ROSA GALLEMÍ BALAGUÉ-ANTONIO PUIG SA BLOG 5TH DELIVERY

                                  

                                  Awards of the Civil War of my husband Josep

                                         

                                 My husband Josep in Valladolid on 12, 7, 1938

                                            

             With my husband Josep and my sister Eulalia at the Art Street farm, 1940s

                            

My uncle Pere Gallemí and Antonio, Francesc Castello's driver in his tower in Castelldefels, 1940s

My husband and I had 5 children, Françesc, Rosa Mª, Eulalia, Josep-lluis and Jordi, two of whom are deceased. For a mother, the loss of a child is the most unnatural and sad thing that can happen to her, and two even worse. Despite this, we fully enjoyed my children's childhood years together with my husband. On the occasion of the celebration of my 100 years, they asked me what had been the happiest moment of my life and without a second's hesitation I answered that the upbringing of my children, no material good or other circumstances could equal it and less surpass it. I also have to thank the unconditional help I always had from my mother Maria, by the way also a centenarian and she helped me a lot in raising my children. Thanks to this I was able to help my husband for many years in the activities of our factory, which at that time took place from Monday to Saturday included, since work in the post-war period was frenetic, given the scarcity of all kinds of products. In the 1950s and 1960s, customers paid in advance in order to have products as quickly as possible. Everything that was produced quickly sold.

The need for production personnel was very great, I remember that on the street door of our industrial warehouse at Calle Pujades, 20 in Barcelona, ​​a sign was permanently hung that read: "Personnel needed". Entire villages arrived daily in Barcelona, ​​mainly from Andalusia, where close 1 million people came from, most of them without any kind of training, who immediately alleviated with their desire to learn and work. I remember that, among others, we had the singer Manolo Escobar and people from Equatorial Guinea working for a while. In a few months the vast majority of them had fully integrated and in a short time they were buying their first apartment and their first motorcycle with bills of exchange, usually a Derbi or a Vespa, or their first car, a Biscuter, a Gogomovil or later everything a Seat 600. There was practically no labor conflict, people thought only of increasing their economic well-being and overtime and moonlighting were the most common, the youngest took time from where they did not have it to attend night classes of Vocational Training above all. In all this context, evidently the majority of the population did not think about politics, it is worth saying that they could not participate in it either, since there were no political parties and the main hobbies were soccer and bullfighting, depending on the area. They worked from Monday to Saturday and there were few holidays but the people were happy. During the 1940s and 1950s, the main hobby was listening to the radio, especially serials and programs like Elena Francis aimed at women. The most restless tried to tune in to Radio Pirenaica, which was broadcasting from Moscow at first and then from Romania, and which sounded terrible. Messages from the Communist Party arrived through it and speeches by La Pasionaria and Santiago Carrillo were common. In the 1960s, television arrived, which at first was in black and white and with a single channel, Television Española TVE. A little later a second channel arrived, the UHF and that was all in those years. The Franco regime immediately understood the strength of a single voice that it had in the single media and that almost all of people compulsorily followed, and Franco's government knew how to take full advantage of this exclusivity.

We began manufacturing in the 1940s, mainly metal fittings for purses, cases, compacts, travel items, toiletry bags, metal boxes to sterilize syringes, etc. Years later, already in the 1950s, we expanded our manufacturing to costume jewelery and we also began manufacturing lighters, being the pioneers of this type of product in the entire national market and before Flamagas S.A. (Flamasats S.A.) existed.

During all this time, the Puig family continued with its commercial representation activities in the Eau de Cologne sector and it was not until the 1960s that they began to slowly become involved with lighters, but only at the import level and thanks to the knowledge of my uncle Francesc Castelló, who on the other hand manufactured for them and for other clients, especially articles related to perfumery.