Modern Perpignan – Revolutions, Railways & Rolling Papers

The JOB Revolution – 1830s–1900

Perpignan’s economy transformed in the 19th century thanks largely to a family from near Toulouse  principally Jean Bardou, the inventor of the famous JOB cigarette paper. In 1838, he launched his paper business in Perpignanand, by the end of the century, JOB had become a global brand.

The city boomed during this time as factories rose, rail links arrived and the Canal Royal was built to irrigate the plains. A new bourgeois class emerged commissioning elegant villas along the tree-lined boulevards and sipping absinthe in local bars. Perpignan was no longer just a fortress town, butbecoming a modern industrial Catalan-French city.

Perpignan in World War I – 1914–1918

When the First World War broke out, Perpignan was far from the front lines, but the war came home in other ways. Thousands of local men were conscripted and sent to the trenches in the north and many Catalan speakers found themselves in French-speaking regiments and were treated as outsiders whilst others were celebrated for their bravery and fierce independence.

The town’s railway station became a lifeline, transporting troops, food and letters between the front and the families waiting back home. Women took on new roles in factories and farms while black mourning veils became a common sight around the town squares.

Monuments across Perpignan still list the names of the thousands of men lost during the war and almost every village in Roussillon has its own sobering memorial.

Perpignan in World War II – 1939–1945

When war returned in 1939, Perpignan once again became a strategic city this time on the edge of Vichy France, a few kilometres from the border with Nazi-occupied Spain, and the town was full of tension, whispers and spies.

Many Spanish Republicans who had fled Franco’s regime in the 1930s were still living here and now found themselves under suspicion by both sides. Some were arrested and sent to internment camps whilst others joined the French Resistance.

From 1940 to 1942, Perpignan sat in the so-called “Free Zone” governed by Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime, a French government that collaborated with Nazi Germany. Though there were no swastikas flying from city hall, German influence was everywhere.

After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, everything changed. Germany moved to occupy the entire country and the Free Zone became “occupied” in all but name. From this point on, Perpignan became a strategic Nazi-linked outpost for surveillance, control and cross-border operations.

Gestapo officers were stationed in Perpignan operating out of discreet buildings in the town centre. Collaborators helped draw up lists of “suspicious elements” including Jewish refugees, communists, exiled Spanish republicans, Freemasons and resistance sympathisers.

Certain cafés were rumoured to host Gestapo informers while others became secret meeting spots for the Résistance. The Palace of the Kings of Majorca, once home to kings, was repurposed by German officers as a military post.

In 1944, as the Allies moved up through France, Perpignan saw street skirmishes and acts of sabotage and was officially liberated in August 1944 to the sound of church bells and defiant Catalan cheers. Some collaborators were paraded through the streets whilst others vanished.

The Rivesaltes Detention Camp – A Dark Shadow Outside Town

Just 15 kilometres north of Perpignan lies the Camp de Rivesaltes, a place with a long and painful legacy that reflects the 20th century’s most turbulent moments.

Originally built in the 1930s as a military camp, it became a detention centre during the Second World War, and over the years, it served as a holding site for an astonishingly wide range of displaced people starting with Spanish Republican refugees fleeing Franco in the 1930s until as far as the 1960s with the Algerian Harkis and their families after the Algerian War.

From 1941 to 1942, over 2,000 Jews were imprisoned at Rivesaltes before being deported to Drancy and ultimately Auschwitz and other extermination camps. Many were housed in barracks without heating, exposed to the Tramontane winds, malnutrition and disease. Some died before deportation. I really recommend that you visit Rivesaltes Camp and its excellent museum.

The French Resistance & The Border Escape Route

Despite the danger, Perpignan was also a lifeline for refugees and allied airmen trying to escape Vichy and Nazi France especially Jewish families and resistance fighters.

Local smugglers and guides, known as “passeurs”, led groups over the Pyrenees by night, risking arrest or execution. Churches and farms in the hills often acted as safe houses.

The “Chemin de la Liberté” (Path to Freedom) is still remembered in local lore as a route of resistance and hope and the forests around Céret and Banyuls saw many dangerous crossings.

Though not as active as in Paris or Lyon, Perpignan also had a strong resistance presence especially among students, Catalan nationalists and Spanish anti-fascists. They printed underground newspapers, sabotaged rail lines and even managed to assassinate a local collaborator in 1944, an act that triggered a brutal wave of arrests.

Post-War Rebuilding and Immigration – 1950s–1970s

After the war, Perpignan began to grow not just in size, but in identity. The 1950s and 60s brought an influx of new residents: Spanish refugees, North African Pieds-Noirsand later, Moroccan and Algerian workers, all drawn by the promise of jobs and sunshine.

The city’s skyline began to change. New housing estates (like Les Baléares, Saint-Assiscle and Haut-Vernet) were built to accommodate growing populations, often without much planning, which led to social divides that still affect the city today.

At the same time, cultural life flourished. The Campo Santo was converted into a summer concert venue. Artists and writers returned, drawn by the light and the strangeness of the place. Perpignan began hosting music festivals, film screenings and open-air Catalan dancing in the squares again.

Picasso Paints in Perpignan – 1950s

In the 1950s, Pablo Picasso began spending summers in Perpignan, staying at the Hôtel de Lazerme, a grand townhouse just off Place de la Loge and filled its pink-walled rooms with sketches, drawings and ceramic experiments.

He painted locals, gave gifts (including a gold necklace in the shape of a bull), and drew portraits of his hostess Paule de Lazerme in traditional Catalan dress. Today, some of his works from Perpignan hang in museums across France and Spain, but a few may still lie tucked away in family collections.

Salvador Dalí Declares Perpignan the Centre of the Universe – 1965

Not to be outdone, Salvador Dalí made a dramatic entrance in 1965. He arrived by train wearing a naval admiral’s uniform, red-pom-pom slippers and an ocelot on a leash announcing that Perpignan Station was “the centre of the universe.”

Dalí claimed to have had a cosmic vision on the station platform in 1963. To honour it, he painted The Mystical Station of Perpignan, an explosion of surrealism, crucifixes and melting geometry, with himself hovering over the train lines.