150 years ago, Barcelona and its surroundings were in full effervescence. The city was growing in extension and population, and factories began to strongly populate what would become Poblenou, then still outside the limits of Barcelona and within the municipality of Sant Martí de Provençals. Industry, especially textile, began to settle in the area largely due to the abundance of water and the energy generated by the underground torrents, to such an extent that it earned the nickname of the Catalan Manchester.
The footprint of that industrial past remains palpable and alive in the neighborhood, and many of those factories dot its streets, often under the shadow of large buildings and skyscrapers that have emerged in an environment reconverted into 22@, Barcelona's innovation district. Among them is La Escocesa, which was linked to industries ranging from textiles to explosives, and which for decades has housed a very different industry: artistic creation, as explained by La Escocesa's cultural manager and programmer, Stefania Lusini. Meanwhile, the site is preparing for its expansion and to host new uses, such as a foodtech project laboratory and spaces for entrepreneurial initiatives.
Between tall glass buildings and vacant lots awaiting better days, the street that bears the name of the old municipality, Provençals, climbs up the Eixample until it meets the shutters of the old industrial complex, which interrupt Provençals for several blocks beyond. The factory opened on what was the outskirts of Barcelona in the mid-19th century, in a booming environment with industries like Ca l'Alier, a few meters from the complex and now converted into an urban innovation center, and with a large part of the factory workers residing in a neighborhood that was expanding.
The origin of what is now known as La Escocesa dates back to the chemical plant opened by the Jaume Arbós Society in the first half of the 19th century, linked to textile dyes, as cultural manager Marta Ovejero recalls among its various naves. From the start of its activity, the factory was expanded even with floors for its workers, and passed through several hands and through various industries and companies —including the National Dye and Explosives Factory, two elements that have little in common in their use, but do in their chemical composition—.
It was in 1894 when those who gave the venue the nickname by which it is still known arrived. From the south of Glasgow, the company Johnston, Shields and Co, specialized in the manufacture of tulle curtains and net curtains, of which they held the patent, disembarked. The company did not arrive discreetly: it landed in Poblenou with 40 Scottish operatives, who initially trained 52 local women and 40 local men in the manufacturing process. It was the beginning of a workforce that eventually grew to more than 200 operatives, who kept the factory active without rest, with three eight-hour shifts.
The Scots brought products and customs to the factory that were uncommon for Barcelona at the time, such as tea time. And, with so many hours of work, it was expected that employees would look for ways to entertain themselves; one of them was to throw wet tea bags at the ceiling to see who could get them to stick, as evidenced by three small bags that are still unusually hanging from the ceiling. But the pastimes were not limited to inside the factory; Scottish workers integrated into the neighborhood fabric and even founded a football club. La Escocesa Fútbol Club shares its inauguration date with Barça, in 1899, but not only that: the first match between both teams pitted them against each other, 125 years ago, as Ovejero explains: "And La Escocesa won."
La Escocesa and its workers remained intertwined with the neighborhood and manufacturing curtains and net curtains for more than 100 years, until the decline of the textile industry led to its closure not so long ago, in 1984. The warehouses then fell into disuse, until in 1999 they were rescued from abandonment by a collective of artists, among whom was Ovejero's father. Then, the artists reached an agreement with the property to rehabilitate the space in exchange for a symbolic rent. After disagreements with a real estate group that acquired the premises and in the face of resistance from the artists, grouped in the Associació d'Idees EMA, the City Council first bought a part of the premises in 2008 and ceded it to the association, and then bought practically its entirety in 2017. Since then, the space has been part of Barcelona's network of Creation Factories, where various artistic disciplines emerge in old industrial buildings.
Thus, La Escocesa remains standing, now converted into a center for artistic residencies and contemporary production managed collectively, as a bastion of mainly analog creativity in a digital and new technologies environment such as 22@. The center hosts 25 resident artists with their own workshop, selected through a public call and an external jury for a maximum period of four years, and about 70 user members, who can use the workshops and spaces for a monthly fee. They are visual artists from multiple disciplines, ranging from plastic arts to audiovisual, and also research residencies, explains Ovejero walking among workshops and rooms. The artists' spaces zigzag through the second floor of the industrial building, among stairs and iron beams and loose glass from large windows, more than one, broken. The industrial atmosphere is still palpable, especially in an entrance with high ceilings and wide windows: "Much of the old factory remains, and we really like to feel this ghost."
Now, the center wants to act as a "catalyst and cultural impulse," also contributing to the projection of artists, seeking synergies with other Creation Factories, institutions and festivals, and working to expand the link with the environment and Poblenou, especially with its neighbors: "They are the ones who built this place."
From the rooftop, this environment in which La Escocesa is framed is evident, dominated mainly by the large buildings of 22@. The two realities coexist, although it seems that one is engulfing the other. From the top of the industrial building, although at a low height compared to the buildings, four chimneys of the old factories can be seen, which also remain standing in the surroundings. From the rooftop, another reality of the complex is contemplated that goes beyond the artistic creation residence: the originally apartments for the factory workers are in very poor condition and, in several cases, occupied. The murmur of dozens of pigeons escapes through broken windows, while the industrial building next door looks different despite also being abandoned since another group of artists was evicted more than five years ago, as Lusini recalls.
This warehouse is the one called to become a foodtech project laboratory, in a space that artists and neighbors assure has been visited by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, along with chef Ferran Adrià. The City Council, which neither confirms nor denies, announced in July an agreement with the Consorcio de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB) to rehabilitate three more warehouses in the La Escocesa complex, in which the CZFB will invest 15 million euros. The objective is for the complex to house, in addition to the artists' residence and the foodlab, spaces to accommodate other entrepreneurial initiatives —especially linked to creative industries—, which the consortium will then rent.
The new rehabilitated spaces will arrive after La Escocesa opened a second warehouse in September, reopened after ten years of works as an intelligent building. Located a few meters from the main warehouse, it includes the center's offices, with six employees, as well as multipurpose spaces and a risograph printing workshop, under large skylights and windows with state-of-the-art automations. Now, the managers are asking for improvements in the main warehouse. At least, to repair the broken windows.
Thus, moving between intelligent buildings and broken-paned windows, La Escocesa works for the promotion of art, in a complex where the Creation Factory is not alone, but another collective of artists occupies another of the warehouses. Lusini explains this next to an old electronic organ that dominates the complex's patio, despite never having worked since it has been in La Escocesa. They say that, like a cat installed in the factory, the instrument appeared one day in La Escocesa, and decided to stay. The same happened with art and creativity, now permanently linked to the history of a factory that is approaching two centuries of history.