In Arbúcies, Girona, bus manufacturers still rely on manual assembly lines, a method that remains central to a local industry built on custom vehicle production. The town’s coachbuilding tradition has lasted for more than a century, even as the wider sector moves towards automation and electric vehicles.
The activity began in the late 19th century with carriage building, using wood from the Montseny area. Later, with the arrival of iron and collective transport, Arbúcies became a centre for bus manufacturing. By the mid-20th century, Joan Carles Salmeron, a historian and mobility expert, said, “practically all buses and coaches circulating in Catalonia and part of Spain and Europe came from Arbúcies.”
At local firms such as Ayats and Indcar, each vehicle starts with a chassis on the factory floor, then gains a skeletal body of steel tubes. Ayats uses an external iron guiding structure to show welders where to join the metal pieces, a system the company says allows millimetric accuracy. As the work moves through the plant, the bus takes shape through fibre and sheet metal panels.
The process remains highly manual. At Indcar, workers climb scaffolding and ladders to work inside and outside the vehicles. Welders, panel beaters, painters and electricians all play a part, with kilometres of cabling fitted by hand. Júlia Pagès, finance director for the Ayats group, said, “It is difficult to mechanise something so personalised.” Gaël Queralt, general director of Indcar, said, “We do not have machines or robots.”
Queralt said the industry depends on skilled people from Arbúcies and nearby areas, with many trades passed from parents to children. He also said family-owned firms now focus on keeping workers by changing management culture, including regular meetings with staff every three months to discuss business progress and gather feedback.
Even so, the sector faces pressure to adapt. Queralt said the local industry needs to “get its act together”, pointing to the 2013 disappearance of Noge, the fourth coachbuilder in Arbúcies, as a warning. For the three remaining companies, that means electrifying models and automating parts of production, while Salmeron raised the question of whether they would be stronger if they joined forces, although he said that is unlikely because of strong family identities and brand pride.
For more Catalonia business coverage, see our news tag page.