surroundings

Although it was already a Roman settlement called Egara, it is actually known for being a traditionally industrial city, starting with a powerful textile industry at the end of 20th century, also for its natural surroundings called Natural Park of Sant Llorenç, also for offering high level universities in the departments of Engineering, Optics, Nursery, Photography, Cinema and Multimedia. It is culturally known for offering a prestigious international jazz festival. It is said that Terrasians love jazz because it reminds them of the rhythm of the thousands of looms working non-stop in the textile plants that gave birth to the thriving city.

Terrassa grown up specially in the 50ties with the arrival of thousands of immigrants from different points of Spain, as essential labour force in the factories. These new inhabitants lived either in the gated communities built by the plant owners for their workers, or settled in self-built houses nearby the factories configuring new quarters. Some of these quarters were built according to the architectonic features of their origin region (specially the south of Spain) and still today you can feel like being in a typical Andalusia village when walking around their white-low houses streets.

Because of the general crisis in the textile sector in the 80ties, many plants where closed down and the huge empty spaces where converted into modern apartment buildings, squares or museums which received the name of the old misfortune tenants. These factories where commonly called “vapour” (steam) which was the energy originally used, so today we have places called: “Vapor Gran”, “Vapor Universitari”, “Vapor Marcet”, “Vapor Armengol”, etc. spread all over the city.

Interesting websites:

• Jazz Terrassa
  • www.jazzterrassa.org
• Hotels
  • QueHoteles.com
  • Hotel Vapor Gran
• Natural Park
  • Wikipedia
  • Diputació
• University Schools
  • ESCAC
  • EUTIT
  • UAB
  • UPC