Religious imagery in Olot was born in 1880 with the founding of El Arte Cristiano, the first workshop devoted to manufacturing saints. It seems that the painters Joaquim Vayreda and Josep Berga, the latter the headmaster of the Public Drawing School of Olot, decided to set up a workshop out of their concern for the lack of professional opportunities for their students, and with the added intention of upgrading the religious sculpture that was being produced at the time.

The first images that were produced were unique, one-off pieces, most likely made out of clay. Back in the beginning, the workshop also decorated plaster images that had been purchased in France.

Four years later, the workshop started to make images in cardboard wood, a material that would revolutionise the production of saints. It was a highly resistant mixture that enabled large pieces to be produced while at the same time lowering the weight of the images. Unlike plaster, cardboard wood was privileged enough to be declared worthy of being blessed according to an 1887 Church decree.

Year after year, once the initial stumbling blocks were overcome, and always striving to improve both the materials and the process of manufacturing saints, El Arte Cristiano gradually solidified its prestige all over the world, and for twenty years it was the ground-breaking and only religious imagery workshop in Olot.

Right around the turn of the 20 th century, new saints workshops sprang up. In 1900 El Sagrado Corazón was founded, to be followed two years later by Las Artes Religiosas. Thereafter, El Renacimiento, El Arte Olotense, El Buen Pastor, El Immaculado Corazón de Maria, El Arte Católico and others would open.

Many of these workshops were founded by groups of craftsmen who left the prominent workshops and set up another one on their own. Over more than a century of imagery, more than forty workshops have been set up in Olot.

The production of religious imagery was soon consolidated as a major, characteristic product of Olot thanks in great part to the existence of the Public Drawing School , which had been founded one century earlier and had fed skilled craftsmen into all these workshops.

The production of religious imagery was soon consolidated as a major, characteristic product of Olot thanks in great part to the existence of the Public Drawing School , which had been founded one century earlier and had fed skilled craftsmen into all these workshops.

On both a local and national level, the evolution of all these workshops should be viewed as a unique translation of the historical events of the 20 th century.

Thus, episodes like the Republic, the Civil War and the post-war era mark periods of stark crisis or swift expansion for all these industries related to religion, which culminated in a decisive moment in the late 1960s, when Vatican II diminished the importance of the worship of saints, relegating them to secondary status.

Nowadays the religious statuary guild in Olot is made up of one hundred members employed in the seven different workshops currently operating: El Arte Cristiano, S.Antonio M.Claret, Stylart, Artidecor, Alot, Artesania Juvanteny and Dimosa. The turnover and production rates are quite stable, and of all the pieces currently manufactured, 35% are exported mainly to the US and Canada, with fewer going to Hong Kong and Australia. Within the European Union, the main customers are Portugal, Italy and the Eastern European countries. The remaining 65% is earmarked for the domestic market, within which the most important areas are Andalusia, Madrid and the east coast of Spain.