Museu de la Vida Rural, L'Espluga de Francolí

The Museum of Rural Life, is the municipality of Espluga de Francolí Spain. It is a cultural initiative that aims to show the importance of traditional values such as effort, time and patience to revive a more sustainable world. The Museum is part of the Lluís Carulla Foundation and occupies the estate Carulla family had in the town in the province of Tarragona, where many generations made apothecaries since the early seventeenth century.

The museum was created in 1988 by the Lluís Carulla Foundation, and exhibits tools, utensils, furniture, clothing, utensils, etc. from the past, before progress modified everything. Its purpose, more than preserving some pots or furniture, is to save from oblivion some traditions to understand the present fruit of a civilization shaped over the centuries. It consists of four sections: agriculture, the rural home, traditional trades, and the landscape of La Espluga and the region of the Cuenca de Barberà.

Despite being an eminently ethnographic museum, its cultural function goes beyond this theme with an extensive programme of temporary exhibitions at different levels. In recent years it has been possible to see artistic exhibitions by Joan Ponç, Joan Brossa, Guillem Viladot and Philippe Lavaill, among others.

At the beginning of 2008 the Museum of Rural Life underwent an extension that provided it with a new annex building, doubling the space for the permanent exhibition and providing it with new museum infrastructures as well as a modern museography. This extension, designed by the architect Dani Freixes, was recently inaugurated in 2009.

In March 2009, the Museum of Rural Life of Espluga de Francolí became part of the Network of Ethnological Museums of the Generalitat de Catalunya.