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When we talk about the Batllós, they are a powerful family in the 19th and 20th centuries, which was able to develop a fortune, with the construction of the Can Batlló factory on Urgell Street (current Industrial School) and the modernist building on Paseo of grace.
The family of Olotte textile businessmen who worked in Barcelona in the first half of the 19th century, which consisted of four brothers, had rented a factory on November 25, 1858 in the municipality of Cornellà to Francisco Quer for a period of ten years. and that expired in 1868.
Despite the death of Jacint and Domenec, the other two brothers, Feliu and Joan Batlló, not only thought about continuing but also expanding the business even more, so they set their eyes on a series of rural properties that were located in a well-known area. as "the Round Olive Tree".
They contacted its owners and obtained a spectacular piece of land at that time, which today would be even more spectacular, located in the municipality of Les Corts, which had still been integrated into Barcelona and which today would correspond to the four blocks of Eixample in where the facilities of the Industrial School on Urgell Street are located.
The new factory was designed and built by Alejandro Mary, but, according to some historians, despite having the collaboration of his friend Rafael Guastavino, his signature not only does not appear on the project, but the architect himself wrote to the director of the Diario de Barcelona informing him that the factory project was unique and exclusively carried out by him.
The mystery will continue not only because of the time that has passed and the disappearance of the two protagonists, since the experts of the time agreed that the architectural solutions of Can Batlló, carried out by Alejandro Mary, were the same solutions that he had put into practice. and had patented Guastavino.
Construction began in 1868 and its completion and inauguration took place in 1870, unifying all the manufacturing of the Monistrol, Sitges and Tarragona factories, which represented its definitive closure.
The new factory, which had 60,000 spinning quills, 1,500 looms and 2,500 workers, was prepared to compete with the Industrial Spain of the Muntadas family.
The beginnings of the factory were not what Josep Batlló Casanovas expected, in his expansion plans that he intended with the inauguration of the new factory on Urgel Street.
The Barcelona that was being forged at that time was involved in a climate of strong political and social instability, which did not help the stability of a developing company and the relations between company and workers were probably not the best.
Political problems were the reason why, in 1868, cotton imports from the United States were cut off due to the blockade of southern ports during the Civil War.
In 1871 the factory remained closed for a few days due to provocations by the workers. The situation has no definitive solution and, in 1873, after strong altercations, there are a series of dismissals that are counteracted with violent demonstrations repressed by the police.
The measures caused the night shift to be suspended in August 1874, which meant a total stoppage of 600 looms. The workers proposed that the company distribute the working hours to avoid the dismissal of their colleagues.
This solution was denied by the Batlló family, who denounced to the captain general the risk of strong disturbances in the factory, which was protected by a military contingent, which not only did not calm things down, but also caused a three-month strike.
The Batlló brothers responded with the threat of withdrawing from the industrial contribution. This confrontation continued between the company and employees.
In 1876 the company split with Feliu and his sons at the head of the factory, which began with the awarding of a medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.
But Feliu planned to pass the factory on to his children and Joan wanted to start a new business away from the conflicts of the factory on Urgell Street. Feliu's death in 1878 caused his sons to change the name of the company, making it Batlló y Batlló.
The final decision to close the Batlló family's original factory was motivated by the explosion of a bomb in 1889 in the offices on Rambla de Catalunya, which caused the death of an orderly.
The event caused the closure of the factory on Urgell Street and the end of a dream that had lasted 19 years and the dissolution of the Batlló company.
Enric Batlló i Batlló, son of Feliu, decided to sell the machinery and tried to do the same with the factory site.
There were many projects and attempts to find a solution to preserve the complex without causing its destruction, but it did not arrive definitively until November 21, 1906.
That day the Board of Trustees of the Industrial School finally acquired the Can Batlló factory. In 1910, the Board itself signed the transfer of an area of land of 12,276 m² to the Barcelona Provincial Council.
Since then, the site has undergone the continuous construction of new facilities that transformed the old factory into the spectacular set of buildings that have become the current complex of the Barcelona Industrial School.
