Science, urban space, and early phonography in Barcelona, 1898–1914

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the gabinetes fonográficos active in Barcelona from 1898 onward. It aims to analyze why Barcelona’s early recording industry remained more precarious and less successful than that in Madrid, and advances two reasons: the failure of the Barcelona gabinetes to position themselves within local discourses around science, technology, modernity, and Catalan national identity; and their increasingly peripheral location in the developing urban space of Barcelona. The chapter then discusses how Barcelona eventually came to lead the Spanish recording industry after the advent of the gramophone, with a subsidiary of Gramophone and a new generation of record shops opening in the city.