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n eleven-year-old boy working in a factory with his father falls into a vat full of boiling dye and comes out with very serious burns on his legs. To cure him and avoid amputation, skin grafts from donors are needed. Thirty-five workers, including two sons of the owner, volunteer to have their skin removed without anesthesia to save little José Caparrós. This sad story, which happened on February 23, 1905, illustrates the character of the inhabitants-workers of Colonia Güell, one of those towns created from scratch around a factory at the end of the 19th century, like so many others that emerged at that time on the banks of the Llobregat or the Ter. A place where solidarity emerged in difficult times, but also a closed world, where it was difficult to escape the foreman who harassed the female worker and who, refusing to repair her loom, could leave her without means of livelihood if she did not give him what he wanted. And where child exploitation, even if not allowed, was common and not frowned upon.
Visiting Colonia Güell today is to know one of the best testimonies of an era not so distant -the factory closed in 1973- but that sounds like other times. Located just 15 kilometers from Barcelona in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, it is a six-hectare stronghold, which more than a century later still amazes with its urban quality -in contrast to a much denser metropolitan environment- and by the mark left by Antoni Gaudí.
Declared a Site of Cultural Interest, it has been open to visitors since 2002, when it was opened to the public as a tourist attraction, and this year it commemorates the Güell Year, on the centenary of the death of this pivotal figure of Barcelona and Catalonia in the last third of the 19th century and early 20th century. Each year the number of visitors to the Colonia has increased, reaching 70,000 annually. A figure far from the overcrowding suffered by other tourist environments, especially those linked to Gaudí, which allows for a very calm and relaxed visit.
The industrial complex occupies the grounds of the former Can Soler de la Torre estate in Santa Coloma de Cervelló. Founded by Eusebi Güell in 1890, the colony, one of the last to be created in Catalonia, was a large business project and a sociological experiment of its time, which sought to distance workers from the social conflict of the big city. "The colony was isolated from external influences and the director acted as a boss within the factory, but also as if he were the mayor," explains Montse García, head of the Colonia Güell Interpretation Center. The three foundations of life in the colony, where about 1,400 people lived and worked, were education, effort or work, and religion, according to the principles of the most paternalistic social Catholicism. People were born and lived their lives without needing to leave there. This social order only wavered during the Civil War, when the factory was collectivized, and when strikes arrived, initiated by women, already in the sixties.
The workers, therefore, did not enjoy luxuries, but, in return, they lacked nothing, as long as they did not question the owner and the established order. Thus, Colonia Güell has very wide, perfectly urbanized streets, and very spacious houses, about 120 square meters on average, with a patio and orchard, as well as all necessary services such as a doctor, school, an athenaeum and theater, among others. Visitors can see, walking through the five streets of the colony, how this space, fully inhabited today like any other town, has become a good urban model that differentiates it from the rest of the industrial colonies of Catalonia, such as Vidal or Soldevila, also on the banks of the Llobregat river.
"La Colonia", as its inhabitants know it, has preserved to this day this atmosphere of a quiet town, but with buildings that show the modernist architectural footprint of the era, left by leading architects such as Joan Rubió Bellver and Francisco Berenguer. And in the midst of this industrial heritage, based on one of the pillars of Güell's doctrine, emerges the church, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco and the work of the greatest master of Catalan modernism, Antoni Gaudí.
However, as also happens in the Sagrada Familia, we are faced with an unfinished work. Eusebi Güell commissioned his friend Gaudí, with whom he had already collaborated to build Park Güell and Palau Güell, to construct the temple with instructions to "do whatever he wanted," without technical, budgetary, or time limitations. Work began in 1908 following an ambitious project, which envisioned a church with two naves, a lower and an upper one, topped by different side towers and a central dome 40 meters high. But, after the patron's death, Eusebi Güell's children informed Gaudí that they would not continue financing the works, and he abandoned the project.
Only the lower nave, known as the Crypt, was completed, and it has continued to function as the Colonia's church to date. Despite being unfinished, the church represents a culmination in Gaudí's work, as it includes, for the first time in a unified way, almost all of his architectural innovations. In fact, the Crypt was a "testing laboratory" for Gaudí, as many of the architectural solutions that the master tried there he would later apply to the Sagrada Familia. Gaudí was interested in much more than beams and pillars; he also dedicated himself to manufacturing the church benches using recycled material, such as oak wood from the boxes that packed the factory machines and iron from freighting cotton bales for the looms. In addition, the benches are positioned in such a way that everyone who sits on them can only look forward to the altar without being distracted by other "details." The exterior pillars, made of burnt bricks, seek to blend in with the surrounding pine trees.
Gaudí and Güell shared an ideology that at that time clashed with the interests of the businessmen of the era. They are described as pioneers of social justice understood as concern for the well-being of workers and not their exploitation. They spent 12 hours a day in the factory, yes, but they enjoyed medical services, a school, where even children could learn German (girls' instruction was more limited), and there was always food on the table. In an era where there was hunger and illiteracy was widespread, that is no small thing.
After the closure of the textile factory in the colony in 1973, the owners sold the houses to their tenants. This has allowed Colonia Güell to be almost entirely inhabited, unlike what happened with other colonies, which after closing their factories have been left uninhabited. But of the 800 people currently living there, 25 percent are outsiders who, after buying a house from the first owners or their descendants, are opting for this haven of peace -even today- in the middle of the Barcelona metropolitan area.