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In La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos we discover today the old factory facilities of the CompañÃa Fabril de Carbones Eléctricos in CastellgalÃ, in the Bages region.
This installation was unique in Spain at its time (perhaps another one in Huelva?). It is a very curious and interesting place, worth visiting, so close to home and unknown. It looks like the Sagrada FamÃlia, but with chimneys.
As detailed by the National Museum of Science and Technology of Catalonia in its map of Catalan industrial heritage, the factory was dismantled in 1992. “It currently belongs to several owners who have dedicated the warehouses to various functions,” they point out, but “among the architectural elements, the eight chimneys that correspond to the different ovens stand out.
In 1898, Climent Asols i Bover created the CompañÃa Fabril de Carbones Eléctricos de CastellgalÃ, which “was the first company in the country dedicated to the production of carbon electrodes for public electric lighting”, according to MNACTEC.
In fact, “they illuminated the streetlights of the most important cities in the world, such as Paris, Berlin, New York, Boston, Chicago and Sydney.”
The company benefited from Spain’s neutrality in the First World War and was essential in the lighting of the 1929 Universal Exhibition.
The Electric Coal Manufacturing Company was equipped with machinery built in Berlin and the furnaces were built with refractory materials from the Schavandorf mines.
