The houses of the municipal area

Dispersed settlement carries significant weight in the history of the municipal area. Censuses and cartography document its evolution: in 1857 the village has 272 households, in 1887 it has 456, and the 18th-century parish map already counts 58 houses outside the village centre, numbered one by one.1857

A quadra is not a house: it is a portion of the municipal area with its own jurisdiction, its own lord and often several masos inside it. In our municipal area there were at least five, and the heading of the 1701 capbreu lists them all.1701 One of these quadres came to be part of the official name of the municipality: in the 1842 census the village was called «Torrellas de Foix y Llombarda».

Casa, in the records, means three different things depending on who is writing. In the cadastre and the fogatges it is a taxpaying unit, that is, a family with its estate. On the parish map it is an inhabited building that the parish priest must be able to visit, which is why the distance to each church is noted. Today, in the Nomenclàtor, it is a toponym: a point with a name, regardless of whether the building is occupied or in what state of repair it is.2026

The municipal area enters written history on 9 December 984, not through a house but a castle. Among the boundaries of an alou in Font-rubí there is, to the west, el terme del castell de Fodexo.984 It is the oldest record in the whole municipal area, and it is the first line of this index.

The second name arrives in 1143, in a will. Vidià de Sant Vicenç, before setting off on pilgrimage to Santiago, leaves to the altar of Sant Jaume de Sant Cugat all the alou he holds in the terme de Fodex, in the parish of Sant Cugat de Muscarra.1143 That parish is today's Mussarra, and the vanished Romanesque chapel that once stood behind cal Marroquí.

The third is Secabecs, whose honor appears in 1213 in a boundary survey.1213 Its scope needs to be clarified: Catalunya Romànica gives the date but does not cite the document. Until the document is located, 1213 should be treated as a bibliographic reference awaiting verification.

On 20 July 1303 the bishop of Barcelona, Ponç de Gualba, visits the parish of Foix. The heading of folio 25 says that he summons the people to appear at the place of Torroeles and that, to visit the church above, he sends a canon.1303

Five men swear and testify: Ferrer ça Val, Bernat ça Val, Ramon de Muntanyana, called Cavaler, Guillem Malet and Arnau Poculul.1303 They are the earliest names of people from the municipal area that we have, and they are personal names, not house names: no 14th-century document yet says which house each one belonged to.

The oldest mas name in the municipal area predates the visit: in 1243, the Llibre Blanch of Santes Creus already speaks of the mas de Daches, today Dagues, «qui est in termino de Foyg».1243 In archive catalogues, the first one appears twenty-five years after the visit: in 1328, an acknowledgement of debt records that an inheritance comes from the mas de Puigferrer, in the municipal area of Foix.1328

In 1359, the fogatge of the Corts de Cervera counts 43 focs at the castell de Foix and a single one at the castell de Secabecs.1359 On the previous page of the same edition there is a «Quadra Dalbereda» with 8 focs belonging to the abbot of Santes Creus.1359 Whether it is our Albereda is plausible but unproven: there is more than one place between Pontons and Torrelles that could be called that.

In 1378 the count is broken down and, for the first time, there are lords' names: forty focs belong to the noble Guillemonet de Cervelló and three to the Order of the Hospital, l'Albereda has eight belonging to the abbot of Santes Creus, and Secabecs one belonging to Berengueró de Castellví.1378 Fifty-two focs in three jurisdictions. The presence of the Hospital can be linked to the mention of its confrères in the 1143 will. This coincidence does not prove continuity of the same estate, nor does it allow the three focs to be equated with three buildings.

Later counts offer lower figures, which must be compared bearing in mind the territorial and fiscal scope of each fogatge. The fogatges of 1497, 1515 and 1553 give 31, 30 and 36 focs.1497 These three are nominal: they carry the name of each head of household. We do not, however, have the names, because they are in Iglésies's books and in the original at the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, and no one has yet transcribed them for our municipal area.

The earliest mas names in the index are medieval: Dagues in 1243,1243 la Verna in 1340 according to the historical study of the property, and the torres Subiranes, today les Torres Altes, in the 1381 boundary marking with Pontons.1381 In 1429 les Llambardes enters the record, with a will: that of Pere Valtanell de les Llambardes, with bequests to the chapels of Santa Maria de Foix.1429 The catalogue adds a detail worth noting: les Llambardes then belonged to the municipal area of Sant Pere de Font-rubí, not ours.

From the 16th century onwards, references to house names become more abundant. The 1536 capbreu is the first of the lordship and is where Can Soler de Secabecs appears.1536 The 1579-1580 capbreu of Garau de Peguera, one hundred and seventy folios bound in parchment, is the one that yields the most at once: Torres Sobiranes and Torres Jussanes, mas de la Pineda, los Giberts, Lluís Cruset de Greensola, Joan Morgades del Molí and las Valls.1579

And in between there are the nine parchments bought by the Town Council, digitised on 4 December 2025, largely concerning a single house. The one from 1571 is an arbitration ruling on the right to irrigate the orchards with water from the mill and to gather firewood there, and it features Leonor, widow of Joan Poch of the mas de Banya Corba, and her son and heir, who hold the mas and the molí de l'Horta.1571 The one from 1591 is the sale under right of redemption of a plot of land at la font Pregona, made by Antoni Ferrer of the mas de les Torres to Pere Morgades, a farmer from Torrelles, and the one from 1620, of a twenty-jornal plot that the Ferrer brothers de les Torres de Dalt sell to the same buyer.1591

Two more still: in 1598, the will of Lluís Mas, originally from the mas de Montsarra,1598 and in 1617, the receipt of the Rafecas of the mas Gavarrosa, in the municipal area of Secabecs.1617

The first survey counted five. The Arxius en Línia survey from September 2026 has brought out fifteen, and the series does not end in 1758: the last one from the lordship with a firm date is from 1770-1794, and there is one from 1752-1820 that the catalogue places in Pacs del Penedès and that still needs checking.2026 The oldest is from 1501, and it is not the lord's but that of the benefice of Sant Marc, founded by the reverend Ramon Carbó, rector of Foix.1501

There is another one that is not the lord's and that changes the research into families: the "sworn capbreu of the parish church of Santa Maria de Foix" of 1602, which is the declaration of those who paid the church.1602 Those who paid the lord and those who paid the parish were not necessarily the same people.

One of the priority volumes for this index is the one from 1700: 326 folios, with an index, held by the notary Josep Bruixa.1700 It is the most legible in the series and the closest to the cadastre we already have transcribed, that is, the one that would allow houses to be matched with names. Among the volumes in the series is the one by Geltrudis de Paguera i Armengol, Baroness of Rocafort, from 1770 to 1794.1770

The main limitation on access is the lack of digital reproductions. The collection ACAP20-2041 "Capbreus solts" of the Arxiu Comarcal de l'Alt Penedès has 945 units and none is digitised.2026 They are written in Catalan and Latin, in the handwriting of the time; those from the 18th century are easy to read, and those from 1536 and 1579 require specialised palaeographic reading. They are kept in Vilafranca, and the in-person visit is still pending in this research.

There is a hand-drawn sheet, kept at the Arxiu Diocesà de Barcelona, entitled «Descripción de la Parroquial de Sta Maria de Foix y su Sufraganea de Torrellas y distancias de las Casas à aquellas». On the left it carries a table with the houses numbered from 1 to 58, and the same numbers are written next to each little house drawn on the map.18th c.

Two footnotes are worth as much as the table. The first says that the houses up to number 48 had always been held to belong to the parish of Foix, and that the following ones were served by the chapel of ease of Sant Genís. The second states how many houses there are in the town, and the figure cannot be read.18th c. What it does say clearly is that the houses on the street are not included in the numbering: the 58 numbers are the scattered settlement, and the village itself is separate.

From the same century we have another list, and this one reads well. The cadastre of Torrelles de Foix, kept at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, gives 119 entries with what each one paid every month, in lliures, sous and diners.18th c.

The highest amount was paid by Joseph Escofet, with 16 lliures, 10 sous and 10 diners a month, well above everyone else. Next came la Mussarra and el Mas den Guiu, with 10 lliures 4 sous each.18th c. The lowest entry of all is Balmeig, with exactly one lliura, and its location has not been established.

A century and a half later, the 1916 planimetric map does the same job in a different way: it places 86 red dots across the municipal area and, in the top right corner, the list "Nombres de casas" with the eighty-six names.1916 The spellings are the Castilian cartographer's and have not been standardised: Cal Marruqui, Mas de Famfregona, Cal Aserit, Mas de Gabarrosa. Eighteen of those eighty-six names can be linked to an earlier name; the rest are the village as it was called in 1916.

Araxit, Aserit, Eixerit. The inventory of the Institut d'Estudis Penedesencs records "lo Araxit" in the 18th century; the 1916 planimetric map has "Cal Aserit"; today there is ca l'Eixerit.2003 The chain is plausible and not proven. It is stated as such, and no version is silently chosen over the others.

Turró and Turbó. The Town Council's website mentions cal Turró, an 18th-century ancestral farmhouse on the camí de Rocavidal; the 1916 planimetric map says "Cuesta del Turró"; the ICGC's toponymic database has Mas Turbó.2026 Turró and Turbó are not the same word. It needs to be checked whether this is a variant, a different attribution, or a transcription error.

La Verna, la Berna, Laverna. They are the same house. In archive catalogues it is written as one word, Laverna, and searching for "la Verna" brings up nothing. The ICGC's official form is la Berna. Anyone searching the catalogues should know this: written as one word, the house is documented from 1368.1368

A case of homonymy that needs distinguishing: the mas de la Riera that Cels Gomis visits in 1888 on his way to the lead mines belongs to our stretch,1888 but the mas de la Riera in the 1530 parchment belongs to the municipal area of Sant Martí Sarroca. There are two of them.

The other one hundred and twenty-five are names from the ICGC's toponymic database that exist on the map and that could not yet be linked to any document.2026 The lack of dating explains why they are not included in this chronological selection.

Each row states where the name first appears, and not all sources carry equal weight. Twelve houses have no date beyond that of their record in the Mapa de Patrimoni de la Diputació, which often dates by the building's appearance rather than by any document: when this is the case, the row says so.2019 And there is one that comes neither from a capbreu nor from a cadastre but from a building permit: the molí del Sendra, which in 1754 Ramon de Peguera allowed Ramon Morgades to build to make paper.1754