Vallparadís Park (in Catalan and officially Parc de Vallparadís)The translation would correspond to the term "Valley of Paradise", in reference to the first settlers who found the waters at the confluence of the torrents and fertile lands. is a natural urban space located in the municipality of Terrassa, in the province of Barcelona, Spain. Its construction began in 1991, from several previous approaches during the 19th and 20th centuries, which culminated in the final drafting of the project by .. The park was declared an Bien de Interés Cultural by the Government of Spain. From north to south it is about 3.5 km long, and averages about wide.
The first fossil findings in the area date back a million years; samples of Pleistocene flora and fauna have been discovered at the Cal Guardiola site,. while the first evidence of human presence dates back to the Iberian period, found at the Egosa settlement. This site would eventually become Egara, now Terrassa..
The park has a "Y" shape due to the Vallparadís torrent and the Monner torrent, which converge in the Monumental church complex of Sant Pere de Terrassa, a historical heritage made up of a patrimonial, archaeological and artistic ensemble, a fundamental piece of Romanesque art in Catalonia. It houses the Textile Museum and Documentation Centre, one of the main textile museum institutions, consisting of a library, an image bank and a fabric collection, and the Carthusian castle of Vallparadís, a fortification —also declared a historical heritage site—dating from 1110, the main section of the current Terrassa Museum. In addition, the park has several architectural monuments of great importance such as the , the or the .
Inside the park there are different facilities —such as a swimming pool or a large-scale train that runs through the center of the park— and events are held annually, such as the Jazz Picnic or the Festival of Colors, which attract thousands of spectators.
History
Geology
Since the Neogene, the park has been naturally shaped by the fluvial erosion of the waters of the Monner and Vallparadís torrents, forming part of the Catalan pre-coastal depression..
The sediments found in the area correspond to the Neogene and later Quaternary, and come mainly from the erosion of metamorphic, volcanic and plutonic rocks from the Paleozoic, and also from terrigenous and carbonate rocks, both from the Mesozoic and Paleogene.
In 1997, through a series of archaeological excavations that lasted more than two years at the Cal Guardiola site, some 26,000 fossils were found,. of which approximately 3,000 remains corresponded to mammals.. Among them, the presence of hippopotamuses, damas, equus and hyenas are noteworthy.. Other animal species found include various types of proboscideans, bears, rhinoceroses, jaguars, deer, macaques, megaloceroses, bovidae and a suidae, the only one found in Western Europe with an age of one million years.
Plant remains have also been found in the excavations, of which two large specimens with dimensions exceeding are worth mentioning.
Projection as a park
The Vallparadís park has gone through several stages until it became what it is today, since 1346, when the first settlers arrived in the area known as Vallis Paradisi. The torrents that occupied the park were inhabited by several agricultural settlements until the end of the 19th century, when the city of Terrassa was affected by the transformations of the municipality due to the arrival of the railroad in 1856 —in the northernmost part of the park— and the first urban planning project by Miquel Curet in 1878..
Thus, in 1895 the construction of the Pont del Passeig was adjudicated, considered the first modern structure in the park, and in 1915 the first urban planning project was carried out by .
18 years later, in 1933, a second, more modest urban development plan called Pla Viñals was drawn up, but it was not until 1951 that the Plan General de Ordenación Urbana was drawn up by the Provincial Urban Planning Committee of Barcelona. Meanwhile, in 1942 a request was made for the Carthusian castle of Vallparadís to be declared a Historic-Artistic monument.
However, the Plan General de Ordenación underwent a series of modifications and it was not until 1965 that a new Plan was presented, revised in 1970, which incorporated special attention to green areas. Finally, in 1972, the park Nuevo Plan de Ordenación was approved with a detailed delimitation and management.
With the definitive Plan, in 1985 the drafting of the Plan Especial de Vallparadís was assigned to , a project that was executed between 1991 and 1997 in three construction phases.
In 1999, with the park already formed, a master plan was drawn up that set the autonomous organizational guidelines for Vallparadís.
Architecture
Monumental church complex of Sant Pere de Terrassa
The churches of Sant Pere de Terrassa are a monumental complex formed by the Romanesque churches of Sant Pere, Sant Miquel and Santa Maria (Saint Peter, Saint Michael and Saint Mary), as well as the clergy house of Sant Pere and an archaeological site that were part of the nucleus of Égara.Egara was a municipality (Municipium Flavium Egara) in Roman Hispania that corresponds to the current city of Terrassa.
It is a series of buildings with an existence of more than 1500 years that were restored in the late 19th century. Later, in 1906, an archaeological search was carried out on the site by the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch. This exploration resulted in one of the most important elements for the historiographical evaluation of the diocese of Egara, documented from the year 400 to 750. The complex, which encompasses both the late and early medieval periods, was built on a small hill on both sides of the Vallparadís and Monner torrents that make up the park, at a time when Christianity went from being a tolerated religion to an official one.. At first, a basilica was built, and later a cathedral, in the area currently occupied by the church of Santa Maria and the clergy house. In this construction, which lasted more than a century, a funerary shrine with a subway crypt was also built, which today is the church of Sant Miquel. In this area, tombs have been found facing east,According to classical Christian symbolism, the tombs were oriented towards the east. belonging to the necropolis of the Episcopal period of the 11th century and the Carolingian period of the 9th and 10th centuries. During this period a parish church was also built, which corresponds to the church of Sant Pere and the episcopal palace next to the cathedral.
The whole ecclesiastical complex expanded progressively over the years until its peak, around the 11th and 12th centuries.
Textile Museum and Documentation Centre
The Textile Museum and Documentation Centre is a museum institution located on the east side of the central part of the park, next to the Carthusian castle of Vallparadís. It is a gallery dedicated to the textile world, in which Terrassa played one of the most important roles of the Industrial Revolution in this sector..
The gallery, which presents an overview of the different techniques and styles used by the different regions throughout history,. is managed by the City Council of Terrassa, together with the Provincial Diputation of Barcelona and is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network. It has a collection of fabrics with 365 pieces that were incorporated into the museum between 1946 and 1968, antique dealers and brocade, as well as church sarcophagi..
At present, the textile gallery can be consulted upon request, and there is also a free consultation service of the museum's collection via Internet..
Carthusian castle of Vallparadís The Carthusian castle of Vallparadís, located in the easternmost part of the park's center, was a fortification documented as early as 1110, when the land was purchased from the then Count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer III.
The building rises on the edge of a large embankment of the park and has a rectangular plan, walls with arrowslits, towers at each of its corners and three bestorres on its west side.A bestorre is a semicircular or rectangular tower, very often open on one side, which is located in many of the enclosures with walls. The reforms to transform it to the charterhouse functions still remain. It is worth mentioning a two-story cloister —the lower one with chaotic openings and the upper one more stable with pointed arches— and geometric capitals without decoration with the ancestral chapter house on the east side, covered with a rib vault. The old church of the monastery is what is known today as El Tinellet, with a flat roof supported by four diaphragmatic pointed arches.
Currently, the castle is the main section of the six that make up the museum complex of Terrassa and its exhibition is structured in different areas such as the natural environment, with the main habitats of the Vallés —forests, agricultural areas, streams and torrents—, prehistory and ancient world —with elements of the archeological sites of Egara, among others—, medieval world —with archaeological remains of the churches of Sant Pere, the castle of Vallparadís and the old castle-palace of Terrassa, among others—, modern era —with religious elements such as retables from the 17th and 18th centuries—, contemporary age —with rural and industrial life in the 19th century and culture and society —with a collection of paintings from the 20th century.
Casa Baumann
Casa Baumann, also known as Casa Coll i Bacardí, is a 1913 building by the architect . It was built with the purpose of serving as a home for the architect himself. It is located inside the park, south of the Vallparadís castle, on Jacquard Avenue, next to the Pont del Passeig. The building originally consisted of two levels and a large plot of land and was sold to the Ernest Baumann company. Subsequently, in 1982 the property was acquired by the City Council of Terrassa. Architecturally, the house underwent a first extension in 1926 and a second one, on the second floor, in 1951. Thirty-one years later, in 1982, the building was affected by a fire in the upper part and the city council had to consolidate the structure. In addition, in 1995, the building's exterior envelope was repaired. Finally, in 2007, the access points were adapted, part of the interior was modified and the current elevator, which can be seen today on the outside, was installed..
In 2003, the Casa Baumann was declared a with registration number 6706-I, and the building is currently used as the headquarters of the Youth and Children's Leisure Service of the City Council of Terrassa.
Retaining walls at Casa Salvans The retaining walls of the Casa Salvans are the work of Lluís Muncunill i Parellada and are located on Salmerón Street, next to the park. They are walls formed with common rubble stone with a size that decreases the higher they are in the wall. They are formed by pebble stones that form an irregular line, which goes down a slope of the road and flows into the Monner de Vallparadís torrent, until it becomes a retaining wall with buttresses linked together with blind arches. At the highest part, a cantilever is formed that is used as a lookout point.
In 2003 the walls were declared a by the Generalitat de Catalunya with registration number 7597-I.
Bridges Vallparadís Park forms a depression with an average slope of . For this reason, several bridges and footbridges cross the park along its length, connecting its two longitudinal ends.