A Great History Together

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The president of the Port of Tarragona, Josep Maria Cruset, presented the programme of events to be held over the coming twelve months to commemorate 150 years of the Port of Tarragona. The press conference was held on the Reus Wharf, in one of the historical facilities of the Port of Tarragona and alongside one of the Port’s oldest working cranes. Mr Cruset revealed the events to be held in 2019-2020 to commemorate the founding in 1869 of the Port of Tarragona Board of Works, the predecessor of the present-day Tarragona Port Authority (APT).

The programme for the anniversary is a combination of institutional and cultural events open to the port community, the city of Tarragona and the territory. Five major events will be held during 2019-2020, backed up by a programme of activities on the Costa Wharf, all with the objective of making the general public more aware of the past and present of the Port of Tarragona.

For this reason, the motto of this 150^th anniversary is “A Great History Together”. In the words of Mr Cruset, “The history of the Port of Tarragona is the history of the city of Tarragona and the Camp de Tarragona region, and vice versa, because over the centuries they have always been interlinked for strategic, economic and commercial reasons”.

Illustrated Atlas

Illustrated Atlas of the History of the Port of Tarragona

On 14 November the Illustrated Atlas of the History of the Port of Tarragona was presented. The work of the illustrator and historian Joan Carles Blanch i Torrebadell (born in La Riera of Gaià in 1973) entitled Atles Històric i Il·lustrat del Port de Tarragona. Del passat al present was presented on Thursday 14 November at 7 pm in Tinglado 1 on the Costa Wharf of the Port of Tarragona.

IMAGE GALLERY

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Institutional Ceremonies

Institutional Ceremonies

28 February | Mainn ceremony: acknowledgement of the people of the Port

The main ceremony will be held in Refugi 1 on the Costa Wharf. It will be a homage and an expression of gratitude to the people who, in recent decades and today, have dedicated their working lives to helping the Port of Tarragona grow from an institutional, commercial and cultural perspective.

The institutional ceremony will bring together the whole community of people linked to the Port of Tarragona and its institutional, business, neighbourhood, social and cultural environment and will serve to review the history of the Port of Tarragona, placing special emphasis on the last 150 years of the Port, through a video and other audiovisual media.

Refugi 1 -800 people attend thePortof Tarragona150thAnniversarycommemoration.An innovativeport. A port with solidity.

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November 2020| The New Port Museum

During this year, and in parallel with the programme of events, the area occupied by the current Port Museum will be refurbished and updated. The refurbishment project will cost one million euros and will consist of the comprehensive rehabilitation of Refugi 2. It will take ten months and will affect an area of 2,600 m² and will add another 600 m² of exhibition area.

The project also includes the improvement of the environs of the building. Particularly noteworthy is the replacement of the existing roof to improve the thermal conditions of the complex. Subsequently, heating and air conditioning (non-existent until now) will be installed in the whole building, to improve the interior comfort for visitors and staff. It is also planned to reorganise all the Museum offices and install new areas for storage and for guided activities and workshops.

At the same time, a new museum programme will be created to place greater emphasis on the port and maritime heritage and to incorporate new participatory formats and audiovisual spaces.

The Port of Tarragona’s objective is that the year of its 150^th anniversary can end with a tour of the new facilities in late 2020. It will be an invitation to all citizens to get to know the new Port Museum that the Port is planning as its legacy to the city on the occasion of this anniversary.

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Dramatised Boat Tours

During April, May and October, two new activities will be introduced to bring the Port closer to the citizens of Tarragona. The first will be dramatised tours on board the golondrina to show our port from the sea. “See the Port from the sea” is one of the most popular activities among local residents, tourists and official visitors. Therefore we are proposing a tour to view the different wharfs and other port facilities from the sea.

This dramatised tour will take in some of the Port of Tarragona facilities that are spread across four municipalities: Tarragona, Vila-seca (La Pineda), Salou and La Canonja. From the sea, a “former port worker” will explain the history and operation of our port, giving the participants an idea of the huge size of the Port of Tarragona, one of the  most important ports on the Mediterranean.

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OpenPORT

The second new activity will be “OpenPORT”, an invitation to people and families to visit the port and its facilities from the land with the objective of explaining the operation and curiosities of the area where the commercial activity of the port takes place.

The interior of the Port is unknown to most people and this activity will offer an exceptional experience that will no doubt be of great interest to the citizens of Tarragona. The Port of Tarragona will take advantage of the anniversary celebrations to offer the opportunity to small groups to take a guided tour from the dockside. They will be shown the wharfs and such elements of the port as cranes, silos, etc. This experience will be organised from January to October next year and will be subject to the availability of the spaces. 

In addition, the different venues on the Costa Wharf will focus many of their activities on recovering and disseminating the history of the Port. The Port Archive, the Teatret del Serrallo, the Museum and the Costa Wharf exhibition rooms will bring little-known aspects of the Port’s history to the visitors through stories, guided tours, talks, publications and other experiences.

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Macro concerts

Macro concerts

27 June| Youth concert, the Grand Summer Party

At midnight on 27 June the Port will hold a macro concert starring Doctor Prats that will be open to all who are young and young at heart.

Doctor Prats consists of seven musicians who have been delighting audiences since 2014. Their project began five years ago with Marc Riera (ex-Kayo Malayo), Ramon Figueras (trumpet), Josep J. Rey (guitar), Oriol Cors (drums), Víctor Martínez (keyboards) and Guillem Boltó (trombone). The bass player, Miki Santamaria, encouraged Marc Riera to be the singer.

Although the initial intention was to make original videoclips to upload to YouTube, the success of their first disc ‘Patates amb Peix’ (Fish and Chips) led a producer to offer the group a concert tour. Next came their first videoclip, ‘Rockamboleska’, which went viral, and they made their first tour in 2015, performing more than 50 concerts.

The second disc ‘Aham Sigah’ received airplay on the country’s main radio stations and Doctor Prats became a regular attraction at the major Catalan music festivals, including a performance on the Maria Cristina Avenue stage for the La Mercè festival in front of an audience of more than 50,000. They also collaborated on the disc for the TV3 Marathon. The group was awarded the Enderrock Award (2017) and  has performed at many festivals in Catalonia and abroad (France, Hungary, Japan,  Morocco, etc.).

The discs ‘Venim de Lluny’ and ‘Avui lluny és més a prop’ from the last two years reached number one in the radio charts and, as the group says, “Doctor Prats has always been known for making the impossible possible”. It’s a group that is constantly performing concerts with extraordinary success. For example, this year they were at Canet Rock (for the third consecutive year) and the Doctor Music Festival.

Children's Festival

Children's Festival

27 June | Children's Party

The third main event is open to the smallest residents of the city of Tarragona and its region. In the afternoon and evening of 27 June a grand children’s party will be held in the space between the former warehouses on the Costa Wharf. The macro-space will be the scenario of a programme of entertainment and shows for the littlest members of the family, among which we can highlight one of the most popular children’s groups in Catalonia, Pot Petit.

Pot Petit is a project for children that is full of magic, music, theatre, songs and fun characters. For many years now this group has been giving concerts that combine music, puppets and theatrical performance and with their own original songs. They delight not only the kids (between 2 and 7 years), but also adults. Their concerts have eight musicians on stage: bass, drums, guitar, piano/violin, saxophone, trombone, puppeteer and vocals. They have also published three discs with their own compositions ‘Canta amb el Pot Petit’, ‘Ritmes i Rialles’ and ‘A l’Aventura’.

The kids love the characters: Pau, Jana, the Melmelada Band, Gina, Juna and Pol, who are accompanied by all their friends, such as the shy lion, the frightened worm, the pirates, the giraffe and the elephant, the rockin’ ant, Rac the dragon, etc. Great fun for the whole family.

Activities

November 2019 -November 2020 | More activities on the Costa Wharf

As part of the 150^th anniversary celebrations, the Port of Tarragona’s cultural programme is organising other activities to make 2019-2020 a very special time.

Origin

Origin of Port Tarragona

The Port of Tarragona Board of Works was set up on 18 October 1869. This was the first body responsible for the administration and management of the Catalan port and it promoted the financing and construction of the modern port. Tarragona’s port board was the second to be set up in Spain, after that of Barcelona (February 1869). Tarragona was followed by those of Seville (1870), Santander and Palma (1872), Malaga (1874) and A Coruña (1877).

The Board’s regulations were passed on 25 November and its main purpose was to administer the Port’s finances. The construction work was supervised the engineers and the inspection was the responsibility of the head provincial engineer. The approval of plans and payments and the reception of the works came directly under the Ministry of Development.

The Port of Tarragona Board of Works was in place from 1869 to 1992, when boards of works were replaced by port authorities under Port Act 27/1992. That is why we are commemorating this date, as it signifies 150 years since the creation of the Board of Works, the precedent to the present-day Port Authority.

The Port of Tarragona Board of Works met for the first time on 5 November 1869. In addition to the director of the Board, it had representatives from the Civil Government, the Naval Command, the Provincial Board of Agricultura, Industry and Commerce, the City Council and the Provincial Government. The end of the 19^th century saw the most important actions that led to the port taking on its current form.

The infrastructure created managed to overcome one of the city’s historical challenges: to provide large, safe area in which vessels could shelter. With the backing of the Board of Works, the Port of Tarragona became the maritime facility that the industrialised Catalan economy needed to connect to the rest of the world.

The resources were managed more efficiently under the Board of Works. It also coincided with a considerable increase in cargo movements, particularly in goods for export. This was when the Costa Wharf and the Parallel Coastal Wharf were built, as well as the Llevant, Oest and Transversal breakwaters. After this construction phase, the board’s attention turned to equipping the infrastructures and renewing the equipment, as well as improving the services, paving the wharfs and installing electrical power.

The Port of Tarragona was also involved in the construction of the ports of Cambrils, L’Ametlla de Mar and Salou, as the result of a decree in the year 1928 under which Tarragona took charge of administering and executing the work on those ports, which then became aggregated to the Port of Tarragona.

From the 1960s, as a consequence of the implantation of the petrochemical industry in the area and the new economic situation established by the Stabilisation Plan of 1959, there was a notable increase in port traffic. In this new economic climate, the port began to build new facilities more suitable for the needs of the time, such as the jetties for loading and unloading petroleum products and new access routes including the Transversal Axis.

This diversification brought about the adaptation of the port infrastructure to the new requirements; the dockside depths were increased and new surface areas were built on the Catalonia, Andalusia, Cantàbria and Chemical Wharfs.

Over the centuries, the physical appearance of the city of Tarragona has also changed along with that of the Port, both with the arrival of the railway and with the birth of the seaside neighbourhoods. More recent changes include the Port Footbridge, the Miracle Beach seafront promenade, the commitment to cruise liner traffic and the strong cultural alliance built up through Port-city relations, all designed to integrate the port into the life of the city.

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