42 photos
Ruben Fidalgo
May 15, 2023
Automobile is the heir to the Barcelona Motor Show, a fair with a very exciting history that we will tell you below.
The Barcelona Motor Show has a lot of history and is older than the one in Geneva, so we are going to tell you its story taking advantage of the fact that Automobile Barcelona 2023 has just started, which opens its doors to the public until May 21 at the Fairgrounds from Montjuïc. This year mobility and electrification will be the main protagonists, with examples such as the presentation of new models such as the 100% electric Cupra Tavascan.
Although the Geneva Motor Show is considered the most important in the world and one of the oldest, the Barcelona Motor Show is even older. Its biennial status (it alternates with the one in Madrid) means that it has fewer editions than the Swiss one, but the Spanish one opened its doors for the first time in no less than 1919, almost four years before the one in Geneva. That first fair was held in September at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with a total of 58 exhibitors. In the second edition (between May and June 1922) the presence of King Alfonso XIII stood out, a real motor enthusiast. A year later, after being declared “Official” by SM, the number of exhibitors increased to 413 and the number of visitors exceeded 50,000.
In May 2019, the Ciudad Condal sample will celebrate its centenary and it will do so at a time when these salons are not at their best. The high cost for brands to go to them and an increasingly limited impact in the media and unable to compete with the immediacy of new technologies are some of the culprits, but not all.
41 photos
In recent times, the automotive world is witnessing a revolution, both in its technology and in the way customers use vehicles, which is demanding changes even in the way brands present their new models. The manufacturers are aware of this and are changing their customs, they are aware that the automobile is considered to be the culprit of the great evils of pollution in the industrialized world, so they prefer that their product be associated with another image.
On the other hand, technology shows are getting more and more front pages, so it is more profitable and has a greater impact to attend a fair like CES in Las Vegas than just one for cars. The Salón de Barcelona is no stranger to this reality and for this reason it has developed a new branch within the exhibition itself called Connected Streetwhere the latest developments in the mobility of the future are revealed (autonomous and connected cars, big data, cybersecurity…)
However, despite the fact that he is not going through his best moment right now, the Barcelona Salon is one of the most important and his story is exciting, as you will see below.
Barcelona Salon: a showcase for the world
41 photos
Until the outbreak of the Civil War, Spain was one of the European countries with the richest car fleet, both in terms of quality and quantity. The national automobile industry was also splendid and brands such as La Cuadra, Elizalde, Hispano Suiza (actually they were the same) were considered among the best in the world, so the Barcelona Salon was a unique showcase in which to show the world the best cars of the moment. However, the Spanish conflict, the Second World War and the postwar period immobilized the country and the doors of the hall were closed from the 1935 edition until 1966.
After the Spanish Civil War, the national park became one of the poorest and most outdated on the planet and industry in Spain almost completely disappeared. They were hard years, but a paradoxical situation arose and, far from losing relevance, the Barcelona Show ended up becoming, almost without wanting to, in an extraordinary showcase, but vice versa. If until the 30s it was a place for the rest of the world to see what was done here, from the fifties until almost the eighties it was one of the few windows that the Spanish had to see what was happening in the automobile outside of our borders, and not only that, the closure of our customs had a most singular consequence…
Salón de Barcelona: the door to legalize unique cars
41 photos
The only foreign-made cars in Spain had 4 sources:
- Imported by emigrants, both legally and illegally
- They were already here before the Civil War
- Imported by foreign businessmen
- For the Barcelona Hall
This fourth access door for foreign cars had a particularity and that is that, if you were a friend or relative of the appropriate official, you could enroll anything who had crossed the border. Yes, thanks to the Barcelona show, some influential people were able to show off their new Mercedes, Karmann-Ghia, Cadillac, Jaguar… the luxury cars that could be bought freely in any other country, but also unique pieces that outside our borders were impossible to legalize.
Thanks to this singularity, unique pieces were registered in Spain such as the Maserati Boomerang prototype, the Citroen SM Frua or the Volvo P1800 Coggiola, copies of which only one unit was manufactured and which could be registered and legalized thanks to the idiosyncrasy of our country. For this reason, it is also in Spain where more units of cars as exclusive as the Citroën SM MyLord were sold (of the 7 units manufactured, 4 ended up in our bull skin, one of them belonging to the royal house), or the very few copies of the BMW Frua 3.0 GTS, among others.
Yes, thanks to the Barcelona Motor Show, cars that were designed to be mere showcases of what the brands were capable of imagining roll with license plates, pieces that, for the most part, have left our borders, much more valued by foreign experts (who know perfectly what was in Spain) than by the few Spanish fans.
