The Stores are one of Catalonia's most important examples of industrial heritage and were completed in the opening decade of the 20th century. They were adapted and refurbished in 1992, the year Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games.
The building currently houses the Museum of the History of Catalonia, the Social Welfare Department of the Government of Catalonia and a number of restaurants.

A brief history of the General Stores

A royal order, dated 3 March 1818, authorised the construction of premises where importers could quickly and cheaply view the products that had arrived from abroad. The city's Manufacturers' Guild was completely opposed to such an order, however, as they viewed it as an attack on their business interests. It was not until 1827 that traders, with the support of the Board of Trade, managed to overcome the manufacturers' suspicions and concerns and a new royal order was issued, providing for the opening of a trading depot in Barcelona.

In 1829, the students studying under Antoni Cellers, the professor at the Free School of Architecture of the Board of Trade, presented a number of projects that placed the depots alongside the Portal de Mar. In August 1831, however, the Board of Trade agreed a rental contract with the Crown and decided to locate the stores on the lower stretch of the Moll Vell (the Old Quay).
Shortly after acquiring the land, the Board had its own premises built under the supervision of Josep Oriol Mestres facing directly out onto the beach of the Portal de Mar. These premises were soon found to be insufficient and new general stores, designed by Elies Rogent, were built over the course of 1874 on Avinguda Icària. With the 1881 building, it was Garrán's intention to construct premises at the port that were more useful and less burdensome for trade.

The Industrial Revolution led to sweeping changes in maritime affairs. The silent wooden sailing ships were gradually but relentlessly replaced by iron and steel vessels powered by noisy steam engines. The technical features of these new craft-greater length and deeper draught-and the business criteria governing their activity-shorter stays in port and quicker loading and unloading-meant that the entire port system had to be rethought. In 1868, the Barcelona Port Board of Works was set up in order to find solutions to the new needs.

Maurici Garrán, the Board's director between 1868 and 1881, outlined in a talk he gave at the Barcelona Athenaeum in 1877 the principal objectives of the port reform works: it was not enough to have a port where ships could be moored; it was necessary to have a place where goods could be unloaded. Trade demanded more than the safety of ships; it needed docks, spacious wharfs, the right equipment for loading, unloading and careening vessels. Delaying by just one day the provision of the means to load, unload, deposit, recognise, store and transport goods would evidently be damaging to the country's interests.

The history archives of the Barcelona Port Authority hold the original design, dated 1 March 1881, for a trading depot signed by the chief engineer and supervisor of the works, Maurici Garrán. The descriptive report records that according to the general layout of the land of the maritime area effected in accordance with the royal order of 20 October 1872, "an extensive plot is to be designed on the Platja dels Pescadors wharf for the establishment of a spacious warehouse [...] which will prove highly advantageous for the placement of those goods [...] that are not to enter the city or which are not intended for domestic consumption. The building being thus located, the goods will pass directly from the ships to the warehouses and from the warehouses to the ships with maximum economy."

As Garrán himself recognised, his design was inspired by English port buildings of the period. Even now it is easy to see the similarity between the dock constructions of the ports in London or Liverpool and the General Stores in Barcelona. The marked personality of the English dock buildings, based on their particular function, has made them emblematic examples of industrial archaeology, a discipline that emerged in Britain after the Second World War in order to study and preserve the material remains of the capitalist method of production.

Maurici Garrán believed that a port trading depot should meet a number of basic requirements: it had to be secure and easy to watch and control; it had to be located near the ships; it had to facilitate fiscal transactions; and it had to be on the outskirts of the city.

The building's floor plan and above all its distribution meant that it was easy and cheap to build and could be divided up, plus it guaranteed security as it was easy to guard and also met customs and excise requirements.

Building work began in 1885. The first phase was to lay the foundations, which was an extremely complex undertaking as it was done on the Platja dels Pescadors beach. On 17 December 1894, the contract for the work was awarded to the Materiales para Ferro-Carriles y Construcciones company and on May 1 1900 the construction was deemed to be complete.

Over the course of its hundred years of existence, the building of the General Stores has been put to many different uses and at one time was even the quarters for the Customs Corps. It was hardly ever used as trading depot amongst other reasons because it was too far from the port entrance, because it was operationally more complex than premises consisting solely of a ground floor and because it was expensive to maintain.

The General Stores building

The General Stores building is an example of the conceptually most innovative construction techniques of the period from the late 19th century to the early 20th. The Stores have a double structure. The interior structure consists of a rolled steel framework while the exterior structure is brickwork. The interior structure is highly effective in spaces that need to be both open and bear heavy loads, while the brickwork exterior provides excellent protection for the goods against bad weather, fire and theft.

The increased use of metal structures over a century ago coincided with the emergence of the flat roof, both of which are used to good advantage in the construction of the Stores. Mechanised casting made it possible not only to save material but also to more closely adapt the form to the function. Flat roofs are lightweight, resistant and ribbed, and dry-bond perfectly to the base and other components without the need for mortar.

Two types of support are used in the Stores: cast-iron columns and rolled steel columns. Pins are the most commonly used linking component. Both the columns and the beams were made in the workshop. Once on site, these large components were assembled and joined together using cold-threaded bolts.

The building was refurbished in 1992 by the architects Josep Benedito and Augustí Mateos, resulting a major transformation of the Stores, blending the port tradition with the dynamism of contemporary architecture and establishing a dialogue between the old and the new. Firstly, a large open space was created in the centre of the building to make it seem lighter and at the same time to allow for vertical circulation within it. Secondly, a new floor was added in order to allow access to the rooftop, which has been acclaimed as a great success as it enables visitors to enjoy fabulous views of the port and the city.

Recommended further reading

Alemany, Joan. El Port de Barcelona. Port de Barcelona, 1998

Capmany, Maria Aurèlia. Fem memòria. El Port de Barcelona. Lunwerg Ed., Barcelona, 1990

Clavera, Joan et al. Economía e Historia del Puerto de Barcelona. Ed. Civitas, Madrid, 1992

Tatjer, Mercedes. La Barceloneta del S. XVIII al Plan de la Ribera. Los libros de la frontera, Barcelona, 1973