The Rise of the Beret Industry in La Rioja, Spain

Once a daily necessity and a marker of social status, the beret was everywhere—covering half of Spain. Beyond its cultural stereotypes, the beret was also a highly successful industrial product.

The last beret factory in La Rioja was Boinas Roig of Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

Beret-making shifted from home-based craft to large-scale industry in the 19th century. In 1852, Esteban Hurtado de Mendoza acquired one of Spain’s first beret factories in Azcoitia, describing how women knitted berets at home for wages, while factory workers handled finishing. This industrialization freed Spain from costly French imports.

Technological advances soon multiplied production. Circular knitting machines allowed a worker to produce 20 berets a day, later soaring into the thousands with mechanized looms.

Factories spread quickly: Antonio Elósegui’s in Tolosa (1858), La Encartada in Balmaseda (1892), and others in Olot, Alcoy, Vigo, Zaragoza, and beyond. By the 1930s, production reached astonishing levels—4,500 berets a day in Tolosa alone—with “Castilian,” “Basque,” and other locally branded berets marketed as cultural emblems. Between Ezcaray and Pradoluengo, output exceeded 4 million berets annually.

The Riojan and Burgos highlands, once declining textile regions, found new life in beret-making. Workshops in Ezcaray and Pradoluengo flourished, supplying markets across Spain. By 1935, Pradoluengo hosted seven beret factories producing 1.5 million units a year, with exports abroad. The last, Boinas Mingo, closed in the early 2000s.

Founded in 1916 by Gregorio Roig, a Haro-born textile entrepreneur, Boinas Roig became La Rioja’s last beret factory. Roig came from a powerful merchant family with ties to banks, wineries, and retail textile trade. His factory thrived during the beret’s golden era.

After Roig’s death in 1949, the factory passed to Pedro María Sáenz de Pipaón, who modernized production with American machinery and marketed primarily in Galicia and Castile. Though the factory survived longer than others in La Rioja, its final berets eventually carried the label “Made in Pradoluengo,” symbolizing the shift of production to Burgos.

For over a century, beret factories in La Rioja and Castile generated wealth and identity, turning a humble wool cap into an industrial icon. Today, only a few historic names like Elósegui remain, reminders of when millions of Spaniards proudly wore the boina. 

Oda a las Boinas

From a  Spanish newspaper article: Oda a las Boinas

Boinas La Bastida

A short documentary on the berets, or boinas, by La Bastida from Argentina.

 

Boinas Elosegui at TVE

TVE reporter Imanol Durán visited the Boinas Elosegui factory in Tolosa (in Spanish, but subtitles available). 

"It's a true cultural icon. The beret or txapela, originally from the Pyrenees, is perfect for protecting yourself from the cold and rain... We visited Boinas Elosegui in Tolosa. They've been creating traditional txapelas for 161 years. It's the only factory left in our country. We also learn how to put it on live at one of the oldest hat shops in the country: Casa Ponsol in San Sebastián." 

The Red Beret: Icon, Tradition, and Identity

Below a 2021 (free translated) article in La Esparanza, a catholic-monarchist magazine. Not my usual fare, but it makes for an interesting read.

Carlist cavalry charge, Ferrer Dalmau

The Red Beret: Icon, Tradition, and Identity

Fashion designers call the beret an iconic garment—an accessory with political and artistic weight, tied to bravery and resistance to unjust power. Even Christian Dior considered the red beret a timeless classic.

The beret, known as bonnaid or buinne in Gaelic and boneta in Basque, is an ancient headpiece of noble origin. Archaeological finds in Sardinia show Neolithic elites buried with their berets and weapons, while Persian kings, including Artaxerxes, were depicted in berets during lion hunts. Like the mushroom cap that inspired its design, the beret’s shape offered natural, practical protection from rain and sun.

Across Europe, nobility embraced it. Queen Margaret of Navarre wore a wide black beret five centuries ago, as did her husband Henry II. Artists such as Holbein the Elder captured prominent figures crowned with berets nearly identical to today’s. Mountaineers of the Basque Country, the Scottish Highlands, and Brittany prized the broad wool cap as protection from relentless rain and wind.

The red beret in particular carries layers of symbolism. In 1920, the silent film Pour Don Carlos set fashion trends when actress Musidora donned one on screen. French designers quickly popularized vermilion berets in Paris and Hollywood. My own mother cherished hers as a child in the 1920s—a brilliant red gift from her hat-making uncles. Its vivid dye came from Rubia tinctorum, a plant cultivated across Spain. The same deep red was also used to color candied apples at local fairs.

Carlists helped establish the beret as a political and cultural emblem. Their preferred red caps—alongside white, blue, and black—were produced by skilled artisans from the “Beret Belt” of northern Spain and southern France: Tolosa, Valmaseda, Oloron, Pradoluengo, and Ezcaray. In the 1930s, these towns manufactured millions of berets annually, exporting them as far as Argentina, where gauchos adopted them as part of their traditional attire. Industrial decline and modernism later pushed the beret into neglect, but its legacy endured.

Military forces also recognized its value. The beret’s snug fit and visibility made it ideal for soldiers, especially paratroopers, who favored red for its boldness and practicality. Yet for Carlists, the red beret held both strategic and symbolic meaning. From above, the color stood out in rugged mountains; from below, it blended with shadows. Local guerrillas even mimicked the call of the black woodpecker—nicknamed the “Carlist bird” for its own red crest—to signal attacks.

The beret’s association with Carlism also provoked repression. In 1838, the liberal general Espartero banned the garment outright, punishing wearers with heavy fines. Liberal caricatures mocked Carlists with berets and umbrellas, portraying them as backward compared to well-equipped foreign troops. Yet the beret persisted, gradually displacing the industrial worker’s cap in factories and reasserting itself as a marker of identity.

Today, the red beret still attracts attention for its flattering style and vibrant symbolism. It remains a festive, noble, and political garment—worn on Sundays, in parades, in battle, and at gatherings as a statement of heritage. For many in the Hispanic world, donning the beret is an act of resistance against cultural erosion, a way of affirming identity in the face of global homogenization.

Los Últimos / The Last Ones

Baltasar

Between 2015 and 2017, Luis Areñas visited towns and villages all over Spain trying to find answers to the questions raised by his wish to pay tribute to his grandfather Luis––and all the grandfathers––who died in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). He would have liked to have known him, and he knows that his mother and uncle would have wanted, needed, to live and grow up with him. It was not to be.

Mariano

Where are the survivors? Who are they? What did the war mean to them? Urged on by these questions, he was able to locate some of the last soldiers who took part in the war, and women who experienced life at the time.

Vicente Colin

The portraits presented in his exhibition are of those people, who are very old today, or who have died since being photographed, who were one day the youth of Spain. Most were barely out of their childhood when they went to war, aged 17 and 18 years.

This exhibition does not deal with the objective work of an historian, but the subjective memory of those who suffered the effects of the civil war first hand. Luis Areñas wanted to rescue those combatants from oblivion, give them a name and a face, and listen to their account, an oral testimony of a historic event that had collective repercussions and of a vital moment of great personal significance: the unavoidable approach of the end of their lives.

Baltasar

The testimonies of these fighters have been captured on a 46 min video presenting a number of extracts, fragments of the conversations held with them in front of the camera. Luis Areñas wanted each individual to tell their own story at their own pace. A memory altered by time, by emotion, and by their present circumstances.

Bonifacio

Time may have altered their memories, but their emotions and their intensity endure. Memories make us more human, and in light of the people who experienced them, allow us to understand this heinous war that destroyed entire families and whose disturbing reminders continue to haunt us today. 

José-Moreno

Paul Delmet

French composer and chansonnier Paul Delmet (1862–1904) is associated with the beret through a well-known portrait of him, though he is not exclusively defined by the headwear. The image of him in a beret, with his distinctive mustache and a cigarette, has become a representative depiction of his Belle Époque and Montmartre cabaret persona.

The famous depiction is an illustration by the Swiss-born French artist Théophile Steinlen, who often chronicled Parisian life. Steinlen created the drawing for the cover of Delmet's 1897 songbook, Chansons de femmes.

More Vintage from Hungary

Fishing in the Tamás Production Cooperative, 1981 

Autumn fishing in Tamási 1962

Autumn fishing at the Fornád State Farm, 1981

Barrel making at the Bátaszék Kádár and Woodworking Cooperative, 1962

Producers' cooperative brigade meeting in Dombóvár, 1966

Stezka Českem

Stezka Českem ("Trail through the Czech Republic) is a show on Czech Television ČT 2. Host Miroslav Vladyka enthusiasm for hiking in Czechia is contagious. 

This husband and wife fell for it and decided to follow the example, but, in retro gear wearing century old leather boots, the typical sweatpants of the era and of course a radiovka. 

"People had fun and laughed when they saw our equipment on the trail".

Angus McMillan

Angus McMillan (1810 –1865) was a Scottish-born explorer, pioneer pastoralist, and perpetrator of several of the Gippsland massacres of Gunai people.

Arriving first in New South Wales in 1838, McMillan rose swiftly in Australian colonial society as a skilled explorer. His explorations led to the opening of the Gippsland region for pastoralism, displacing the Gunai Aboriginal people who were the traditional owners of the land. McMillan organised an armed assault on the Gunai, leading to the massacre of between 60 and 150 Aboriginal people at Warrigal Creek. McMillan was the leader of the "Highland Brigade", a group of Gaelic-speaking men who undertook reprisal raids on the Gunaikurnai.

Nineteen monuments honouring McMillan exist in Gippsland, including at Wellington, Heyfield, Yarram, Omeo and Lucknow. After considering 240 community submissions in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which included about half in favour of removing two stone cairns dedicated to McMillan on land owned by the Wellington Shire Council, the Council voted against the move on 17 June 2020.

Claude Confortès

Claude Confortès was a French actor, playwright and director (1928-2016). He also wrote several plays under the pseudonym Claude Satèsen.

In 1964, he became assistant to Claude Berri, with whom he learned to direct on The Old Man and the Child (1966), Mazel Tov or the Marriage (1968) and The Pistoned (1970).

He met the cartoonist Georges Wolinski in 1968, whose album Je ne veux pas mourir idiot he adapted for the stage, becoming a pioneer of the genre. 

Americans

Chicago

New York

Washington DC

Seattle

Los Angeles

San Francisco

New Orleans 

Boineros

 

Needlework

Needlework encompasses decorative and constructive textile crafts that utilize a needle to apply thread or yarn to fabric, including sewing, embroidery, cross-stitch, needlepoint, and quilting. These crafts serve both practical and decorative purposes, adding luxury and beauty to garments and furnishings, and have been practiced across many cultures for centuries.

 

Germany 1937

A restored and colourized film of German cities in 1937. Scenes feature the cities of Eisenach, Leipzig, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Wetzlar and Berlin.

This footage captures the daily life of German people walking through city streets, driving along the German autobahn and attending church.

Other scenes highlight painters at work (with beret), factory workers and kayakers. Moments of joy and amusement offer a glimpse into the universal nature of human experiences that have remained unchanged over the decades, 2 years before WW2.