Hoya de Castalla region
The r egion "Hoya de Castalla" The Valencian Community is one of the regions most industrialized of Spain. His industry is characterized by the productive specialization, which has created authentic industrial regions specializing in an alone sector. Another prominent characteristic of the Valencian industry is the great quantity of workforce who uses, to the detriment of the mechanization, which generates important problems of adjustment.
In "Hoya de Castalla", or mas known as "Foia de Castalla" emphasizes the toys industry. The levels of concentration, not only in the Valencian territory but in the Spanish, and even European, do of this industry a sign of identity of the region. The region juguetera excellent is the "Hoya de Castalla": Ibi, Onil, Tibi, Biar, Benejama y Castalla. Here we find so much big companies like Famosa, Féber, Chicos o Falca, as familiar workshops. The saturation of this zone has allowed the installation of plants jugueteras in other zones like Beniparrell, Cuart de Poblet o Denia.
The Foia de Castalla, also known as " Toy Valley " shapes a natural region, placed in the Northwest of the province of Alicante, to 43 km from the provincial capital. It takes his name of the geophysical enclave delimited by the saws of Onil and of the Menejador - in the NW and NE-, and Castalla's saws and the Carrasqueta - in SW and I Know - where there are born and pass the high sections of the Green river, Montnegre y Barranc d´Ibi.
The tops that make a detour to the central valley, all with altitudes over thousand meters, award to the set of the region an eminently rural and mountainous character that together with his interior condition, beside separating it from the rest of the province, limits and determines his activities.
The " Toy Valley ", formed by the villages of Castalla, Biar, Ibi, Tibi and Onil, possesses an approximate surface of 392 Km2 representing 5,7 % of the total surface of the province of Alicante. The municipalities, which spread along the Valley in the shape of irregular rhombus, present an average altitude of 722 m.
In the local area, Onil is the most north municipality of the Foia and that of minor surface (49 Km2). He is to a distance of 32 Km from the provincial capital. For your part, Tibi is the most extensive third municipality of the region (70 Km2) and the nearest to Alicante (25 Km).
Ibi's municipality, nailed in the most oriental part of the region, at the foot of the Carrascal de Alcoy, being the quarter in extension (61 Km2), is located to 46 Km from Alicante. Castalla, nailed geographically in the head-board of the river Verd/Montnegre, is the most extensive municipal area of the " Valley of the Toy " (113 Km2) and the second nearest to Alicante (36 Km).
Finally, Biar's municipality, placed in the western vertex of the Valley, is the second locality with major surface (98 Km2) and the most distant of the provincial capital.
History
Until beginning of the 20th century, the agriculture was the principal activity of the Foia de Castalla. The population was sustaining across such primary activities as the culture of the grapevine, the olive tree and the cereal. But this was not sufficient to support the whole population, for what there originated the development of handcrafted and commercial activities. This way there were arising mills of oil, flour and paper; workshops of manufacture of rubber-soled slippers, ceramics and threads, and later the manufacture of toys.
In case of Onil, the pottery and the availability of raw materials used for this type of work, they are the factors that stimulated the origin of the over-dressing. In the middle of the 19th century civil Ramon Mira, of Onil, had begun to mold wrists of handcrafted form, taking advantage of the deposits of clay and the technical knowledge acquired in the managing of the mud.
Little later, at the beginning of the 20th century, there begins the manufacture of the first toys in Ibi. The precursor of this activity was the family Payá, which started by giving packings of tin-plate the ice-cream sellers and making objects of the same material for domestic use, but this activity with the time spread also to small toys that were reproducing the real utensils.
During the second decade of this century several innovations got in the systems of elaboration of toys, between which they can be mentioned: raw materials, the matricería and, from 1916, the use of the lithography for the decoration. In these years an increase of the sales takes place and begins the exporting activity. Till then the production of toys was orientated in sole right to the domestic market. During the thirties, this industry was developing endorsed by the realized innovations. But, the arrival of the Civil war stopped this process of expansion; while this one lasted the factories of toys transformed in an auxiliary industry of war and one left the manufacture of toys, though the sale of that they were remaining stored still continued. Once finished the contest, the companies return to hands of his owners and his production was reorganized. In this stage, the models who threw and the molds that are in use are of the thirties, due to the national crisis and the shortage of raw materials.
The year 1949 constitutes a point of inflexion in the development of the industry of the toy. The introduction of the plastic stimulated the industry of the " Valley of the Toy " and transformed the zone into the principal Spanish center of manufacture of toys and into one of the most important of Europe. The investment was reactivated, facilities were extended, machinery was imported and vocational schools were created for the formation of the human resources.
We can say that the entry of the plastic originated the expansion of the activity juguetera, that it gave his fruits from the sixties, stimulating an industry that had remained suspended from the Civil war and which process of innovation in this stage diminished to the launch of some very important products as, for example, the locomotive "Santa Fe" made by the Payá Company.
The industrial bloom that begins in the decade of the sixties, lasts up to the first half of the seventies, turning the manufacture of toys into the principal industrial activity of the localities of the " Toy Valley ". |
Castalla |
