VISITING

Claramont stood on the eastern edge of the village of Capellades, where the terrain suddenly plunges down and rises up steeply again; the sunny hillside opposite looks like it should be covered in vineyards. Down in the valley, the C-15 road from Vilafranca del Penedès and the R6 railway from Barcelona run parallel to, and above, the Anoia river.

Capellades, and its 5,300 residents, lies 60 kilometres from Barcelona—a 40-minute drive that takes one past the impressive Montserrat mountain range, through a landscape that would be stunningly beautiful, were it not dotted with industrial plants and warehouses, and criss-crossed by overland electricity lines. Catalan flags are painted on rocks, and calls for independence written on walls.

“The water is a problem. It doesn’t rain enough, and when it does, the soil can’t soak it up.” His companion, Pere Casals, nodded gravely. “Have you seen the reservoir next to the paper museum? It’s empty! Some politicians had the idea of making it impermeable, you know, like a swimming pool…but then there were all these people who said it had to remain natural. So there is no water.”

Even with the reservoir dry, the paper museum is Capellades’s biggest attraction. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the village supplied much of the Spanish and overseas markets with high-quality writing and smoking paper. The old machinery was restored in the Fifties, and today most Catalan children remember Capellades for the school trip on which they made their own paper.

The upper two floors of the old building are now exhibition and working spaces, but used to be where the sheets were hung for drying. “Pay particular attention to the many windows, 18 on each side,” Ana, one of the young girls who work as guides in the museum, said. She obviously enjoyed her job; like a young woman showing her new house to her parents, she pointed out every detail enthusiastically. “Why was there so much paper production here?” a visitor asked. “Are the trees particularly good?”

Ana smiled. “No, back then paper wasn’t made out of trees, but from cotton. It was because of the water. The reservoir over there is fed by an underground source, so the water is very clean. And it was also the force driving the machines.”