REC.0 Experimental Stores took place from 10 to 13 May in Igualada's Rec neighbourhood. The eclectic festival of fashion, culture and gastronomy held its 23rd edition and once again drew a great response from the public, with attendance of around 100,000 people over the four days.

Leather Cluster Barcelona took part in REC.0 for another year, forming part of the programme with various cultural activities. Together with the Igualada Leather Museum, the cluster once again organised a number of guided visits to Cal Granotes and Curtits Badia, where visitors were able to discover, on the one hand, the artisan leather tanning process of the eighteenth century and, on the other, today's industrial process for tanning quality leather.

The collaboration between Leather Cluster Barcelona and Catalonia's leading fashion festival began in 2019 with children's workshops for discovering and playing with leather, and since then every REC.0 has featured more activities with leather in the leading role.

At this spring edition leather had a strong presence, with two new events that were very well received by visitors: a lecture given by Sandra Quílez and a historical walking tour led by Miquel Vila.

Sandra Quílez of Nquart Leather gave a talk at Adoberia Bella, the headquarters of Leather Cluster Barcelona, on "Gaudí's Leather. Caring for leather and preserving history". The session, which was highly dynamic and participatory, ended with a workshop where participants were able to learn how to make different objects from leather.

Sandra, a restorer, leather artisan and campaigner for leather, received the Restaura 2020 award for her work recovering and restoring leather and hide elements in various exhibition spaces and museums, most notably the leather furniture of Palau Güell in Barcelona. Sandra is also the driving force behind the recognition of Carrer de la Riera in Vic as a Point of Artisan Interest of Catalonia.

Separately, on Saturday 13 May an interesting tour took place that attracted a very good turnout. This was a new Leather Cluster Barcelona activity within the framework of REC.0: a guided visit to discover the fascinating history of Igualada through two of its treasures, the Rec and the tanneries, led by Miquel Vila. Linked for many years to the Igualada tanning industry and an expert on the history of the leather sector in the city, Miquel Vila gave a passionate account of the "History of Igualada, the Rec and the tanneries (987-1920)".

Now that this May edition of REC.0 has come to an end, Leather Cluster Barcelona is already working with the fashion festival's organisers to prepare the coming November edition. To that end, in order to intensify the collaboration with REC.0 and give leather an ever greater presence there, the cluster is developing an important project to give visibility to the atelier members of Leather Cluster Barcelona.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector. The cluster is an accredited entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.