In 1979 the Catalan Museum of Science, Technology and Industrial Archaeology Association was created. It was the Industrial Engineers Association who first proposed that Catalonia should have a Museum of Technology that would trace the industrialisation process in our country and would, therefore, be a clear exponent of our history and personality. The Engineers Association saw clearly that this would not just be a subject for engineers, it would have to be multi-disciplinary and that in some way the project would have to be opened up to the outside, giving leading positions to interested people from other professions, such as architects, historians, teachers and people in the local world amongst others.
After a great deal of effort, in 1984, the Generalitat of Catalonia was persuaded to take up the cause and the result is the Catalan Museum of Science and Technology. Once this milestone was achieved, the Museum Association began to do all those things proper to an association of friends of a museum, that is to work together with the institution as far as it could, to offer services, to try and be the external arm of the museum, to try to find resources and, in short, to give all the support possible.
Now, and in collaboration with the museum, it works towards the preservation, dissemination, study and promotion of Catalonia 's industrial heritage. The task has taken many years and the result of all this work is that industrial heritage has become, we could say, fashionable. Let me explain what I mean with a few brief examples.
These days, in many parts of the country, when a council has completed remodelling a garden or town square and is looking for the most appropriate decorative element to round it off, in place of the typical sculpture, machines are appearing, a part of the place's own industrial history. In the squares and gardens of Catalonia we can find more than a hundred such monuments. This means that awareness of industrial heritage has increased and that this can already be seen on the streets.
Interest in industrial heritage has spread across the whole of Catalonia . The mNACTEC Regional Museum System continues to grow. Today it consists of more than twenty museums and there are more than twenty others waiting their turn. I would say that for each town in Catalonia, apart from wanting a new road, a museum forms part of its aspirations; a museum that explains the history and what is interesting about the town's own, local industrialisation process.
Two years ago, the fervour that accompanied the commemoration of the 150 th anniversary of the industrial villages on the Ter and Llobregat rivers was immense. As was the echo of the cry that went up to save the industrial heart of Can Ricard, in the 22@ district of Barcelona, something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
We have been working for a long time to encourage industrial tourism, promoting visits, tours and trips based on industrial heritage and thereby increasing knowledge of the subject. Today, it is the public administration, at the instance of the Terrassa City Council, that has put forward a powerful communication proposal that would make Catalonia a world reference point for industrial tourism. Before that, however, the efforts of many people were necessary.
And we could find many, many other examples of the ever growing awareness and interest shown by Catalan civil society towards the discovery and protection of our country's industrial heritage.
What is for sure is that the museum and its association are no strangers to these facts!