The Sant Oleguer caves, located in Sabadell, in Vallès Occidental, are a set of artificial caves that were the home of many families during the middle of the 20th century.
During the Franco era, many families from around Spain decided to come to Catalonia to work in the Sabadell textile industry and look for a new home. For this reason, families were forced to stay in barracks or excavate their own houses in caves like those of Sant Oleguer.
Renting the Sant Oleguer caves cost around 3,000 pesetas at that time, which today would be about 18.03 euros. In order to be able to live in the cave, the new tenant had to pay this amount to the previous occupant.
This habit was not very useful, as it led to numerous abuses such as the trespassing of caves in poor condition. When the economic situation of one of the families improved, they left the caves to go to another more stable home and transferred the rent to another immigrant.
The Sant Oleguer caves had an area of ??between 6 and 15 m², mainly divided into two rooms, one of which was a bedroom and the other was a kitchen-dining room. In some cases, there were ‘houses’ that had more than two rooms.
The families that lived in those caves were the vast majority immigrants from the rest of Spain, although families from Catalonia also lived. The families who lived in the caves had terrible living conditions: they suffered from hunger, a lack of schools, precarious housing and, above all, there was a lot of labor exploitation without receiving a decent wage to survive.
Furthermore, these people were the object of prejudice and discrimination by those people related to the Franco regime, who judged them negatively, calling them xenophobic and classist due to their origin and social class, as explained on the information sign in the caves.
All those who lived in that precarious place were subjected to heavy rains and that directly affected the home because they were not built of resistant material. In fact, we can see in some photos how they are propped up,
In this way, living in these precarious spaces had its consequences. Delving into the history of the Sant Oleguer caves is like “a trip to sad history”, according to Narcís Serrat, author of these photographs in La Vanguardia’s Photos of Readers, who thus refers to one of the most tragic things that happened in this place.
In October 1951, heavy rains caused the destruction of many of the caves and injured the families who lived there. Two years later, on July 1, 1953, another strong storm with hail fell that killed two brothers, Amador and Trinidad, aged four and six, respectively.
As we can see inside the cave, the space there was limited, so sharing a home with an average of four family members was complicated.
During the 1950s it was difficult to find a decent home with the salary that families earned. Therefore, they had no other option than to live in these precarious caves of just a few square meters in area.
In 1946 it is recorded that in Sant Oleguer there were up to 400 homes in caves and barracks next to the Ripoll river and inhabited by 1,500 people.
