3 November 2016

This morning saw the signature ceremony of the partnership agreement between the Catalan Cultural Heritage Agency, the City Council of Granollers and the Roca Umbert Arts Factory, under the terms of which the Roca Umbert Thermal Power Plant will become a part of the Regional Structure of the National Museum of Science and Technology of Catalonia (MNACTEC).

The MNACTEC Regional Structure is a network of 26 separate and distinctive museum and heritage sites that explain industrial productive processes across Catalonia. The museums belonging to this structure explain the industrialisation of Catalonia by means of their collections and/or museum exhibits presenting the different production activities that have existed and of which comprehensible remains still exist, comprising our industrial heritage.

The Roca Umbert Thermal Power Plant
The Roca Umbert Thermal Power Plant is a heritage site that opened in November 2011. Its mission is to explain the industrial heritage of the city of Granollers through the remains that have been preserved of the Roca Umbert power plant.

In its current state of preservation, it represents a distinctive edifice which generated energy using coal and oil as fuel, and which is currently not in use because of the high level of pollution it creates, although this method is still used in some countries, given the deceptively low economic cost. The building that houses the power plant was constructed in the 1950s, since according to the documentation the first boiler had already been installed by 1952.

It is a distinctive heritage site for two reasons: because it represents a type of energy generation that existed in this country during a period marked by dictatorship and economic autocracy, and because very few remain today in a condition allowing the whole complex to be seen.

The site operates as a visitor centre focusing on three topics: energy generation, the industrial past of Granollers, and the social memory of manufacturing activity.