This is why the bubble burst for Malaga's leading soap industry

In the 19th century someone wrote that the level of development of a society could be measured in terms of its use of soap. The increase in population and the gradual improvement in living conditions had an impact on the growth in demand for this product. When reference is made to Malaga's industrial expansion in the 19th century, the fact that for several decades it was the main soap-producing centre in Spain is rarely mentioned.

In the city there was a modest tradition of making handmade soap from olive oil, of which some names have survived, such as Jaboneros y Almona (a word applied to the place where soap was made). At the end of the 18th century, a French merchant introduced the industrial manufacture of soap to Malaga.

This man was Juan Bautista Maury, the owner of a trading house who in 1796 established a factory in what was later called Calle de las Almonas (now Calle San Andrés). To start up the business, brothers Francisco and Luis Reboul, experts in soap making, came to the city from Toulon.

In the following years, the number of small soap factories increased, using olive oil as fat and barrilla ash as an alkaline agent. These raw materials came from the region: oil from inland areas and barrilla from Almeria, where this plant was cultivated to obtain soda.

Most of the industrial initiatives came from foreign merchants. In 1813, José Reisig set up a company to manufacture soap and in 1817 the Scholtz house introduced the use of Flanders fat, which caused some protests. The success of the soap business attracted the attention of Manuel Agustín Heredia, who bought one of the Reboul factories in 1830. Shortly afterwards, he obtained the right to use a process for making soap with cast iron boilers, a pioneer in Spain. Heredia would go on to open three soap factories in Calle Salitre and in 1841 his company was the biggest manufacturer of soap in Spain.

In those years, Malaga's production was aimed especially at exporting to the markets of the Antilles (Cuba and Puerto Rico). Heredia himself complained about competition from the other major Spanish export centre, Mallorca, and that the island was re-exporting Marseilles soaps to the colonies. In 1843 a French report stated that in Malaga there were thirteen factories producing almost 9,000 tons of soap a year, of which some 4,000 tons were exported.

By that time the soap industry was starting to change. The high cost of the bark stimulated the development of artificial soda by applying sulphuric acid, seed fats and animal tallo. Heredia set up a large chemical plant next to his factories where, among other components, artificial soda was produced for the manufacture of soap.

There were up to 17 factories in the city, spread around the El Perchel (around Calle Cuarteles), Capuchinos, Molinillo, Refino and Pasillo de la Cárcel (now Avenida de la Rosaleda) districts. They belonged to companies such as Heredia, Zalabardo y Dupuy, Bolín, Sandoval, Antonio Maresca, Guillermo Reboul, Joaquín Sotelo, López and Gracián. In 1861, the Malaga soap industry had the capacity for 39 boilers and employed some 125 people.

Antonio Parejo provides significant data on the local importance of the sector based on the industrial register of 1871: the share of soap manufacturers represented 31% of the industrial tariff, above the textile industries of the Larios and the Heredia iron and steel industry, which accounted for 37%.

In the mid-19th century Malaga was still Spain's leading soap-making province, but this leadership was short-lived. Competition from Mallorca won the export to the West Indies and towards the end of the century it was Barcelona that dominated the national and colonial soap market thanks to the incorporation of cheaper raw materials and new production techniques based on mechanisation.

The factories in Malaga began to close down and those that survived catered to local demand. By 1890 there were only four: Armentia, Gross, López and Sandoval. In the early part of the 20th century soap-making activity made a slight comeback, but now as a by-product of the olive oil warehouses and refineries that were set up in Malaga by companies such as Moro, Minerva, Olivarera Peninsular, Larios, Nagel and Van Dulken. The commercial period of Malaga soaps was long gone.