A piece with history

Last December, the Museum opened a photo exhibition that reviews everyday life and shows aspects of the city and its people during the winter months of different years.

When we were preparing it, a photograph really caught our attention because we thought we recognized a piece that appeared in it and is kept in the Museum’s collection. Having checked and confirmed the fact, we explain to you which piece it is and what we know about it, and relate it also to the photograph.

It is a standard (MB 2057) on which the text Escuela pública de párvulos is embroidered on one side and the coat of arms of Badalona (prior to 1914) on the other. The photograph in which it appears corresponds to the celebration of the Festival of the Tree on March 4th, 1906, which took place in the area of the Rosés hill.

The first tree festivals in Catalonia took place in the spring of 1899 and soon spread throughout the territory. It was a day that wanted to spread the importance of trees as regulators of the water cycle, protectors against erosion and shapers of the landscape.

The Badalona celebration that appears in the original image, made by the Sayol Brothers and of which a 13 x 18 cm glass negative is preserved in the Museum’s Image Archive, was attended by the local authorities and the representatives of Badalona and also some from Barcelona. After the events and parliaments, more than 2,000 snacks were distributed to the students of the schools that attended.

If you want to know all the details of this celebration, do not miss the news published by El Eco de Badalona, dated March 10th, 1906:

https://www.museudebadalona.cat/arxiu/hemeroteca/el-eco-de-badalona

Standard Escuela pública de párvulos (Badalona City Council)[before 1906]. MB 2057

Tree Festival in Badalona, 4th March 1906. Germans Sayol/MB. Arxiu Josep M. Cuyàs.