165- 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
Close encounters: living the Spanish way
So much for the grand architectural gestures.
What kind of buildings do the Spanish actually live in
and where do they put them? As you might expect,
Spain’s traditional vernacular architecture isn’t easily
pigeonholed; regionalism generates marked variation.
Available building materials and, more significantly,
climate have always dictated how people build their
houses or outbuildings.The Spaniards’ approach to
living arrangements is more easily summed up.
They’re nothing if not sociable; while northern
Europeans anxiously section off their own plot of terra
firma, in Spain they seem to enjoy living on top of each
other, clustered in apartments and houses around the
plaza mayor. It’s not like they’re short of space either –
a population density of around 85 per sq km is one
of the lowest in Europe. Althoughurbanizaciones
(self-contained developments) have sprawled out
greedily along the Mediterranean coast, Spanish cities,
towns and even villages in the back of beyond tend to
huddle together, beginning and ending bluntly with
the last apartment block or house rather than trickling
on through land-hungry suburbs. Isolated houses
(excluding working farms) out in the countryside aren’t
the norm – any you do encounter these days may
harbour a grey-haired migrant from abroad.More than 75 per cent
of Spain’s population
lives in towns and cities.
It wasn’t always so: only
in the 20thcentury did
people drain from the
land.Out with the old
The Spanish are
renowned for their love of
new buildings over old,
born perhaps of the desire
to regenerate after the
Franco era. Historic city
apartments, complete
with original fittings, are
torn down and replaced
with modern blocks in a
way that would get
sentimental Anglo-Saxons
weeping into their Butler
sinks.3.2.6 Home truths: domestic architecture,
living arrangements and planning chaos