La Manual Alpargatera — Handmade Espadrilles Since 1941

La Manual Alpargatera on Carrer d'Avinyó is the last traditional espadrille workshop in Barcelona, famous for creating the world's first fashion espadrilles in 1940. Founded by Emilia Martínez and Joan Olivé, the shop turned humble rope-soled footwear into high fashion. Over eight decades, La Manual Alpargatera has made shoes for clients like Salvador Dalí, and a 1955 pair is held at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Barcelona · from the walk “Stones & Secrets: Hidden Courtyards of the Barri Gòtic” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Carrer d'Avinyó 7, Barcelona

Who created the first fashion espadrilles at La Manual Alpargatera in Barcelona?

Look at this narrow shopfront at number seven, Carrer d'Avinyó. Behind that modest facade is La Manual Alpargatera... one of the most quietly extraordinary places in all of Barcelona.......... Now, the street you're standing on has a scandalous past. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, there was a brothel at number forty-four... a place called Ca la Mercè. A young painter named Pablo Picasso used to frequent this very street. And in nineteen oh seven, working from memory in Paris, he painted those women into what became "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"... one of the First cubist paintings ever created. His French friends heard "Avinyó" and assumed it meant the city of Avignon in France. But no. It was This street.......... And right here, at the quieter end of that same street, a woman named Emilia Martínez had a revolutionary idea. In nineteen forty, she and her husband Joan Olivé founded this shop. But here's the twist... under Franco's regime, Joan had to register his name as "Juan" because Catalan names were forbidden. And although it was really Emilia's business, a woman couldn't officially run a shop, so his name went on the sign instead.......... What Emilia did was Transform the espadrille. For centuries, these rope-soled shoes had been humble peasant footwear... worn by farmers in the Pyrenees since the thirteenth century, and even by soldiers of the King of Aragón. Nobody considered them fashionable. Emilia changed all that. She created the very first "fashion espadrilles," introducing heels and wedges a full Thirty years before Yves Saint Laurant made them famous on Parisian runways.......... By nineteen forty-two, her designs were already appearing in fashion shows by legendary Spanish couturiers like Pertegaz. And the client list? Salvaore Dalí, Pope John Paul the Second, penÉlope Cruz, Jack Nicholson, the Queen of Sweden, and even Jean-Paul Gaultier.......... Today, this is the Last traditional espadrille workshop still operating in Barcelona. They still make the ceremonial espadrilles for the Mossos d'Esquadra... the Catalan police force's dress uniform. The workshop table at the back of the store? It's the same one where the very first pair was stitched over eighty years ago.......... And perhaps the most astonishing detail of all? A pair of their Taverner espadrilles from nineteen fifty-five sits in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York... a humble rope-soled shoe, displayed alongside works by the greatest artists in history.

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