Guided Visit to La Encartada Fabrika-Museoa in Balmaseda

La Encartada Fabrika-Museoa is located in Balmaseda. Founded in 1892 by five indianos — Basque emigrants who had made their fortune in Mexico, three of them originally from Balmaseda itself — the factory worked wool for exactly one hundred years, from its founding until 1992. Its main product was the beret, though it also produced blankets, cloth, gloves, scarves, visors and balaclavas over the course of its history. Since 2007 it has operated as an industrial museum, and all visits are guided. The tour takes you through the complex as it stood at the time of closure: buildings, machinery — mostly English-made, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — and the workers' village that grew up around the factory, complete with workers' housing and a chapel-school. What makes La Encartada exceptional is that the entire production process is preserved intact, from the reception of raw materials through to packaging and dispatch, with almost nothing altered. A visit that connects directly with the origins of industrialisation on the Iberian Peninsula and with the social and economic history of Balmaseda.