Serge Conesa, “Ranteil Vivra” lime and cement in Albigensian: Lafarge Ranteil, Chronicle of a planned death; Tarnais Institute of Social History; 2024, 62 pages; 10 euros.
