Opening hours: Friday from 4 pm to 10 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 10 pm and Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm
Photographic memory of an industrial community
The discovery of the existence of brown lignite, in 1790, marked forever the history of As Pontes (A Coruña), but we had to wait until the forties of the twentieth century to glimpse its effects on the future of the municipality. The economic policy of Franco's regime, focused on avoiding dependence on other countries and to be supplied with its own resources, led to the creation of the Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo (ENCASO) in 1942 to manufacture liquid fuels and lubricants from rocks in four large industrial complexes, located in Puertollano, Ebro, Levante and As Pontes.
ENCASO builds in As Pontes a thermoelectric power station, a fertilizer factory and plans the construction of a town, in order to meet the housing demands of its workers. Thus began, in 1945, the construction of As Veigas, a self-sufficient village with all the services necessary for daily life - commissary, school, church, clinic, cinema and green areas - with a marked social hierarchy that reproduces the labor scale of the workers who live there.
The exhibition brings us closer to the architecture of the 40's and 50's, to the industrial paternalism, to the work spaces, but also to the family and social spaces, showing us the day to day life of an essential period in the history of As Pontes. This is possible thanks to the photographer Manolo Vila, a true notary of the life of this community.
This is a temporary exhibition, originally designed by the Asociación de Estudios Históricos y Sociales de Hume, with the collaboration of the Diputación de A Coruña and the Concello de As Pontes, for the Centro de Interpretación A Mina, dedicated to disseminate the trace of brown coal in the town.
