The invisible women who 'trained' the Part Forana
An exhibition at the Inca Footwear Museum highlights the hidden role played by nearly a thousand women workers from the Pla de Mallorca region in the sophisticated braiding industry, which would eventually become an international benchmark. This activity enabled many families scarred by the difficult post-war years to prosper.
Palm73-year-old Selvatgina native Francisca Coll Sampol proudly stands next to her huge youthful photo in the exhibition. Braid, at the Inca Footwear Museum. "It's from 1965," she says. "I was 13 years old at the time. It was made for me by the people from Trenzados Fiol in Inca for a leather fair that was scheduled to take place in Düsseldorf (Germany). For the occasion, they wanted me to dress as a peasant, although I never had a handloom with me. This is the ancestral tradition of our trade."
Coll has regained the prominence she deserves thanks to historian Biel Company, curator of the exhibition (open to the public until November). "My aim," she says, "was to rescue from oblivion the women of the art of braiding, which constituted the auxiliary industry for shoes. When I went to visit them at their homes to interview them, they didn't understand my interest. They didn't attach much importance to what they had done." The starting point for Company's initiative was the book Leather braiding in Mallorca in the 20th century (Illa Edicions, 2020), by Rafel Morro Aguilar and Miquel Sanz Beltran, who have documented this manufacturing industry since the 1930s. One of its driving forces was the Yugoslavian model maker Esteban Zovko, who lived in Inca. "The shoe factories," Company points out, "saw a good opportunity to have another product to sell. It involved applying the same technique used on hair to make a truñón (trunk). It's a technique that has existed since prehistoric times and has been done with various fabrics and materials such as latra."
![Grup de perleres](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Selected articles
The leather was primarily goatskin and was purchased primarily in India and, in the early days, in Igualada (Catalonia). "Given its complex manual production," the curator notes, "the items were very select. The braids were used to make bags, wallets, belts, upholstery, watch straps, door and bed headboard decorations, etc. Summer shoes with holes were very successful." Mallorca was the only place in Europe with this type of industrial activity. "The epicenter of production was Inca, with a dozen factories. Notable among these were Trenzados Fiol, Trenzados Perelló, Curtrexa (owned by the brothers Antoni and Bartomeu Fluxà), and Matrema (owned by the Sanz family), a fusion of the term 'Manual Trenzadora Mallorquina' (Mallorcan Manual Weaving)." The former mayor of Inca, who would end up managing it together with his brother-in-law, initially sold in Mallorca, Menorca, and the Elda area (Valencian Country). boom tourism, the international markets of Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France and Italy were reached."
The braiding factories were dedicated to designing their products with specific patterns and colors. The types were quite varied: dama (with a design similar to a chess board), herringbone, millstone, lattice… The men were in charge of cutting the leather into strips, either thinner or thicker. Production was carried out at home, part-time, and carried a female stamp. "With the shoe industry of the late 19th century, there were already women working at home. Many were from municipalities in Raiguer. When the braiding business emerged, entrepreneurs began looking for more workers. So, wherever there were more available workers, it was in the Pla region, especially in Sant Joan, María de la Salud, Algaida, Montuïri, and Pina. They distributed the leather to the rest. Once the piece was made, it was taken to the factory, where it was polished, ironed, and cleaned." It is estimated that there were nearly a thousand women in the area who dedicated themselves to 'making teleses' with only an awl and wooden frames as a framework. In the 1960s, thanks to the efforts of Croatian engineer Ivan Kadic, production became mechanized, although it was always done by hand. "They were paid piecework, piecework, at the end of the week. Now we might consider this black market, but before, a different concept prevailed regarding this artisanal work."
Extra Doubles
From Selva, Francisca Coll Sampol, the subject of the photo folklorized in Düsseldorf in 1965, was one of the few braiders who wasn't from the Pla (Pla). She explains why this art was in the hands of women in the era of slow living. They looked to us to make these types of products. The same thing happened to the shoemakers." Coll learned the trade from her mother at the age of four. Her father worked in the fields. "She was one of the first in the village to dedicate herself to it. It was done whenever she had a free moment. "She would start after dinner, after having spent all day worrying about the housework and her five children, four dolls and a boy. In winter she would braid while clinging to the stretcher, and when the good weather arrived, she would take out the chair from the postwar years." That extra money came in very handy. "We were able to buy a gas stove, a television, and other necessities. I remember my mother telling us: 'Look at these 100 pesetas, they should be enough for us for the whole week,' from an income other families didn't have. Back then, living in Selva, not everyone had a car to get to work or to study for their A-levels in Palma."
That was a great tool for economic emancipation. "I was able to carve out a little corner to get my driver's license and go out to dinner on Saturdays. Today they call it female empowerment. Back then, it was always the men who cut leather in the factories who got all the credit." At 13, while braiding at home, the Selpell native also started working in a leather factory in the town of Selpell. And at 54, having completed a training course with the Commonwealth, she got a position in the social and healthcare sector.
Foresighted Braiders
Coloma Font Bergas, 87, is from Maria de la Salut. She took up braiding late, in 1968, at the age of 32, and is now the mother of a young child. "One day, a neighbor who owned a Citroën asked me if I wanted to go with her to Inca to look for work in the footwear industry. We stopped in front of a factory, Matrema, and asked a man if they needed anyone, and he said yes. He immediately gave us a leather caramull to braid. We could combine it with the housework. One afternoon I would braid until 12, and other times until 1 in the morning."
![Francisca Coll with a veteran trainer in a promotional photo for the Düsseldorf fair.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1452 1781"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
In María de la Salud, there were many women braiders. "It was an important tool for prosperity. With what I earned, my husband, who worked as a farmer, could retire. He never objected. The money belonged to both of us." In 2000, at the age of 65, her unexpected retirement came with the closure of Matrema, which couldn't compete with Asian countries. Later converted into Trecur SA, in 2006 it would be the last factory in the sector in the entire country to close its doors. To be able to collect her pension, Font was forward-thinking. "In the last 17 years, I registered with Social Security as a farmworker. I never stopped working even when I was sick. It wasn't a life of sacrifice at all."
Debunking Myths
The hidden history of braiding women serves to debunk some myths. This is what Rafel Morro Aguilar and Miquel Sanz Beltran, authors of the book, write. Leather braiding in Mallorca in the 20th century"[Ours] was not a poor island nor one solely dedicated to the agricultural sector before the arrival of mass tourism. [It was an island and a people] who were not oblivious to what was happening abroad, much less disconnected from international markets."
That thriving artisanal industry began to decline in 1973 with the international oil crisis, which also shook the shoe industry. In the 1990s, in the midst of globalization, the final blow came with the relocation of many factories to Asia, which offered much cheaper, if lower-quality, labor. The dream was revived in 2021. In Pollença, two German women and a Pollença man founded the company Mastrenat with the aim of reviving the ancient art of braiding. Thanks to them, the typical summer sandals with holes, which compete with Menorcan abarcas, have come back into fashion. Another factory dedicated to making artisanal braided shoes is Tiamer, based in Mancor de la Vall.
Inca historian Miquel Pieras Villalonga is the author of the study "Women in Inca from a Historical Perspective" (2019). "At the beginning of the 1940s," he asserts, "once the Civil War was over, many women joined the shoe factories. At that time, there was a shortage of labor because there were men who had died in combat or were still doing their military service." However, the presence of women in the factories began to decline in the 1950s. "It was when the dictatorship offered bonuses to workers whose women worked at home. The fundamental laws of the Movement already stipulated that women should be subordinate to men."
In this new context, some factories opted to recruit women who remained at home for work. Thus, the "angels of the home" promoted by the Franco regime found themselves multitasking as braiders or seamstresses. The latter, also known as shoemakers, were responsible for stitching the leather pieces that were later finished in the factory. "Business owners," Pieras points out, "could reduce costs, without having their jobs guaranteed. They were delighted to have the extra money that some families could use to send their children to study for a degree in Madrid. It was also a much more comfortable and better-paid job than harvesting almonds or olives."
That shadow economy obscured the sense of vulnerability of a group marked by illiteracy. "At no point did they feel exploited, but in reality they were. It was a situation of absolute inequality, since men could be insured. That's why women couldn't qualify for any pension when they retired. In the 1990s, with the footwear crisis and the agricultural sector becoming completely unprofitable, the hospitality industry emerged."
The historian explains a factor in the footwear industry that is worth considering: "It's a seasonal sector. People usually buy shoes in the summer or winter. In contrast, the food industry is in demand year-round. So, by not having permanent, intermittent jobs, employers were already benefiting from the option of women working from home." However, women's work at the factory was important. "Inca was one of the towns in the Balearic Islands with the most women working in factories. They were usually single. When they became pregnant, they were forced to leave, as employers didn't want to pay maternity leave. Furthermore, by labor agreement, they were paid slightly less than men, and in times of slow work, women were the first to work."
