Centro del Textil-La Quinta

Since the Middle Ages, Priego has been a town with an industrial vocation. That vocation has developed in three consecutive phases; 1 The production of silk fabrics, until the first decades of the 19th century. 2 The production of cotton fabrics, from 1860 until the penultimate decade of the 20th century. 3 The manufacture of clothing, from 1961 to the present day. The machinery on display in this centre belongs to a factory from the second phase: the production of cotton fabrics. Silk weaving reached its peak in Priego in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the Industrial Revolution (new fibres, new machines, new manufacturing methods) brought about the fall of the silk industry, which was ruined in Priego in the first third of the 19th century.

The cotton textile industry

The first cotton fabric factories in Priego were set up around 1870. They used looms known as “pole looms”, driven by hand. Close to 40 fabric factories came to be registered in Priego, with more than 1000 looms in operation. The machinery shown in the Interpretation Centre was donated by Mr Domingo Pedrajas. His wife, Mrs Trinidad Ávila López, and his sister, Mrs Trinidad Pedrajas Jiménez, have carried out that wish by handing it over free of charge to Priego Town Hall.

Some of the machines

Winding machine

The thread from the spinning mill is wound onto large-capacity bobbins. While the winding machine is working, the thread is cleaned, removing its defects or weak parts in order to reduce possible interruptions in the operation of the looms.

Pirn winder

Machine that wound the weft thread onto a wooden tube (a pirn). The pirns were placed in the shuttles, which passed through leaving the thread between the warp on the loom.

Warping machine

The warping machine arranges the threads coming from the reels and places them in parallel, and winds them onto the beam, forming what will be the warp of the fabric.

Looms

The loom is a machine used for weaving. Its mechanism is basically as follows. Once arranged on the bobbin, the warp threads are grouped horizontally into odd and even ones, separating alternately upwards and downwards, driven by the grids or heddles, which allows the shuttle carrying a pirn loaded with the “weft” thread to pass between them. The weft thread crosses the warp threads. The pressure on each pass of weft thread gives cohesion to the crossed threads, forming the fabric.

For more information and details, careful reading is recommended of the interesting work The Cotton Textile Industry in Priego de Córdoba by the local chronicler Miguel Forcada Serrano