Period of commercial operation
A fantastic archive
As we have mentioned, thanks to Lluís Marià Vidal great love of photography, a good collection of images of La Pedrera and the work that took place there has come down to us.
The hard life at La Pedrera
Just the journey that takes us from Santa Maria or Vilanova to La Pedrera, either passing through the Meià or through the Cabroa pass to go to the Reger fountain and, from there continue to the Rúbies junction and go down to La Pedrera, already gives us an idea of how wild this area is and how difficult it must have been to work in those conditions. Another option to go up to La Pedrera is from the current road from Àger to Terradets, from a point near the Bagasses spring, along a path.
Under these conditions, it is understandable that a solution was sought to avoid travel and increase production. This solution involved the construction of some huts for the workers, of which today we can still see part of their structure and even some abandoned sinks or laundry rooms.
A complicated job
At the end of La Pedrera we find the vestiges of the workers’ houses, but at the entrance we find a larger construction, which in the photos of the time shows us greater splendour. At this point, the entry and exit of carts and, above all, of the stones that were sent to Barcelona had to be controlled
Although the lithographic stone outcrop is very extensive, the orography of the area leads us to assume that the initial work to find the extraction layers must have been very difficult. In Vidal’s series of images on the cleaning and preparation of the cut, the hardness of these tasks can be clearly appreciated, which consisted of removing the earth and the accumulated sun on the outcrop, with the aim of being able to follow each layer well.
Once the surface was clean of soil and vegetation, the lithographic stone blocks could be removed and separated, with the help of perpalines, escarpments and masses. In Vidal’s photographs you can see the arduous task of preparing the stones and, in one of them, you can perfectly distinguish between the workers, the manager and the owner.
