ABSTRACT
In 1736 Joan Padró, lawyer and priest, member of the newly ennobled family mentioned in Chapter 2, published an account of the Holy Christ of Igualada, a statue purported to have sweated and wept blood in the sixteenth century and henceforth ascribed with miraculous powers. 1 Padró dedicated the sixth chapter of his work to a lengthy description of the geography, history and noteworthy features of Igualada. Padró’s was a celebratory account. He was able to cite with pride many recent additions to the town, including the Piarist school he himself had helped to found, the barracks for royal troops built at the town’s expense and, above all, the ‘large, costly and wealthy woollen and cloth manufactures’, the source of the town’s ‘good credit’ and commerce and the ‘decency’ in which the inhabitants lived. 2
