Village
Rubí is an industrial town in the comarca of Vallès Occidental, in the province of Barcelona, situated in the valley of the Riera de Rubí, from which it takes its name — from the Latin Rivo Rubeo, for the red clay the stream carried. With 82,823 inhabitants, it is the fourth-largest town in the comarca by population. The oldest written documentation mentioning it dates from the year 986: around it rises the church of Sant Pere, patron of the town, built around the 10th century next to the termenat castle of Rubí, of Arab origin, around which the first farmhouses and, later, the town center gradually grew up.
Monument
Castle located in the town of Rubí (Vallès Occidental), well preserved, made up of three wings -west, north and east- that enclose a courtyard on the south side. Its origins go back to 1233, when Berenguer de Rubí asked King Jaime I the Conqueror for permission to build an L-shaped defensive domus, residence of the lord of Rubí. In 1361 the Torrelles family enlarged it and turned it into a castle. In the 15th century, when civil and military jurisdiction passed into the hands of King John I, it lost its military character: from that period date the doorway giving access to the balcony, the battlements and the Gothic windows with mural paintings, today badly deteriorated. In the 16th-18th centuries it was a farmhouse, and in 1983 it was acquired by Rubí Town Council, which turned it into the urban Castle-Ecomuseum.
Monument
The Celler Cooperatiu de Rubí, the second-to-last winery built by the architect Cèsar Martinell, a disciple of Gaudí, follows the late-modernist model of exposed-brick arches typical of the wine cooperatives of the Camp de Tarragona designed by the same architect. It was founded by Pere Pí in 1920 as a section of the Cambra Agrícola Oficial de Rubí, today the Casino Español, so that member winegrowers could collectively make and sell their wine; its main L-shaped hall housed the vats, with another twenty or so in the basement. In August 2007 part of the roof collapsed, leading to a restoration directed by the architect Joan Albert Adell that recovered the characteristic palm-shaped discharge arches and reopened the building in 2013.
Monument
Historic farmhouse of Rubí documented since the 12th century, formerly the mas Canals, with a classic three-block structure, one of them topped by a stepped tower with the attic, and with a stone voussoired round-arch entrance doorway. The windows, also topped with stone, each bear a carved date: 1581, with the anagram of Jesus, and 1677. The property, located within a walled enclosure, belonged to the Togores family, lords of the castle of Castellà, and in 1159 Berenguer de Togores, canon of Barcelona Cathedral, established the Mas Canals. In 1669, according to notes in the parish archive, it was acquired by the Rosés family, from Sarrià, who gave it its present name of Can Rosés.
Activity
The Festa Major of Rubí is celebrated from 26 to 29 June, the feast of Sant Pere, patron of the city, with more than 250 activities of popular culture, music and sport.
Historical milestone
The 1962 Vallès Occidental flood was a hydrological disaster caused by torrential rain: on 25 September, after a long drought, 240 litres per square metre fell in under three hours, overflowing the Llobregat, the Besòs and their tributaries, among them the riera de Rubí. The water swept away entire neighbourhoods built within the watercourse, such as the Arenas neighbourhood in Terrassa or l'Escardívol in Rubí, and caused between 600 and 1,000 deaths, one of the worst natural disasters in recent Spanish history. Rubí, located within the very valley of its riera, was the hardest-hit municipality: it left hundreds dead or missing, close to a fifth of the disaster's total.