Puiggròs commemorates 60 years of the construction of the Casal 'with pick and shovel'
The Association of Friends of the Castle and the Puiggròs Town Hall recover the memory of this communal project with a documentary and a magazine
PuiggròsIn the summer of 1966, the construction of what is known today as the Casal began in Puiggròs (les Garrigues), a large multipurpose building with a stage and balconies, which to this day still accommodates all kinds of social, recreational, and cultural events, in addition to a bar-restaurant.
The facility was built through "jova", that is, with the voluntary (and free) work of almost all the town's residents. The work, much of it done with pickaxes and shovels, lasted for months. The final completion of the Casal never had a specific date. First, the front part of the building, where the cafe is located, one of the most desired facilities by the population, was opened. Then the events hall was built and years later, the town hall offices.
Organized in shifts by the then mayor of the town, Antoni Cabau, the head of the Agricultural Chamber, Ramon Chimenos, and the head of the Union Brotherhood, Rogelio Chimenos, all the families of Puiggròs still remember today how a large building was erected in less than two years. “Thank you for all the nights we have spent working and dreaming about what this place would be and mean for Puiggròs, and above all, for the love and faith you have put into it,” concluded the mayor, on the very day of the inauguration (August 1968).
"It was the result of a collective need, in which one house always used to help the other," recalls the local ethnographer and historian, Joan Bellmunt. “It became the meeting point that the people of the town were asking for, a place to chat,” argues the former rector Jaume Teulé, who now lives married with children in La Règola (Àger).
During the celebration of the last Festa Major of Puiggròs, on July 25th, more than a hundred people once again attended the Casal to witness the unprecedented premiere of a documentary video that includes interviews with witnesses from that time with unreleased images, as well as the monographic edition of the magazine El Portal, a now-defunct local publication for which a special edition of 12 pages and 250 copies was made to remember that collective feat.