Los Manteros: On those from the Diaspora who turned a sheet spread on the ground into a political movement

The word comes from manta: the blanket. The sheet spread on the sidewalk, on which the bags, the sunglasses, the sneakers, the trinkets are laid out. Cords are tied at the four corners; one tug closes the whole display into a bundle to be carried off at a run when the police approach. Mantero: the one who sells on the blanket. In Barcelona, in Madrid, on the Ramblas and around the train stations, they are, in large part, Senegalese. Men who left Dakar, Louga, the region of Saint-Louis, who made this piece of cloth laid on the ground their workplace, their livelihood, their first foothold on Spanish soil.

The image is easy to look down on. The unlicensed vendor, the counterfeit goods, the flight when the officers arrive. That is how the city prefers to see them: a public-order problem, a nuisance to be moved along. But under the sheet, there is something other than an illegal trade. There is one of the most remarkable stories of self-organization the diaspora has produced in Europe.