In less than two centuries, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, in the heart of the Costa Brava, has gone from being a society that lived mainly from fishing, maritime trade and shipbuilding to being an outstanding tourist destination, with great weight today of the second residences. But between one sector and another, from the end of the 19th century and especially until the First World War, it became an excellent pole of the cork industry that exported all over the world (Sydney, Bangkok, Istanbul, Bogotá , San Francisco, Calcutta, Port Sudan...). The municipality came to have about forty factories that in 1901 already employed more than 3,200 people, of whom approximately 30% were women.
Driven by the train, which reached the port itself, the cork industry (today only one company remains) brought the name of Sant Feliu de Guíxols halfway around the world. “It was an industry very focused on foreign trade; entrepreneurs in the sector sent their children to study abroad and some opened branches in California, New York and Australia.
Several countries set up consular offices here", explains Sílvia Alemany, director of the History Museum of Sant Feliu de Guíxols. This cultural facility hosts an exhibition that allows you to discover the evolution of the society of Sant Feliu de Guíxols over the last 200 years.
If the construction of steamships was a blow to the shipyards of the area, which gradually abandoned the activity of manual shipbuilding, the same irruption of steam made the cork industry grow, which gradually lost weight with the First and Second World War and the Civil War. "Many industries were destroyed, this, added to the cork crisis, caused many entrepreneurs to convert to the tourism sector or diversify their activity", explains Alemany.
Tourism was not massive until the 1960s. In 1950, the town only had three inns and three hotels, which mainly accommodated summer visitors from Barcelona, as well as merchants, captains or shipowners. A number that had multiplied by 22 in 1970, when there were already 135 establishments, including hotels, inns and campsites that housed mainly European tourists.
The need for labor to build tourist infrastructure and provide service to hotels and restaurants led to "a second wave of migration and the emergence of new neighborhoods like Vilartagues", explains Xavier Roca, technician at the History Museum. The first - explains Roca - coincided with the construction of the railway, which arrived in 1892, the rise of cork factories and the construction of the port.
But before this massive irruption of tourism, the municipality had already witnessed several initiatives, such as spa tourism, thanks to the public baths of Sant Elm or the Viatges Blaus, an initiative promoted by the businessman established in Barcelona Jaume Marill between 1929 and 1936, consisting of hiring large boats, with cobles and corals that enlivened the journey from Barcelona, to discover the landscape of the Costa Brava.
A prominent name in the exhibition is that of Ramon Gay, a businessman who knew how to adapt to the times. As a waterfront carpenter, he handcrafts hundreds of traditional wooden fishing boats. After the Civil War, he converted some of these ships into tourist boats. Thus arose the Costa Brava Cruises, operational between 1960 and 1979, which transported tourists from Blanes to Llafranc.
Another visionary was Vicenç Gandol, who in the 1960s created a private tourism office from where he rented houses to tourists, sold cruise tickets or tickets for the bullfights.
Currently, the hotel offer is made up of a total of 23 accommodations and the second residences have a large weight.
