With the growth of champagne production in France came a large demand for high-quality cork stoppers, and the Baix Empordà had the vital raw material for this industry to prosper: the excellent cork from the woods of the Gavarres and L’Ardenya hills. The industry began to operate, in a manual fashion, in the last quarter of the 18th century.

Cork manufacturing brought a period of prosperity to our land. Both farmers and fishermen, tired of their exhausting and uncertain trades, put down their tools and nets and went to work in the cork factories, where they earned very good wages in comparison, for example, with textile workers.

These high wages generated an affluent atmosphere in the corkmaking towns, leading to an increase in culinary festivities, dances, and leisure and entertainment activities in general, with cultural and social centres (casinos and ateneus) being built where the cork workers could go to read or enjoy a drink and a chat with their colleagues.

They dressed smartly to go to work, and they worked in silence, since almost everything was done by hand. Eventually the figure of the reader was introduced, to read out newspapers, magazines, poetry and prose to the men as they worked. This fostered a level of cultural learning that could be appreciated in their speech: the language of the corkmakers, in contrast with the unschooled population, was remarkably rich and descriptive.

But this marvellous prosperity came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War. Many factories and workshops closed down, but others adapted their methods, improved their machinery, diversified their production and continued to work until the present day, in which the cork produced in the Baix Empordà is still considered to be of excellent quality.