Chronology
- 1881
Salvador Samà commissioned the construction of the park in 1881 as his private resting place.
Parc Samà hosted the visit of King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia and headquarters of numerous meetings and political conventions.
- 1920
In the 20’s, the Development Council carried out different botanical experiments in the Parc, especially tests which expected to exterminate the olive tree fly.
- 1936
But Parc Samà was also a witness to the Civil War. In 1936 the park was used exclusively for military purposes. The palace and gardens were confiscated by the Comitè Antifeixista de Cambrils and the site became a Military Instruction Centre where thousands of soldiers passed through and after a few days were sent to the trenches.
- 1938
In 1938 the Park took in the soldiers of the "Quinta del Biberón" who, after receiving military instruction for just three days, were sent to the Ebro or Segre lines. At the end of the same year, a "Hospital de Sang" or field hospital for the war wounded was set up within the enclosure.
- Post-war period
The post-war period brought changes and what was once a hunting estate became an agricultural estate. Olive trees, vines and hazelnut trees were planted. A wine cellar and a press were built where Muscatel wine was made and sold directly.
In this new stage, Parc Samà hosted the first editions of the Cambrils International Classical Music Festival. Salvador Samà i Coll, a music lover, was the driving force behind this festival together with Lluís Recasens, the mayor of Cambrils at the time. Salvador Samà gave the garden to hold concerts there, where José Carreras and Monserrat Caballé, among others, performed.
- 1981
Alfonso de Fontcuberta, VII Marquis of Marianao, received the park as a donation from his mother in 1981 and made the second great change to the park: he restructured the estate, invested in machinery, planted new trees such as almond and peach trees, and marketed the produce wholesale. He put in drip irrigation throughout the estate and for all this he received the Deu award from the Institut Agrícola de Catalunya as a model farm.
Alfonso de Fontcuberta realised that the park had become a centre of reference for tourists and, after a trip to California, he copied the model of visits to places with cultural and leisure attractions and so began the tourist visits and the commercialisation of the park through intermediary agents. In this sense, it could be said that Parc Samà was the first leisure park in Spain.
