(This report is a re-post from the ones that got lost a few weeks back)
Ah, poor little 'local industry'... Northern Spain is dotted with towns that saw their growth or even birth thanks to an invention that became of widespread use at the turn of the 20th century: hydroelectric power. Over the course of the river Ter, many factories were built, most of them being either textile or paper mills. The economic crisis at the beginning of the 2000's saw most of this factories closing down for good, and by telling the story of one of them, one tells the story of the whole region. (At some point I'd like to do a series on more of these factories down the Ter river, we'll see!)
The Dussol Colony was built in 1892 by the wealthy Dussol family, initally merchants of socks. In its laters years, it had become one of Europe's leading 'open-end yarns' manufacturer for the fashion sector, whatever that means. Still, the company couldn't resist the 2008 crisis in Spain, and by 2012 sent its workers home due to the factory becoming without raw materials and electrical supply from one week to the other.
Being in a fairly rural place, some kids have been there smashing stuff and playing with the fire extinguishers, but overall the place is not super trashed, it was a surprisingly nice explore!
Can't explain too much about the exploration itself, the place presented no challenges and made for a nice morning wandering around.
Still, there were some interesting things left behind: in the basement what was left of the water turbine for the generator. Also we realised that many of the switches on the walls were labeled in italian, best guess is they bought some machinery from a closing italian mill...? Also, a surprising amount of unused, soft, perfect quality textile yarns.
Now comes the surprise of the day, the admin room was fairly intact with even the computer still there... We spent sometime going through the paperwork, and found a couple of interesting things:
In one letter, one of the accountants was refering to the company as 'a dinosaur about to get extinct'. In another, Sergei from Russia was complaining about the price of the wool for his sock-making clients, which somehow had to to with someone in Turkey...try to make sense for yourselves reading it!
I'm going to let the images speak for themselves and finish the report with some more 'artsy' shots...
Hope you enjoyed, see you on the next one!
Ah, poor little 'local industry'... Northern Spain is dotted with towns that saw their growth or even birth thanks to an invention that became of widespread use at the turn of the 20th century: hydroelectric power. Over the course of the river Ter, many factories were built, most of them being either textile or paper mills. The economic crisis at the beginning of the 2000's saw most of this factories closing down for good, and by telling the story of one of them, one tells the story of the whole region. (At some point I'd like to do a series on more of these factories down the Ter river, we'll see!)
The Dussol Colony was built in 1892 by the wealthy Dussol family, initally merchants of socks. In its laters years, it had become one of Europe's leading 'open-end yarns' manufacturer for the fashion sector, whatever that means. Still, the company couldn't resist the 2008 crisis in Spain, and by 2012 sent its workers home due to the factory becoming without raw materials and electrical supply from one week to the other.
Being in a fairly rural place, some kids have been there smashing stuff and playing with the fire extinguishers, but overall the place is not super trashed, it was a surprisingly nice explore!
Can't explain too much about the exploration itself, the place presented no challenges and made for a nice morning wandering around.
Still, there were some interesting things left behind: in the basement what was left of the water turbine for the generator. Also we realised that many of the switches on the walls were labeled in italian, best guess is they bought some machinery from a closing italian mill...? Also, a surprising amount of unused, soft, perfect quality textile yarns.
Now comes the surprise of the day, the admin room was fairly intact with even the computer still there... We spent sometime going through the paperwork, and found a couple of interesting things:
In one letter, one of the accountants was refering to the company as 'a dinosaur about to get extinct'. In another, Sergei from Russia was complaining about the price of the wool for his sock-making clients, which somehow had to to with someone in Turkey...try to make sense for yourselves reading it!
I'm going to let the images speak for themselves and finish the report with some more 'artsy' shots...
Hope you enjoyed, see you on the next one!
