Form and function
Avant-garde architects delivered Rationalism to Spain
in the early 1930s. One building in particular inspired
them: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion
at the Barcelona Expo of 1929.The wandering
voluptuousness of theModernistaswas long gone,
replaced by efficient, lineal builds that drew on the
‘design for life’ ideas of architects like Le Corbusier.
The Grupo de Arquitectos yTécnicos Españoles para el
Progreso de la Arquitectura Contemporánea movement
(save yourself the heartache and call them GATEPAC)
adopted the unfussy functionalism with enthusiasm.
Barcelona’s wing of the movement generated the
best work, notably the Dispensario Antituberculoso,
a collaborative work of the mid 1930s driven by
GATEPAC’s leading light, Josep Lluís Sert. As the name
suggests, the building was clinical in function as well as
shape, wholly in keeping with the movement’s socialist
undercurrent.Dictates of style: building under Franco
Architecture under Franco rarely suffered from attacks
of subtlety.The socialist sensitivities of the so-called
International Style enjoyed by GATEPAC were
banished (as were many of its architects) in favour of
monumental attention-craving buildings early in the
Caudillo’s rule. It had to be big and it had to evoke
Spain’s glorious (if brief) imperial past. New work fed
off a heavy, unimaginative classicism, as seen in Luis
Gutiérrez Soto’s oversized air ministry, completed in
1957 (Soto had actually started out as a Rationalist).
However, before Franco could follow Mussolini or
Hitler too far with his grand building projects, Spain’s
economic nosedive torpedoed over indulgence. Only
with thedesarrollo, the economic miracle of the 1960s
and 70s, did Spain join the rest of Europe to innovate.162- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Spain’s forgotten
cathedral
Franco’s approach to
architecture is revealed
in the Valle de los
Caídos, a verdant
national park just outside
Madrid which, even in
summer, largely fails
to attract the capital’s
seared residents out
to its lush surrounds.
Why? Because here
the Generalísimo left
the biggest physical
reminder of Spain’s years
under dictatorship.
A granite cross, 150m
high, is just the icing on
the cake; below, gouged
from the rock to a length
of 250m by Republican
prisoners of war, is a
cavernous basilica
containing, among other
things, Francisco’s
remains. While much of
Spain has tried hard to
blank Franco from the
memory, the sheer
scale of the Valle de los
Caídos’ architecture
precludes convenient
amnesia. Most of Spain
chooses, instead, to look
the other way.