The General Manager of the  Gas Natural Fenosa Foundation, Pedro-A. Fàbregas, and the Director General of the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation,  M. Carmen Verdaguer, have signed an agreement to study the history of the gas industry in the Catalan counties. The Professor of  the History of Economic Institutions from the Faculty of Economics and Business, Carles Sudrià,  will be the director of this project.

 

The research project on the history of gas in Catalonia aims to produce a work on the expansion of the gas industry in Catalonia, leaving aside the case of Barcelona. The study, which will last about nine months, will focus on the 28 gasworks that came to exist at the time of maximum expansion (at the beginning of the twentieth century):

 

The Maresme Region (Badalona, Premià de Mar, Arenys de Mar, Calella, Mataró),

The Vallès – Osona Region (Sabadell, Terrassa, La Garriga, Granollers, Vic, Manlleu)

The Anoia – Bages Region (Sitges, Vilafranca, Vilanova, Igualada, Manresa, Sallent, Lleida)

The Tarragona Region ( Tarragona, Reus, Tortosa, Valls, Vendrell, l’Arboç)

The Girona Region (Girona, Figueres, Palafrugell, Sant Feliu de Guíxols)

The study will focus on the origins of the gasworks and the protagonists of the initiatives: the role of foreign capital, the participation of local entrepreneurs, the technical and financial references of the proposals. Other bases  of the study will be the role played by the town councils - the forms of  public service adjudications or local regulatory policy -  the economic evolution of the companies, the changes in ownership, and the disappearance and / or integration in regional business groups.

 

The Gas Natural Fenosa Foundation is a cultural, not-for-profit, foundation of general interest that has among its main objectives to support and promote culture in its different forms and levels, by all appropriate means, with particular attention to the history and the present and future projection of the modern energy sector in general and of piped gas in particular, its introduction and development.

 

The Bosch i Gimpera Foundation is the Technological Knowledge and Innovation Centre of the UB and one of its objectives is to encourage and support agreements and contracts between public and private organisations and the University Departments and Services.