Indeed, 1845 marks the start of industrialisation in the region. In Negrelos, Santo Tirso, the Rio Vizela Spinning Mill was opened, the first modern industrial plant established in the Ave Basin.
An unmissable event in the region’s historical landscape, this date also demonstrates just how late the process of industrialisation was in the Ave Valley. But it was the beginning of an irreversible, unstoppable phenomenon, one that our ancestors witnessed, that we are witnessing, and to which future generations will not be strangers.
More than a century and a half after the region’s industrial take-off, the entire territory is today shaped by this historical process, constituting not only irreplaceable landmarks in the collective memory of local communities, but also elements that strongly characterise and define a territory and a society.