Tecla Sala i Miralpeix: Business Leader, Philanthropist, Feminist

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It’s been just over 50 years since the death of businesswoman and philanthropist Tecla Sala i Miralpeix, who is considered to have been one of the most important female entrepreneurs in the history of Catalunya. She was a part of the societal and cultural transformation that helped carve out a place for women in business in this part of the world.

She was known as a woman with a strong character, intelligent and decisive, and for having a sharp business sense. Also, for her capacity to think out of the box, for her stellar treatment of her workers and her attention to their needs, as well as for her ability to manage both the production and distribution of her product with a firm but fair hand. Perpetually dressed in black, as was the habit of many strict Catholic women of her generation, she often left a first impression as a “severe” person, but her generosity was legendary.

Early Life: The Family Business

Born to a bourgeois family in Roda de Ter, Osona, in 1886, Tecla was orphaned at a young age: her mother died in childbirth when Tecla was only two, and her father died when she was five. She was raised by her aunt and uncle, Francesca Miralpeix and Pau Sala, a couple of industrialists. She grew up in their house along with her cousin, Joan Riera, who was the child of Pau’s younger, widowed sister. When Pau Sala died in 1904, Francesca continued to run the family’s textile, livestock and other companies, ultimately setting an example for Tecla that a widowed woman could in fact handle the day-to-day matters of running a business. In fact, their textile factory was sometimes referred to as Viuda de Pau Sala, “Pau Sala’s Widow,” until Francesca also died in 1908.

Though Tecla and Joan were first cousins and had been raised together as siblings, they ended up getting married and inheriting the family businesses, which included the rented textile factory Can Portavella de Roda in Roda de Ter also known as “La Blava.” (The name came both from the use of blue dye in spinning, and because that’s the color that the doors and window frames of the factory were painted.) Beginning in 1910, when Tecla was only 22 years old, she became co-director of a small industrial empire. But societal restrictions of that era meant that a woman couldn’t officially run a company, so her husband assumed control of all the family’s business interests while she unofficially played a critical roll in running things from behind the scenes.

At the time, the Ter and Llobregat basins were hubs of the textile industry thanks to easy access to water, and therefore hydraulic power. In 1913, the couple also acquired industrial buildings in Torrent Gornal de l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, at the site of a 19th-century former paper mill, which had been designed by architect Claudi Duran Ventosa in 1882. They called their new location the Tecla Sala factory in Hospitalet.

By 1920, both the Tecla Sala factory and La Blava were going strong. In 1921, with the idea of building a newer, larger, more modern installation, they bought the land on which La Blava was located—their adoptive parents had only been renting the land—as well as the rights to use the waterfall that belonged to the old mill. They put engineer Francesc Vives Pons in charge of the building of the new factory, which would also be called La Blava. Meanwhile, their businesses continued to prosper: In 1923, the Tecla Sala factory in Hospitalet was the third largest textile factory in the city, with only Can Trixet and Can Trias numbering more workers. It employed 322 workers, 271 of which were female.

Works on the new factory were completed in 1924. Joan and Tecla moved some machines from the original La Blava factory and ordered other top-of-the-line equipment from England. In 1925, the new machines arrived from England. This additional space and infrastructure would allow the company to significantly increase its level of production.

A Woman Running an Empire Alone

In 1926, the new La Blava factory was opened. However, Joan died in December of that same year, leaving his 40-year-old widow to both raise their five children and run the family businesses. Not long after their father’s death, her two sons Pau and Rossend, who were 18 and 15 years old at the time, would begin working at the factory under their mother’s guidance.

In 1931, Tecla and her children moved to a large noucentista building that she had commissioned by the architect Francesc Folguera i Grassi, at the corner of Carrer de Casp and Carrer de Pau Claris in Barcelona. It was the first building in the city to be inspired by the wave of “rationalist” architecture that was becoming popular in other countries, such as Italy, and which was a reaction against modernista or art nouveau architecture. The space would serve not only as her family’s home, but also as her business headquarters.

A centralized headquarters was needed because Tecla’s businesses and other projects continued to expand: in 1932, a new building was added onto La Blava and 10,000 new spinning spindles were installed in the factory. The staff under her management eventually grew to number approximately 1,200, many of them women.

At the start of the Spanish Civil War, some of her relatives in Barcelona were killed and her company was collectivized by the workers, so she went into exile in Andorra and then in Castellnou d'Arri (Castelnaudary) and La Ramejane in France. When the war ended and she felt safe enough to come back, she temporarily settled in Mas de Can Sala in Premià de Dalt and worked to regain control of her companies.

Once life returned to “normal” during the post-war years, her factories grew and expanded under Tecla’s direction until she was one of the largest and most profitable textile magnates in the entire country. Throughout her forty years at the head of her companies, she was known for the excellent quality of her products, for the modernity of the industrial equipment and for the good treatment and high wages she paid to her workers.

Throughout its decades-long success, there was notably very little unrest within the ranks of the workers apart from the incidents during the Civil War, which is something that can’t be said for many factories in and around Barcelona during that period. Even when textile production later saw a severe downturn in the 1970s, her factories would remain among the strongest in Spain.

Tecla was the company’s director until her death in 1973, in Barcelona. At the time, Tecla Sala was one of the five largest Catalan factories in the textile sector. Her sons ran the factory until 1981, when they decided to close during a period of severe crisis and instability in the textile industry.

Good Works and Giving Back to the Community

Apart from being a prominent business leader and patron of her community for forty years, Tecla also represented the profile of entrepreneur-philanthropist to a degree that was almost unheard of at the time. She held deep religious convictions and possessed a strong sense of social justice, which manifested themselves in a desire to improve the living conditions of the working class, specifically and especially when it came to working women: she became known as a supporter of organizations that aimed to further these causes in the realms of both professional training and education, and offering leisure activities for children and young people within the community. Her cultural, social, religious and education initiatives were manifold.

Tecla set up a library for her workers, which offered lessons in reading and writing, as well as an on-site clinic (her nephew, Dr. Ramon Solanich i Riera, was the factory doctor), workers’ showers and a commissary. When she was widowed, she began to pay particular attention to the specific needs of the female workers, setting up a kindergarten and daycare on the grounds of the factory as she was hyper-aware of working mothers’ needs when it came to conditions and scheduling.

She invested in the community outside the factory as well, building what was at the time the best school in the municipality. Her other good works included helping to fund the Red Cross, donating money to the construction of a religious school which would eventually bear her name, paying for the construction of a football field and other athletic facilities, and sponsoring the restoration of the Church of Santa Eulàlia in Mèrida. But her philanthropic activities didn’t stop at Hospitalet’s city limits: she paid for the bells in the church at Premià de Mar and also financed a professional school in the town, gave money to support Montserrat Monastery, helped to rebuild the church in her hometown of Roda de Ter, paid for a local bus line to be built there, and also founded a girl’s home and education center.

However, even Tecla’s stellar public reputation wouldn’t prevent her from being put on trial by the Court of Political Responsibilities under Franco in the year 1940, when she was accused of being a “Catalan sympathizer.” This was partly due to her friendship with known Catalanists Vidal i Barraquer, Carrasco i Formiguera and others. But the accusation didn’t result in any serious consequences, and Tecla continued to expand her professional and philanthropic projects. She remained beloved by the local community, and in 1954, the city of Hospitalet awarded her its gold medal, and named a street after her.

Tecla Sala’s Legacy

Today, her legacy lives on in the Metropolità Cultural Center Tecla Sala of l'Hospitalet de Llobregat on the premises of her former factory; the City Council of l'Hospitalet bought the site to turn it into a cultural facility in 1982. It’s now a free public facility which includes a contemporary visual arts center, a library, is the headquarters of the Arranz Bravo non-profit foundation and offers educational programs and hosts exhibitions. Since 2012, it’s been included in the list of eight centers that form a part of the Public System of Visual Arts Facilities of Catalunya.

In 2023, the Museum of History of Catalunya created a series of temporary exhibitions on notable figures in Catalan history, including Tecla Sala. The exhibit showcased various objects donated by the workers from La Blava company in Roda de Ter and the Tecla Sala textile factory in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. The objects included small details from daily life, such as factory punch clocks, lunch boxes the employees would bring to work, and even the pencil case of a former long-time La Blava employee who became a renowned poet in Catalunya, Miquel Martí i Pol.

The museum also interviewed over fifty former workers from her textile companies as part of the field work project led by museum curator Raquel Castellano, with the aim of expanding the public’s knowledge of her life and her business activities. The museum cites her as one of the three contemporary Catalan women who had the most impact on society, alongside Francesca Bonnemaison, the creator of the first women’s library in Europe, and the poet and writer Caterina Albert, who wrote under the pen name Víctor Català.