This little go-kart-like contraption was donated to the Museo Pedagógico de Aragón (in Huesca) by siblings Gregorio and Mª (María) Carmen Lax Angás.

The file on the Spanish state museums website (see screengrab here) dates it to circa 1920, and we are told it was gifted to the siblings by their father Gregorio Lax Roda, who died in 1931 at the age of 32. His son Gregorio (for the purposes of clarity, hereafter referred to as Gregorio Jr) was born in 1930, one year before his father’s death. I was not able to find a date of birth for his sister Mª Carmen, though I would assume she was born before her brother, given the dates.

This kind of go-kart was known as a ‘Tumilet’ and was made by a company called, variously, J.G. Tumilet or P.G. Tumilet, for the names of two brothers who owned the business – José (or Josep, depending on whether records are in Catalan) and Pedro (Pere, in Catalan) Grau Tumilet.

The first mention I have found dates to 1st January 1927, in an advert on page 8 of La Publicitat for a toy shop called La Clínica de Bebés at Carrer del Bisbe no.3 in Barcelona (for a rabbit hole on this old toy shop, see this blog post, in Catalan). The advert was published right before ‘Reis’/’Reyes’ (Kings Day, Epiphany), giving parents time to shop – for 35 pesetas they could buy their children a Tumilet.

It was described as an auto-patín or auto-scooter, and the brothers’ apparently uncommon second surname ‘Tumilet’ seems to have gradually morphed into a short-hand for the toy itself, somehow managing to sound like a made-up brand name for a fun object designed for children (the suffix -et in Catalan meaning ‘little’ or indicating affection/endearment).

An advert in the 3rd January 1931 edition of the Catalan magazine En Patufet, also published in time for Kings Day, reads:

The Kings will bring a TUMILET Auto-scooter.
It is the toy all boys and girls prefer. It is the best distraction for children.
HEALTH, STRENGTH and DEVELOPMENT
TUTÚ (Tumilet), safer than a scooter, provides children with happiness and health. On sale in all major toy shops and outlets.
Wholesalers: JG TUMILET, Lafont 26 (P.S.)-Barcelona

 The design is not unlike the ‘Irish Mail’ hand cars (see an advert of the time here, credit Online Bicycle Museum) which appeared in the US in the 1920s. The principle is the same, with the handle operated using a rowing motion, though I think the Tumilet was easier to turn corners with. ‘Irish Mail’ hand cars were also sold as being wondrous for children’s health – apparently, they ‘soothed nerves and reddened the blood’!

Gregorio Lax Roda (b. 1899) would have bought this for his child or children while living in rural Huesca (Aragón), most probably when he lived in the village of Ballobar, where he was the headmaster of the school. Ballobar currently has fewer than 900 inhabitants, but in those days it had a population of around 2200 – you can take a look at this video montage of old photos of the village to get a feel for it.

Lax Roda seems to have been extremely dedicated to his profession and especially to the cause of generally improving literacy in rural villages in Spain. In 1926 he wrote an article entitled ‘Pro Cultura’ applauding the work of writer, journalist and educationalist Luis Bello, who travelled around Spain’s schools from 1926 to 1929, interviewing and talking to teachers, students, authorities and villagers, and writing about it; he, too, defended and promoted the idea of a public state school for all.

Gregorio Lax Roda’s school at Ballobar had 140 children aged 7 to 14 and, like all other village schools of the time, very few resources – he wrote pleading with education authorities to fund schools in villages and end the extremely high levels of illiteracy, which he put at almost ¾ of the population (see reference in this article about Luis Bello).

In this rural context, I wonder whether the Tumilet felt like a rather fancy toy to have in the village; I can’t imagine many other children would have had one. I also wonder whether, at least for Gregorio Jr (and probably for his sister too), it held an extra special meaning for them, being one of the main objects left to them by their father.  It is the sort of object that would feel grand to any child, and the fact that they took such good care of it and donated it to the museum years later together with several other educational materials from the school, indicates that their father held a very special place in their lives despite being gone so early.

We get a glimpse of something of Lax Roda’s life and character when we read local newspaper articles about his activities as a teacher. One article in 1925 describes how he made a ‘beautiful speech’ about the advantages offered by trees and our need for them, as well as the role of schools in attaining culture and prosperity, ending by asking for new school facilities that were spacious, simple, clean and white, with plenty of windows and surrounded by many trees and flowers.

I was not able to find information as to the cause of his death, but in 1932, we see his widow Carmen Angás being awarded a yearly widow’s pension of 1000 pesetas. She would go on to outlive her husband by 55 years, dying in 1986.

The Tumilet factory also made pushchairs and more ‘regular’ scooters (called monopatines in Spanish – the word ‘patín’ being used in some form or other to refer to scooters, skateboards and actual skates and rollerblades). While I was researching, I came across no instances of the surname Tumilet except for references to these toys and also to a well-known French double act active during the 1910s, who toured with their rollerblading show around Europe – see Les Frères Tumilet in Paris, and then adverts for shows in Melilla in 1912, in Valencia in 1919 and so on.

I spent a lot of time poring through records for this portrait, partly because Spain’s registries seemed a little harder to navigate than those in the US or UK – the Civil War (1936-39) might account for a lot of this, but it was also confusing to sort through naming conventions. I am used to the current naming conventions in Spain, where women keep their own surnames when they marry, and everyone has two surnames (the first being their father’s surname, and the second being their mother’s surname). However, registries for this period often have the first and second surname of a husband also feature as his wife’s first and second surname, which made for a rather dizzying experience, dealing with four different surnames attached to one person.

But it was enjoyable to work out relationships and follow little threads, my favourite one relating to Gregorio Jr’s wife, one Roser Pericall Lecha (from Girona, b.1933 - d. 2020). I happened upon a masters thesis on oral accounts of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, which mentioned Roser and her uncle Narcís, who fought in an air defence unit during the war. In it, we learn that Roser’s first communion dress was made from silk repurposed from a parachute that had belonged to a German soldier who jumped from a plane shot down by her uncle Narcís’s unit (reference in this thesis here, in Catalan).

I say favourite because details like these really help paint a picture – the day-to-day running of our funny little lives, war o no war. Roser needed a dress for her first communion and perhaps they felt the heavens duly provided, albeit unconventionally. Hold still or you’ll get pricked, mumbled a mouth full of pins.

It’s easy to imagine Roser being delighted, just as her future husband Gregorio Jr was bound to have been delighted (possibly a few years earlier) scooting around on his Tumilet during the Civil War. Ballobar remained in Republican hands from the start of the war until March 1938, when the Republicans fell to Franco’s Nationalist side across Aragón. Girona, where Roser was, held for almost one more year.

I tried to look for more information about the Grau Tumilet brothers. It would appear that Josep Grau Tumilet was involved with the company in the earlier years, whereas the name on invoices in later years is exclusively his brother Pere’s.

I didn’t find anything else about José/Josep, except for when I rooted through the Spanish Historical Memory archive and saw he was accused of crimes of ‘Masonry and Communism’ in 1947 – the charges appear to have been dismissed.

Ten years before that, there is a record for Pedro/Pere from 1937 – an employment certificate, under the Barcelona Union of Metalworkers.

And then we jump to 5th March 1949, where we find him registering a patent for the Tumilet in Havana, Cuba – it’s hard to say from the description whether it is slightly different from this one or not.

In 1958 he appears in Cuban records once again, listed as a member of a Philatelic Society. Could he have emigrated for good? Many did.

I spent a lot longer than usual researching and looking through details for this portrait, and I have been wondering why I have found it harder to finish than other portraits. Looking through the few articles about Lax Roda as a rural teacher, and then the little crumb trail of information left by the Grau Tumilet brothers, I try to pinpoint what I find interesting and even moving here – perhaps it is a sense of hardiness and doggedness in less-than-ideal circumstances, but I also take great delight in how that crumb trail feels delicious and how it seems very apt for this lovely, pleasingly solid Tumilet to be associated with their names.