Department Store El Siglo

The history of the El Siglo department store begins in 1881, when three businessmen: Eduardo Conde Giménez, Ricardo Gómez del Olmo y Saavedra and Pablo del Puerto Arrey created "Conde, Puerto y Compañía"; company dedicated to retail trade and which located its headquarters at number 5 of the Rambla de los Estudios and also occupied:

• Numbers 3 and 7 of the Rambla

• Numbers 10, 12 and 14 of Xuclá Street

• And the number 1 of the Bonsuccés Square

They were the first department stores to open in the entire state and the architectural project as well as the storefront and the sign on the front door were by Domènec Balet. Antonio Carretero took care of the decoration based on noble woods. The business was very luxurious, in the style of the Harrods department store in London or Le Bon Marché in Paris.

A long article in the newspaper La Vanguardia 18 October1881 describes the department stores and praises the architectural work of Domingo Balet and the carpentry work of Antonio Carretero:

The space was huge, about 2500m2 that were divided into many sections full of genre of all kinds. It was one of the first public places to enjoy electric light, it had luminous signs and six thousand incandescent lamps.

Between the store, the warehouses and other departments, 1,050 employees worked, to which we had to add another 600 people who worked in different clothing workshops, who made the products for El Siglo.

Employees were well paid and enjoyed paid vacations (something unusual at the time). Besides, the place had its own medical office and fire department.

The department stores had a reading area, Café - Bar and hairdresser available to customers.

They were the pioneers in mail-order sales, they had a fleet of 25 delivery trucks and distributed 30,000 catalogs of their products.

They were also the first to give away up to 90,000 balloons a year with the company logo for the enjoyment of customers' children.

On Sunday, December 25, 1932 (Christmas day), just as the people of Barcelona were preparing to prepare the Christmas meal, a fire broke out that destroyed everything.

According to the journalist Lluís Permanyer the reason for the fire was the following:

"In one of the shop windows they had, as a commercial attraction, a small miniature train that ran through the exhibits. In order to give it more realism, some wagons were loaded with coal and small packages simulating gifts. At closing time, they forgot to turn off the locomotive that continued to go round and round on its route. The excess weight of its wagons caused the train engine to overheat until it caught fire. That small fire spread to the curtains from the shop window, to the articles, to the wooden shelves and so on until the entire building was set on fire in one of the most notable fires in Barcelona's memory."

According to the Insurance Museum of the insurance company Mapfre, the compensation to the insured, as a result of the fire at the El Siglo Department Store, was assumed by 22 insurance companies.

With the fire, a large plot was left and Calle Pintor Fortuny was able to join the Rambla. Currently on both corners there are the Le Meridien Hotels and the Hotel 1898.

In 1934, after the great fire, the El Siglo department store moved into the building at Calle Pelayo 54, which had previously belonged to Almacenes Damians.

More than 100 years after its foundation in 1984, the El Siglo stores closed their doors permanently and today the building is occupied by the textile multinational C&A.

Source: Archivo Contemporaneo de Barcelona; La Vanguardia; Wikipedia; barcelonamemory.com