In the mid-twentieth century, Coma-ruga was not the village it is today. It was tiny, and its seafront neighbourhood was barely urbanised. Then, after many years of slow recovery from the Civil War, in 1961, the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Zaragoza, Aragón y Rioja, a bank, built a summer holiday house in the heart of this neighbourhood, today the Santa Maria del Mar Youth Hostel.
History
In the mid-twentieth century, Coma-ruga was not the village it is today. It was tiny, and its seafront neighbourhood was barely urbanised. Then, after many years of slow recovery from the Civil War, in 1961, the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Zaragoza, Aragón y Rioja, a bank, built a summer holiday house in the heart of this neighbourhood, today the Santa Maria del Mar Youth Hostel.
Unlike other private institutions, savings banks, on the instructions of the Bank of Spain, were obligated to earmark a certain percentage of their profits to social and cultural projects. In this case, the bank chose a kind of communal summer home for the children of its employees.
So, at first, the workers, the guests and the resources needed for the house to operate all came from Aragón. But the building gradually adapted to the reality of Catalonia. This process culminated when the facilities came to be owned by the Provincial Council of Tarragona in 1982, and when it began a government youth hostel shortly thereafter. In this desire to blend in better with society, in subsequent management agreements the Government of Catalonia has allowed different civic organisations, private enterprises and schools to use some of the building's quarters. And sometimes this social commitment has even extended beyond our frontiers. For example, in the late twentieth century, when the Balkan War broke out more than 1,500 kilometres from Coma-ruga, the Santa Maria hostel housed numerous refugees from the six former Yugoslav republics (Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro).
At first around 100 children were slated to stay there; but when the plane landed in Barcelona, it was carrying people of all ages, ethnicities, economic levels and cultural backgrounds. This is why an extra effort was made to adapt to the new situation and give the refugees everything they needed for a stay that lasted more than one year, and to provide them with the documents they needed to stay in our country indefinitely.
This story is not the only unique thing about the Santa Maria del Mar hostel. It also stands out for its geographic location in the Costa Daurada, a privileged location in the midst of a beautiful forest almost 60,000 m2 large right near the seafront.
Likewise, given that it was designed mainly to be used in the summer months, the building’s architecture tries to encourage air flow. For this reason, the dining room, lounge and largest bedrooms on the first and second floor have windows facing both the sea and the mountains. The remaining bedrooms, which are meant to be occupied all year round, have both heating and air conditioning.
Architecture
The building's aesthetic is typical of the 1960s, with very simple, austere lines with no decoration. However, over the years, the building has undergone two major changes. In 1997, the left wing was structurally reinforced, which affected the service and infirmary areas on the ground floor, as well as one of the two large bedrooms on both the first and second floors. This project also eliminated the outer porch that used to occupy the ground floor, which was used as a church when giant wooden wooden doors holding the altar, sacristy and confessional were opened. Since 1999, it has been administered by the Baix Penedès University Consortium and is used for the Hospitality School. Later, it was given to the Santa Teresa Foundation, which has managed a Tourism School there since 2005.
In 2002, almost the entire building was given a facelift and the annexe with staff bedrooms was turned into workrooms and bedrooms.