River of confluences

The industrial textile districts, which are part of our heritage with a more or less high level of conservation, represent the legacy of the industrialisation process of Catalonia in the second half of the twentieth century. However, what is their present state and what perception do the people who live there have of them? The failed processes for their restoration have been the starting point of this project, which takes the town of Puig-reig as the subject of analysis and action.

The initial aim of the work has been to explore alternative forms of heritage management to the ones that have been used to date, and to focus on the needs of the residents to put forward a management method that resolves the relationship between residents and heritage. What inspired me to take on this project was my own interest in this problem. Also, the fact of having experienced for myself that the management projects that are not subordinate to the sense of industrial heritage and the preservation of the historical memory prove to be much more positive.

The work studies the history of the textile districts, analyses the relationships with the town centre, the process of de-industrialisation, the emergence of the tertiary sector and, finally, it highlights the consequences brought about by failed management methods. On the basis of this analysis, a critical point has been found as to the why of the failure or success of these projects and the template has been sought for action in heritage from now on. All of this is with the aim of managing and generating a change of dynamic, establishing a meeting point between people and environment, and generating positive synergies between heritage, the natural environment and residents.
An act of rediscovery should occur, a different movement between locations, fostering interests and new points of view of the population. A project that does not incite fear, that is humble and begins from within, rethinking a new way of presenting the districts to their inhabitants. Changing the current perception that sees them as old and outdated resources, a historical burden rather than an opportunity to discover new ways on the basis of what is and what has been.

As a practical project, a photographic installation has been proposed with black and white pictures, made using an analogue process, the result of wandering to rediscover the districts and see them from behind a camera. On the one hand, these photographs give relevance to the nature that surrounds the districts and, on the other, to the mechanisms for capturing water to generate power.