Catalan fabrics

In the Haut-Vallespir, striped cloth belongs to a very specific industrial history: that of the espadrille. In Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans, the making of rope and canvas sandals developed in the 19th century and sustained the valley for nearly a hundred years, to the point that the town came to be nicknamed the “capital of the espadrille”. The sandal workshops needed a hard-wearing canvas and braids: weaving settled alongside them.

In 1897, Joseph Sans, the son of a muleteer who had trained in Barcelona in an uncle’s workshop making sandal canvas, joined forces with his only rival in the village, Abdon Garcerie, to build a factory. There, hemp, jute and cotton became fabrics in the Catalan colours, the sang i or, and braids for espadrille makers. Table linen and deckchair canvas followed later. The 1897 building still stands.

After a century of activity, the factory, in difficulty, was taken over in the mid-1990s by Françoise and Henri Quinta, a decorator and an interior architect, who gave it the name Toiles du Soleil. They kept the old shuttle looms, on which the fabric is still woven in a narrow width, and draw patterns and colours from the firm’s archives, adapting them to present-day tastes.

Other places in the valley preserve the traces of this activity. In Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans, the Maison du patrimoine et de la mémoire André Abet occupies the Union sandalière, a cooperative factory founded in 1923 by unionised workers; it presents a reconstructed espadrille and weaving workshop, as well as a space devoted to the Retirada of 1939. In Arles-sur-Tech, the commune bought the former Tissages catalans site in 2012, now the Moulin des arts et de l’artisanat: the loom room remains open to the public, alongside craftsmen’s workshops.