This wax cylinder captures the verses ‘Catalunya comtat gran, qui t’ha vist tan rica i plena, ara el rei nostre senyor, declarada ens té la guerra’ [Catalonia, great county, who has seen you so rich and bountiful? Now the king, our lord, has declared war on us], preserving a cultural expression of contemporary Catalan national symbolism.

This wax cylinder, used as a sound medium, was recorded with a device that etched a groove on its surface with a needle, a fragile but effective method of capturing sounds from that time.

Possibly dating from between 1902 and 1907, the cylinder is one of more than 300 digitized in 2008 by the National Library of Catalonia to ensure the preservation of an audio record of the documentary heritage.

Contemporaries of this cylinder used manual phonographs – devices equipped with a needle and a diaphragm to reproduce the sound recorded on the wax – to listen to recordings such as this one of ‘Els Segadors’ at the turn of the 20th century.

This cylinder is a key tool for analysing the evolution of Catalan music and poetry, shedding light onto how works such as ‘Els Segadors’ were passed down and preserved over time until becoming the Catalan national anthem.