Terrassa

The morning commuter train from Barcelona Sants hisses to a halt at Terrassa Estació del Nord, and within twenty-eight minutes the city of 225,000 reveals its first surprise: a 63-metre brick chimney towering above palm-lined platforms. It belongs to the Vapor Aymerich mill, now the Catalan national science museum, and it sets the tone for a place that keeps turning factory heritage into cultural capital.

From the station it is a ten-minute stroll to the Rambla d’Ègara, a wide plane-shaded avenue that functions as the city’s outdoor lounge. Grandmothers gossip on benches, teenagers skate past the 1908 modernista market hall, and office workers queue for coffee at kiosks that charge €1.30 a cup—roughly half Barcelona prices. The market itself, Mercat de la Independència, is worth ducking into even if you have no intention of buying saffron-rubbed butifarra. Iron roof trusses arc like the ribs of a whale, and morning light filters through stained-glass roses designed by a pupil of Gaudí. Tuesday and Friday are wholesale days; go early if you want to photograph the interior without wheelie suitcases in frame.

Churches older than England’s

At the upper end of the rambla the pavement suddenly dips into Vallparadís park, a 40-hectare gorge that slices the city in two. Stick to the left-hand path and you emerge in a clearing where three stone churches stand within a single walled precinct. Sant Miquel, barely twelve metres across, predates the Norman conquest of Britain; its horseshoe arches echo Visigothic masons who were working here when Terrassa was still Roman Egara. Next door, Sant Pere’s twelfth-century apse rises in Lombard bands of ochre and limestone, the colours of dry sherry and old bone. English captions inside explain how bishops squabbled over tithes and how fragments of Visigothic sculpture were reused as building rubble—history as pragmatic recycling rather than romantic preservation.

The trio is free to enter, but the tourist office runs a one-hour English tour (book online; maximum fifteen people) that includes the medieval painted panels in Santa Maria and a climb onto the roof for a skyline still punctuated by mill chimneys. Tours start at 11:00; arrive sooner and you will share the cloister with pigeons and the occasional school group.

From looms to laptops

Back across the park, the same brick chimney visible from the train station now serves as the exhaust for the Museum of Science and Technology. Inside, dimly lit aisles are flanked by thunderous spinning mules and a fully working Jacquard loom that clatters through a demonstration every hour. Children are handed punched cards—proto-code—to spell their names in fabric. The upper floor traces Catalonia’s post-industrial pivot: IBM and Hewlett-Packard set up shop here when the mills closed in the 1970s, turning Terrassa into one of southern Europe’s earliest tech corridors. Allow ninety minutes; the captions are bilingual and the café does a decent flat white.

If the museum leaves you wanting more modernista flourishes, weave north to the Masia Freixa, a 1907 summer house that curves like a piece of Nouveau silverware. The building sits in Parc Sant Jordi, where locals walk dogs beneath lemon-scented mock-orange hedges. Entry is free, though opening hours shrink to afternoons only in winter.

Lunch, Spanish office-worker style

By 14:00 the city smells of garlic and grilled escalivada. Most restaurants offer a three-course menú del dia for €14–16, bread and half-bottle of wine included. Colmado 1917, two streets behind the market, prints its menu in English and will swap pigs’ trotters for roast chicken without fuss. If you prefer stand-up eating, squeeze into the market’s central bar, order a canya (small draught beer) and a slice of tortilla still warm from the pan, and practise your Catalan numbers—cinc means five—while the barman keeps tally in chalk on the counter.

Bear in mind the Spanish lunch curfew: kitchens close at 16:00 and do not reopen until 20:00 at the earliest. Plan accordingly or you will find yourself surviving on crisps and goodwill.

Up the mountain, should the legs allow

Terrassa backs onto the Natural Park of Sant Llorenç del Munt, a jagged sandstone massif visible from almost every crossroads. The GR-172 long-distance footpath starts 200 metres behind the cathedral and climbs 600 metres in nine kilometres to La Mola monastery. The route is way-marked but stony; wear proper boots and carry more water than you think necessary, because shade is scarce once the holm oaks peter out. In summer, start before 08:00; temperatures in the high thirties are common, and the exposed rock reflects heat like a pizza oven. October brings gentler weather and the smell of damp pine, but check the weather—sudden storms can turn the path into a slick waterfall.

If that sounds too strenuous, the park’s lower loop, Ruta de les Ermites, is a flat five-kilometre circuit from the suburb of Matadepera that passes three ruined chapels and ends at a farm selling fresh goat’s cheese. Buses leave Terrassa every thirty minutes; the journey takes fifteen minutes and drops you at the trailhead.

Practicalities without the checklist

Trains run twice an hour from Barcelona Sants; the regional ticket costs €4.60 each way and is not valid on the faster Media Distància services—check the departure boards for Rodalies R4. Driving is pointless: the centre is a mesh of one-way streets and blue-zone parking limited to two hours. Instead, leave the car at the free park-and-ride next to the science museum; from there the churches, market and rambla are all within a fifteen-minute radius on foot.

Sunday mornings are blissfully quiet, but most indoor sites shut in the afternoon. Avoid local school-holiday Tuesdays, when coach parties from the Costa Brava descend for the church tour. If you need Wi-Fi, the public library on Passeig de les Lletres offers fast, free access and clean loos—handy if you are waiting for a late train.

An honest farewell

Terrassa will not give you sun-drenched beach shots or flamenco dancers; it does not trade in postcard clichés. What it offers is the rare sense of walking through a working city where monuments are simply part of the daily commute. Come for the Romanesque steeples, stay for the market lunch, and leave before the 20:00 dinner bell—unless you fancy practising your Catalan on patient waiters while the streets empty and the chimney of an old mill keeps watch over the night shift of a different century.