The anarchist who patented a dirigible and called it 'Catalunya'

In 1874, Jules Duruof and his wife got lost while trying to cross the Atlantic in a balloon. At that time, balloons – and airships too – had no maneuverability and were often at the mercy of the wind. They fell into the water, but a fishing boat was able to pick them up. Other aeronautical adventurers were not so lucky. All this led Baldomer Oller, an aeronautics enthusiast born in Calaf and exiled in Paris, to want to devise a device that would allow the balloon to be directed wherever its crew wished, and from this came the patent for the airship Catalunya. But the story of this Catalan exiled in Paris is much more interesting and goes beyond technological entrepreneurship. It is a story of unionism, anarchism, imprisonment and torture, exile and return, with the culmination of a surprising invention that was never built.

Now, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat has acquired the plans for the airship Catalunya, along with other documents from the personal collection of Baldomer Oller (1859-1936) that were in the possession of the antiquarian bookstore Delstres in Canet de Mar. There are up to nine original plans, some cyanotypes, with all the details of the invention. The bookstore acquired them from the family, who contacted them to sell various documents by Baldomer Oller in two installments, in 2014 and 2018. "What surprised us most was the extraordinary state of preservation they were in, they were perfect," explains Esteve Domènech, from the Delstres bookstore. A Generalitat archivist visited the bookstore a few months ago and discovered the plans.

The Generalitat de Catalunya acquires funds or documents following criteria of singularity, exceptionality, uniqueness or their exclusive character, antiquity or risk of loss, among others. Documents over 100 years old produced by individuals (private persons) and documents over 40 years old produced by legal entities (companies, associations, private institutions) form part of the documentary heritage. "Incorporating documentary heritage like Baldomer Oller's plans into the National Collection strengthens Catalonia's collective memory and narrative for future generations," points out Joaquim Borràs, Director General of Cultural Heritage.

The lot, which was purchased for 3,016 euros according to Generalitat sources, contained 87 newspaper clippings with news about the technological advances –and misfortunes– of the era in the world of balloons and dirigibles, in addition to the plans for the Catalunya, which was patented on May 11, 1909 as "a new class of dirigible balloon". According to historians Antoni Dalmau and Josep Maria Solà in an article in the Revista d'Igualada, the Spanish Congress approved an allocation of 250,000 pesetas to build Oller's device, "but finally there was a change of government and the allocation was taken by the famous engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo". This Cantabrian inventor had patented his own dirigible in 1905 with other different innovative characteristics, which allowed for a lighter casing.

What was the invention?

But Oller's invention, which never saw the light of day, also brought an important innovation: a system that allowed the boat to turn independently of the balloon and thus direct the direction of travel without the enormous elongated balloon having to rotate. The mechanism consisted of a plate attached to the balloon with a groove into which a disc attached to the boat was inserted, as well as two rudders –one at each end of the boat– with propellers located on the sides above the small boat that could rotate 135°. "It would be the daring equivalent of the helicopter, it was a very important innovation that allowed the engines and the small boat to be oriented," explains Xavier Álvarez, professor of mechanical engineering and deputy director of the UNESCO Chair of Sustainability at the UPC.

"The airship models that were made later have neither the rotating boat nor maneuvering systems to change direction as brilliantly as Baldomer Oller had devised, I know this because I have studied all the existing airship models," adds Álvarez, who is designing a medical airship himself. Although he admits that Torres Quevedo's patent is earlier and that his invention was also important, the expert considers that the fact that Oller's airship was named Catalunya, at a time of significant social and political conflict, "was probably a factor" that influenced the government's decision to withdraw funding for its construction.

Accused of terrorism

Perhaps the same trajectory of Baldomer Oller also influenced it, because the inventor had lived many lives in one and his past included imprisonment in Montjuïc in a terrorism trial. Born in Calaf on November 2, 1859, Oller learned the tailoring trade and worked in Barcelona, where he became involved in the trade union movement from the perspective of anarchism, to the point that at 29 years old, in 1889, he participated in a congress of the Second International in Paris. But the most significant moment of his biography is linked to the terrorist attack on Canvis Nous street on Sunday, June 7, 1896, which left twelve dead and about fifty injured by a bomb that exploded during the Corpus Christi procession heading to Santa Maria del Mar. Baldomero Oller and his wife had been arrested the day before the attack, but after this event they became part of the accused in the case, along with dozens of other detainees.

. But today, the plans and the idea of Baldomer Oller are already cultural heritage of the Catalan government.

La Publicidad, a task he continued later from Paris, where he moved to live in 1905.

The events of the Tragic Week, in 1909, and the execution of Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, with whom he had been in contact, marked a turning point in his career, which gradually moved away from anarchist circles, according to Dalmau and Solà. It was then that he delved deeply into his aeronautical side. At that time, the Gordon Bennett Cup was famous, a balloon crossing from Paris to London, and Oller began to frequent those environments. The former tailor and anarchist revolutionary threw himself into the task of solving the ungovernability of balloons and dirigibles, and according to experts, he succeeded. He also considered an invention to harness the force of sea waves to generate electrical energy, a pioneer of an idea that would eventually be implemented (without relation to him) in the 1960s.

Oller and his family eventually returned to Barcelona, where he died at the age of 77, in September 1936. He never saw the Catalunya built. Only his great-granddaughter, Martina Bou Tàpies, built a model of it in 2013 and dedicated her Baccalaureate research project to it. But today, Baldomer Oller's plans and idea are already cultural heritage of the Catalan government.