Mataró is experiencing a historic moment. For the first time since the Civil War, the bells of the Basilica of Santa María are removed again. In 1936 the original bronzes were melted down to make weapons and the bell tower was not completely recovered until 1954. This Tuesday a large crane took them down again. The objective now is to carry out a comprehensive restoration to recover the traditional ringing, documented in 1927. “It is the most important work on the bell tower since the last century,” comments the director of the Santa María Museum-Archive, Nicolau Guanyabens. One of the bells, the ‘Carme’, will be new, since its state of deterioration is very high. In fact, it stopped playing in 2017 due to the appearance of a crack.
That incident in 2017, in fact, led to the state of the rest of the bronzes being analyzed and the decision being made to carry out a comprehensive rehabilitation to avoid the progressive deterioration of the entire set. The main intervention in the five liturgical bells will be the replacement of the current iron fastening and counterweight elements with wooden ones, like those that existed in ancient times.
Apart from the physical intervention and maintenance of the bronzes, one of the most important aspects of the restoration are the changes in the sound of the bell tower. “It is not done so that they are prettier, but so that the instrument sounds better,” highlights one of the greatest experts in campanology in the State, the anthropologist Francesc Llop.
Llop, who is also the bellringer of the Valencia Cathedral, advises the Santa María Museum-Archive throughout this process. He assures that until now the bells of Santa Maria “neither played in the traditional style, nor made music; they made the loudest noise.” With the performance planned for the coming weeks, an attempt will be made to once again become a “traditional music instrument.”
The main change will be in the way of ringing the bells. Currently, a group of volunteer bell ringers, who have kept manual ringing alive since the early 80s, rotate the bells by hand, while the traditional ringing is with horns and the bell does not turn on its own axis, but rather tilts. from side to side.
“We have played almost intuitively. We turned the bells, but this is not the Catalan style. With the change of counterweights and thanks to the strings we can recover the traditional ringing,” explains one of the city’s bell ringers, Jordi Silva. . For the collective, he explains, it will be like “starting from scratch.”
The group of Mataró bell ringers is “unique” in the State, since it has maintained manual ringing for decades without any interruption. “In the 60s they disappeared everywhere, but here they have continued with a new mentality of heritage care,” highlights Francesc Llop. And when the intervention is over, the bell ringers will go back up to Santa María. It will be in Les Santes, the month of July.
Before being reinstalled in the bell tower, however, the ‘new’ bells will be exhibited in Santa María so that people can “caress” them and for the population to “make them their own,” according to the director of the Museum-Archive. , Nicolau Guanyabens. It is also expected that they will be able to visit schools or homes, depending on the dates on which the work ends.
The project has a cost of more than 100,000 euros and both the Generalitat and the City Council finance a significant part (44,000 euros each administration). The remaining money will be obtained from a sponsorship campaign. This same Tuesday, the parish collected donations from people who came to see the removal of the bells.
