63rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL FOOTWEAR FAIR

Today, September 6, 2023, marks 63 years since the inauguration in Elda of the I National Footwear Fair. We couldn't let this date pass without remembering, even briefly; what that feat meant for the shoe sector in Spain. The efforts of the industrialists of the time and of the Elda City Council chaired by Antonio Porta Vera, bore fruit and it was precisely the council itself, on the initiative of the party councilor, who would take charge of a company that meant for the entire Shoemaking Spain, an “economic miracle” that would place us on the world map as a reference for the city that organized the first footwear fair in Spain. In that year of 1960, Spain had more than 1,000 footwear factories, employing more than 20 thousand people directly, without taking into account induced work; Of the 15 million shoes manufactured per year, the province of Alicante carried out 50% of the total production. The First National Monographic Fair of Footwear and Related Industries, as it was called at the beginning, took over the first pages of all the local and national media. Spanish shoemakers showed the world their skills and the qualities of their products. There were moments of emotion and elevated feelings, but perhaps what the weekly Valle de Elda published that day summarizes what we experienced: “…. In these memorable days, a special memory for the old shoemaker, pillar of our industry, who could not dream, years ago, of this brilliant and triumphant exaltation of his work that the Fair represents. We have had the opportunity to see in the most tender expression sentimental what the Fair means in the emotional tears that appeared in the eyes of an old shoemaker in the emotional moments of the inauguration…” The pages of the book “The Fair. A great collective effort” by José María Amat Amer, and for sale at the Footwear Museum, gives us an account of how the events occurred, from the beginning of the ideas, until the dramatic moment of its disappearance in 1991.