Azucarera de Santa Eulalia
The Santa Eulalia del Campo sugar factory consisted of industrial facilities, a power plant with steam generators, a workers’ quarter for the employees, a school only for the children of the employees with two teachers and a commissary where everything was sold, as well as a railway infrastructure for loading and unloading. In 1942, 491 people were employed in the huge factory. All the sugar beet grown in the Jiloca valley was processed in this sugar factory.
In 1912, the Azucarera del Jiloca, located in the municipality of Santa Eulalia and built by the Compañía de Industrias Agrícolas S.A. (CIA), began its activity. (CIA). It was built with Catalan capital and had a milling capacity of 800 tonnes of beet per day. The surface area occupied by the factory and the neighbourhood created around it was 200,000 square metres. During the years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and the Second Republic, the industrial engineer Sebastián Zaldívar was its director.
He had a great influence on the economy of the area. The farmers of the nearby municipalities were able to combine their work in the fields with work in the sugar factory, as the milling was carried out during the winter, a time when there was less work in the fields.
The sugar mill greatly helped the economic development of Santa Eulalia and its surroundings, with the opening of banks, shops, businesses, the cinema, etc. coming to the town.
The policy set by the Government in the 1970s was the beginning of the crisis of the Spanish sugar factories and especially that of Santa Eulalia.
The great losses suffered by the Compañía de Industrias Agrícolas forced its definitive closure in April 1985.