The slaughterhouse hour

The last article we published in the Ara Descobrim of the Camp de Tarragona supplement was dedicated to closing a series on the markets with the most tradition in the Camp and Terres de l’Ebre regions. With this September’s rentrée, I want to change things. We will go back to the origins!

We could look for the port, the boat, the farm, the herd… We will get there, but this time, and it will surely accompany us throughout this season, our setting will be the slaughterhouse.

Most towns and cities in the Camp and Ebre regions have one, many with uses different from the original ones – such as a museum, library, rectory, headquarters for an entity… – but in others, such as Santa Coloma de Queralt and Sarral, it is still in use.

The first is one of the slaughterhouses currently undergoing transformation: the one in Torredembarra. One of the oldest with the modern and hygienist typology of the mid-19th century. In fact, its function was to replace the cattle slaughters that were carried out in a small space on Carrer Carnisseria, right in the middle of the old town.

The change is not minor. During the 19th century, Catalan towns began to transform, and so did the way of understanding public hygiene and health. It was necessary to control what was eaten, under what conditions the animals were slaughtered, and how waste was managed.

Its architecture responds to a very specific function: wide spaces, ventilation, surfaces easy to clean, and differentiated areas to organize an activity that for decades was part of the daily life of the town. Animals, butchers, workers, and veterinarians passed through the slaughterhouse.

And, like so many other things, the moment also arrived when the slaughterhouse was no longer necessary. Large industrial slaughterhouses, new distribution systems, and sanitary requirements gradually changed that way of doing things. Many of the small municipal slaughterhouses closed and the buildings were left empty, abandoned, or found a new life.

For years it has been a closed building, with conservation problems and pending an intervention that would allow it to be recovered. The repair and consolidation works are already underway. This first phase aims to stop the degradation, remove elements such as asbestos, reinforce the structure, and especially recover the facade on Carrer del Nord. The future facility will still have to be defined, but Torredembarra's popular culture suggests that it will be one of the possible protagonists of this new stage.

It is not bad at all to start this new season of Ara Descobrim here: in a place where for more than a century a part of the path that led from the field to the table began. Now another one begins, the one that leads from the slaughterhouse to heritage.