Sant Celoni

Sant Celoni is a municipality in Vallès Oriental that stands out for its privileged geographical location.

The municipality, with an extension of 64.4 km², consists of two urban centers, mainly: Sant Celoni, the most populous (16,995 inhabitants, in 2022) and La Batllòria (1,452 inhabitants, in 2022), about 5 kilometers to the northeast. The municipal term also includes Vilardell, Sant Martí de Montnegre, Olzinelles and Fuirosos, nuclei of the Montnegre area that in the past had constituted municipalities with different grouping formulas.

Straddling the provinces of Barcelona and Girona and very well connected both by road and by rail, Sant Celoni has become a benchmark municipality in Baix Montseny and is one of the main gateways to the Montseny Natural Park and the Parque del Montnegre y el Corredor, natural spaces of great wealth and scenic beauty.

Sant Celoni offers visitors a rich cultural, natural and gastronomic heritage and a wide variety of nature routes with alternatives for all types of public.

History

The first Celonins lived in scattered houses grouped around the parish of San Martí de Pertegàs. In the 11th century, the lords of Montseny ordered the construction of a chapel dedicated to Sant Celoni at the foot of the royal road from Barcelona to Girona.

At the beginning of the 13th century there were already 72 fires or houses, and by the middle of the 14th century the population was already approaching a thousand inhabitants. In 1370 the Hospitallers approved the ordinances of good government, one of the first in Catalonia, demonstrating the strength and good organization of the town. In 1405 Sant Celoni became the property of the Cabrera family, who thus completed their domains in Montseny.

During the Middle Ages, the town of Sant Celoni was in the hands of the Hospitallers of Sant Joan de Jerusalem. The fortified city is what we know today as the neighborhood of La Fuerza. The economy of Sant Celoni was governed mainly by crafts and the market, where all the surrounding towns found tools and tools necessary to cultivate the land. This is demonstrated by the existing trades in the town: cloth merchants, merchants, weavers, vanovers and clerks, wool combers, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, tanners, basters, carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, bakers, butchers...

The importance of the wool and linen weavers led to the birth of the textile industry at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, also favored by the arrival of the railway in 1860. The relief in this vitality, traditionally linked to commerce, agriculture and livestock, has been taken by the considerable industrial implantation, which occurred essentially throughout the 20th century, erected in recent years as the main engine of the local economy, complemented by the dynamism of the commercial sector and the strength of services.