“Catalonia is the Lancashire of Spain,” wrote Richard Ford in A handbook for travellers in Spain (1845), “and Barcelona is its Manchester. Besides being wholesale manufacturers, the Catalans are amongst the best retail tradesmen, innkeepers, and carriers of the Peninsula.” While Barcelona was Spain’s biggest manufacturer of textiles, its comparative backwardness meant that local industrialists travelled to northern England and other more advanced parts of Europe to buy and steal techology, working methods and designs. After Bonaplata’s famous down-town factory was burnt down in rioting, says Blackwood’s, “he was in Manchester during the year 1828, and purchased, we believe, many thousand pounds’ worth of the most finished machinery from Messrs. Gower of that town.”

This walk takes you through the fields and villages where earlier visitors saw calico spread to dry to the remainders of Barcelona’s late 19th century industrial revolution. You’ll also find out and/or see about some of the more colourful bits of the local flea market, the city’s relationship with Calais and Dunkirk, one of its ancient water courses and the great tower built by the modern water company, Inquisition witchhunters, a street that doesn’t officially exist, medieval defence towers, Barcelona Council’s failed Catalan Silicon Valley scheme, the scene of the original Durruti column and the kangaroo court trial by anarchists of the bishop of Barcelona, and, for all you Yorkies, a factory built by engineers from Keighley.

1. » Security guard theory of genetics, gypsy looters, and a bit of general moaning says:

   December 6 2008 at 21:32

   [...] See this on this walk or this one. [...]