Mistrust, non-payments and disputes marked the beginning of the Olot Train 130 years ago

Girona130 years ago, the Olot railway in Girona inaugurated the first section of the planned route to connect Girona with the capital of the Garrotxa region. This initial section ran between Salt and Amer. The line to Olot wasn't completed until 1911. The concession had been granted, by order of April 18, 1883, to Domènec Puigoriol Fabregat (Vilagrassa, 1834 - Girona, 1889), a man from Urgell, after a meeting was held on the railway. The concession passed from one promoter to another without the necessary capital being secured to make the project a reality. Puigoriol only appeared at the very beginning, during a bureaucratic process. The concession was transferred, in the same year, 1883, to the Compañía Española de Ferrocarriles Económicos (Spanish Company of Economic Railways), based in Barcelona and represented by Eduard Martínez Suñer.

Presence of English capital

To put the first section into service, several extensions of the concession had to be obtained, and it was finally transferred to an English company – The Olot and Gerona Railway Company Limited – which, from 1891 onwards, gave a different impetus to the initial work. With the contribution of British equipment, it demonstrated that the project was serious, but disagreements between the company and the builder Gerard Rodés led to notorious conflicts before the inauguration of the first section, resulting in lawsuits, the seizure of equipment, and delays in the payment of wages to the workers who laid the track.

Indeed, the Olot railway was a slow undertaking, delivered in painstaking stages, amidst the fin-de-siècle crisis, the colonial disaster, and the vicissitudes of the construction companies involved in the project: the section between Salt and Girona was put into operation from May 1898; between Amer and Les Planes, in May 1900; between Les Planes and Sant Feliu de Pallerols, in January 1902; between Sant Feliu de Pallerols and Sant Esteve d'en Bas and Olot, in August and November 1911, respectively.

A glacial opening

General skepticism reigned on the inaugural day of 1895. An ironic ditty, sung by some young men from the area around Salt, summed up the distrust of the population it was intended to serve:

Secondary lane of Amer

you were born with bad luck

Englishwomen have your coffin

and in Amer your death.

Rails of such caliber

to travel at this height

of certain burial

let us ask God to deliver us.

According to the press of the time, the start of the service was a failure. One of the publications, The Bulwark, he noted:The cheers, triumphal arches, station decorations, music, fireworks, benches, and other public celebrations that are customary in such cases have been replaced by the quietest silence, patrols of the Civil Guard guarding the line with weapons at the ready, unease among the public, fearing that someone owes a good number of monthly payments, in a word, by the most glacial indifference on the part of everyone"

Setback in completing the project

The English company, headquartered in London, had its administrative offices in Paris and branches in Barcelona and Madrid. Financial support from José María de Abaroa's bank in the French capital was essential to its survival. Despite internal disputes between the builder and the company, the railway workers kept the trains running. People grew accustomed to the new way of traveling, and the industries in the towns along the route benefited. In 1897, the service timetable indicated three daily departures from Salt station (at 9:30 a.m., 3:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m.) and three from Amer station (7:40 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 4:30 p.m.).

The train didn't die in Amer, but a setback for the English company forced the suspension, in 1902, of the opening of the remaining sections needed to complete the route. This difficulty wasn't overcome until 1909, when the Olot Railway Company was established in Girona, following a renationalization of the capital. The new entity, primarily linked to the Arnús bank, advanced the railway towards Olot, after the Bas pass had been pierced by a 235-meter tunnel. Then, after many years of delay, the complete inauguration of the line was enthusiastic, hopeful, and celebratory, albeit with a breakdown near Les Preses, not included in the official schedule. It was November 14, 1911.