A century of Pirelli in Manresa
In a few days it will be a century since the foundation of the Pirelli factory in Manresa, which in 1924 was no longer the fourth most populous in Catalonia, as it had been twenty years earlier, because the cities around Barcelona they were stretching at a higher rate, but it was still an industrial powerhouse and a city with a power that would now make us see visions: in that same triennium, the Nova Factory and the Kursaal were also inaugurated, for example.
A memory for Manresa
Remembering the power of that historic peak must be useful today, when Manresa is at a particularly low point after a decade in which it has lost positions very quickly compared to other comparable cities. What made that Manresa great was that it was well placed to fill the sails with the winds of that economic phase and that it had enterprising people and good social capital. Then, the winds of the economy changed; war and exile decapitalized the city humanly, and to the successive productive crises of the 1970s and 1980s has been added a sudden setback after the great crisis that began in 2008, the effects of which we are just beginning to feel conscience. Pirelli stopped production in 2009, but in fact it is still alive: it has a hundred workers and a lot of activity. Ultimately, this is a message of hope: nothing is completely lost, and it is always possible to start again. It must be done.
