Contemporary Age
La generación fernandina es una continuación del siglo , su trazado responde a una cuadrícula de dimensiones muy reducidas, cruzada por algunas diagonales que unían las plazas. Las avenidas ofrecen perspectivas largas, lo que demuestra la influencia barroca.
The time of Joseph Bonaparte
Silvestre Pérez was in charge of carrying out reforms in Madrid, as architect of King José. He had been a disciple of Ventura Rodríguez and at the beginning of the century he enjoyed great prestige. In 1801 he had developed the project for Puerto de la Paz in Bilbao, an authentic new port city, articulated around a large square open to the estuary, and with a layout that some authors see as related to Christopher Wren's 1666 project for London.
The actions of the previous stage had focused on the Prado axis, and the descent towards the Manzanares from Atocha, but Madrid continued to be a city with an anarchic layout and without urban landmarks. The anticlericalism of the French revolutionary ideology allowed previously unthinkable actions to be carried out. Burials in churches were prohibited, creating cemeteries outside the walls, as a measure to avoid epidemics. Convents were also expropriated and demolished to clear the urban fabric, which became squares (preserving the name of the respective convent: Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, Los Mostenses or San Miguel). Similar provisions were adopted in other cities such as Seville, Valladolid or Salamanca (where the plaza called Anaya was opened, in front of the north façade of the cathedral). The great density of the walled cities only allowed this resource to gain space, at a time when the demolition of fences was not yet accepted as a generalized idea. Two decades later, the confiscation of Mendizábal would once again make it possible to gain ground by resorting to the same procedure.
Sacchetti had warned that the Royal Palace required a plaza in its eastern part and Sabatini had prepared a project that could not be carried out. The creation of a monumental area around the Palace became Silvestre Pérez's most ambitious work. In the Napoleonic "Forum (architecture)") pure geometric forms had to dominate. In Madrid it would be carried out through an axis that would link the Palace with the church of San Francisco el Grande, converted into the headquarters of the Kingdom's Cortes. For this purpose, a large square would be built on the main façade of the Palace, followed by another quadrangular square in the place now occupied by the Almudena, and a bridge over Segovia Street that would lead to another large square shaped like a Roman circus in front of the church of San Francisco. The war prevented Silvestre Pérez's design from producing any results, although some of the ideas it contained would serve his successors to organize that area.
The city of romanticism
San Sebastián was bombarded by Wellington in 1813 and almost completely destroyed. The reconstruction project was commissioned by the city council to Pedro de Ugartemendía, who designed a city with a regular plot, articulated around an octagonal square that would be the center of social life. The conception without social segregation by neighborhood did not take into account the previous road. Finally, the collision between public and private interests made a thorough remodeling of the old route almost impossible and Ugartemendía had to direct the works of a project carried out by the second mayor Manuel Gogorza.
Isidro González Velázquez succeeded the exiled Silvestre Pérez in the organization program around the Royal Palace of Madrid. He devised a circular plaza, in which a perimeter porticoed gallery would serve as a link between the Royal Palace and the Royal Theater, taking advantage of the space freed up, in front of the eastern façade, by the demolition in the Josephine era of 56 homes and the Treasure House. The project could not be carried out due to budgetary difficulties, but nevertheless, it is at the base of the plaza that was built in 1842, at the initiative of Agustín Argüelles.
In 1854 the reconstruction works of the Plaza Mayor were completed, following the 1790 project by Juan Villanueva, when a fire partially destroyed it.
The opening of intramural plazas was favored by the confiscation, which had its peak between 1835 and 1837. In cities like Madrid or Malaga, Church properties occupied a quarter of the available surface, a percentage that was even higher in smaller cities. However, this solution only represented a temporary compromise due to the need for land in the cities. Only the delay in industrialization in Spain allowed the demolition of the walls and the creation of expansions to be postponed until the 1850s.
Another important obstacle was the absence of an adequate legal framework. In 1834, Custodio Moreno drew up the first detailed topographical plan of Madrid, but it was not until 1846 that a Royal Order was published that obliged other cities to provide themselves with this instrument. Something similar happened with the lack of regulations on street alignment, which were not made mandatory until 1859.
In Madrid, during the Elizabethan period, Puerta del Sol "Puerta del Sol (Madrid)") (see History of Puerta del Sol), became a new center of urban life, after the demolition of the convents of San Felipe and La Victoria. The Puerta del Sol does not follow the typical model of a Spanish main square, however, at this time there is a revitalization of this very characteristic model, interpreted according to the classic taste of Villanueva or the Basque main squares of the late 18th century. The Plaza Real of Barcelona (1848) and the Plaza Nueva "Plaza Nueva (Sevilla)") of Seville, follow this model destined to disappear in the new expansions.
Birth of contemporary urban planning in Spain
In Spain, the industrial delay during the century prevented the birth of coal cities, developed in industrial Europe and the United States. The increasing concentration of population in some cities led to a housing shortage and declining living conditions. In Madrid, the corridor houses or corralas stood out above all, these were the houses of the humble, where urban workers lived. In the absence of large concentrations of industrial workers, strictly speaking, it was more of an artisan population, for which the home itself served as a workshop for their work.
After the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the Spanish population began a process of uninterrupted growth that reached 20 million inhabitants in just a century and a half, especially reflected in the cities. The population retained a pre-industrial structure and at first there was a degradation of the living conditions of the urban population. The city that emerged from this process presented a serious situation of overcrowding and a crisis in services.
The overcrowding of inhabitants in cities was a consequence of population growth combined with a lack of parallel increase in the number of homes. Since the end of the century, demographic growth in large cities has been achieved at the expense of the number of people per home and the appearance of sub-tenants. The subdivision of old single-family homes, the elevation of floors, the occupation of the surface of the previously unbuilt plot for housing, the occupation of part of the street space through the proliferation of overhangs contribute to seriously densify the center of cities that maintain the road network inherited from previous times and in which streets less than four meters wide were not uncommon.
Population expansions
The demolition of the walls did not only affect the expanding cities. For example, in Jaca at the beginning of the century, the use of the few buildings that arose outside the walls for vacations and rest of the wealthy began to spread, but it had barely grown since its walled enclosure was built in the 19th century. However, it was the subject of a major urban reform project, intended to radically modify the appearance of the city. In 1917, the Jacetan town council began a plan that consisted of the complete demolition of the walls, which had been intact until that date, and the systematic alignment of the streets of the medieval town, due to which most of the old streets and the buildings that flanked them disappeared. This ambitious operation, because it affects practically the entire population, hardly finds parallels in Spain. As a result, practically the entire medieval and Renaissance Jaca disappeared, of which only vestiges remain in some isolated point such as the Market Square or the small Calle del Arco.[8].
The tram
There are also spaces such as suburban complexes dedicated to the houses of the proletariat, occupied by emigrants from rural towns. There would be a dual model: expansions and suburbs. This led to problems linked to the living conditions of the suburbs, which made them hotbeds of disease. There was also a social problem that could be sources of political activism that could spread to the rest of the population.
Faced with this problem, proposals arise to solve them, among them that of Ángel Fernández de los Ríos stands out, who proposed a ring road railway that would go along the edge of the expansion and connect the working-class neighborhoods with the city. This proposal sought a rational organization of peripheral space. The linear city of Arturo Soria was given, which is one of the most important contributions to the urban planning of Spain, it emerged in 1882 and it is emphasized that it is a column where the buildings are installed. It is a city based on isolated single-family housing with a garden, self-sufficient in services and facilities. It is the antecedent of the garden city. It will have to be healthy and will be an area of class unity and an important means of communication.
In the expansion of populations, the implementation of a new transport system, the tram, was of great importance, which began with animal traction in Madrid (1871), Barcelona and Bilbao (1872), Santander (1875), Valencia (1876), Valladolid (1881), Cartagena "Cartagena (Spain)") (1882), Málaga (1884), Zaragoza (1885), Seville (1887), Palma de Mallorca (1891), Tenerife (1901)[9].
In 1879 the Madrid-Leganés tram line began to operate with steam traction and in 1899 the first electrified line operated. Steam traction was introduced in Barcelona in 1877 (to Sant Andreu), and the first electrified line was from 1899. In the middle of the century they disappeared, replaced by buses.
turn of the century
In 1892 Arturo Soria published his Ciudad Lineal project "Linear City (urbanism)"), which would extend between the existing core cities. Soria was inspired by the thought of Fourier and Fernández de los Ríos and was six years ahead of Howard's garden city movement, which would see the light of day in 1898. The Linear City was born from overcoming the concept of expansion and its objective was to build a new, healthy city that would improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, structured around a wide central avenue in which the tram acted as a cohesive element. From the beginning, the homes were thought to be single-family, with large areas of garden, orchards and green areas. In the Linear City there would be room for social difference, not all houses had to be the same, but unlike other projects, the less well-off were not relegated to distant suburbs, but to a second or third row, always close to the main avenue and transportation. The provision of services such as schools or shops was another point of attention.
Not only did he enunciate a program for an ideal city, but he created a private company to put it into practice. But instead of uniting two core cities, as was the original idea, it created an urban ring road that should be built around Madrid. Future inhabitants could participate as owners of shares in the entity, depending on their economic capacity. A communication organ, "La Ciudad Lineal" was in charge of disseminating the project and the underlying ideology.
The first section of Ciudad Lineal was finished, after overcoming many financial difficulties in 1911. The result was the creation of a residential and recreational area, in which the bourgeoisie liked to spend the summer months, in the current district of Ciudad Lineal. The Madrid Urbanization Company, as the one created by Arturo Soria was called, continued operating and exploiting the tram line that served the linear City until 1951, when it ended up being absorbed by the Municipal Transport Company (EMT).
This model was well received in Catalonia, where at least three projects were proposed: a neighborhood in Barcelona, an articulation of the Reus-Tarragona-Salou axis (which would have been much more in line with Soria's initial idea) and an agricultural colony in Vilanova, which were never carried out.
In Madrid, the municipal engineer Pedro Núñez Granés tried to coherently unite the city with the peripheral centers. The Núñez Granés plan was completed in 1909, but it did not receive municipal approval until 1916. A wide avenue ran parallel to the promenade in the northern part, and a ring road ran to close the project along the route of the current M-30. The extension of the Castellana had to be carried out by eliminating the racecourse and correcting its alignment so that it took a south-north orientation. This project was never carried out, but the idea of extending the Castellana had permeated the city council and was one of the points in the specifications for the competition that would be called in 1928.
Second Republic
The Second Republic coincided with the rise of rationalist architecture, of which García Mercadal was the main introducer. He participated in the founding congress of CIRPAC in 1928, organized Le Corbusier's visit to Madrid and was the promoter of the creation of GATEPAC in 1930. The Republican government provided a strong political impetus to urban planning, especially under the mandate of Indalecio Prieto in Public Works between 1931 and 1933.
In 1932, the Madrid Access and Surroundings Technical Office was created to improve road and rail access and organize peripheral population centers. The brain of this cabinet was Secundino Zuazo, and his most significant achievements were the access plan to Madrid and two works related to the Castellana extension work: the railway tunnel between Chamartín and Atocha and the New Ministries.
Another work of the Cabinet was the Madrid Regional Plan, which contemplates not only the city and its immediate periphery but a much broader territorial extension.
The interior of the municipal area of Madrid was the subject of an Extension plan in 1933, which replaced the failed competition of 1929. This was a work that established objectives on zoning, density, green spaces and the transportation system.
For his part, García Mercadal won the position of head of the Urban Planning Office of the Madrid City Council in 1932. His main urban contribution from his position is the Jarama Green City Project.
Where this became official architecture was in Catalonia, promoted by the Generalitat of Catalonia. The GATCPAC, led by Sert, will be the reference for Catalan republican urban planning.
The group's first major project was the Diagonal urbanization (1931). It is an exhibition of the most orthodox rationalism, in which the closed Cerdà block is replaced by longitudinal alienations of free blocks. In 1932, the "Ciutat de Repós" was published, a holiday colony within the movement's concern for hygiene and leisure.
In 1934, the writing of the most ambitious project, the "Plan Macià", for the creation of a new Barcelona was completed, which had the support of Le Corbusier. The growth of the city should be done by discarding the Jaussely-type radial proposals and preserving the reticular organization of Cerdà, but with a larger module (one new block would be equivalent to nine old ones). Special attention was paid to the coastal belt, zoning and the modification of urban ordinances.
Francoism
After the end of the Spanish Civil War, the so-called period of autarchy begins and during it a process of elaboration of the conceptual formulation begins along with the administrative institutionalization of urban planning that culminates in 1956 with the progressive Land Law of Spain.
The National Institute of Industry (|INI) carried out industrial projects in medium-sized cities (50,000 inhabitants). Before this and due to the Civil War, the regime inspired a national plan for industrial reconstruction that had little success because in the 1940s the government became more interested in rural areas. The main element was the INI, which undertook several actions such as the intervention in Puertollano with the Calvo Sotelo company with bituminous slate factories in 1942. It also highlights the actions in Madrid promoting the creation of new industrial complexes such as the Villaverde or San Fernando de Henares industrial estates.
Two phenomena also appear in the 1950s, such as the appearance of the investor, who is a professional agent who acquires land and builds homes, and the neighborhood or suburbs that colonize the outskirts of the city that work in industry and are a marginal settlement, in many cases they will be illegal or with insufficient health conditions.
The 1960s were years of urban explosion associated with economic modernization, industrial and service growth, demographic growth, and the arrival of immigrants. In the first half of the 1970s, demographic growth stagnated due to the economic crisis.
The physiognomy of the city, taking into account the regulations of the general urban planning plans that come from the land regulation of 1956, advocates territorial balance and the construction of cities with open building polygons and well equipped and communicated. What was done had little to do with this because the conquest of the land for urbanization with massive construction was advocated and the land law was subordinated to the interests of the groups of promoters. The economic agents who had land and capital profited. This important urban growth was transferred to the urban morphology with large residential complexes located on the periphery and will be for the middle class.
There is also the phenomenon of suburbs that is increasing. It is linked to economic growth and the phenomenon of metropolitan areas arises in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao with relations between the cities and their periphery. This growth of metropolitan areas surprised the government and the growth was disorderly with an absence of regulations in management or services.
In the 70s this changed due to the energy crisis of 1973 and the city had another aspect in which the citizen's concern began to count and a new situation arose due to the transfer of powers.
Since 1975
At first, the industry suffers the consequences of the energy crisis, increasing unemployment. Faced with the crisis, the industry reacts in two ways, one at the private level and the other at the state level. At a particular level, new industrial locations are sought related to products that require specialized labor such as textiles or footwear. At the state level, industrial reconversion plans seeking new alternatives stand out. Despite this, the most important phenomena are the arrival of democracy and the globalized neoliberal society.
Regarding the arrival of democracy, territorial planning is autonomous competence with its own legislation. There is also the autonomy of the city council. A common link is that citizens have decision-making power, creating associations concerned about the type of city they want.
In the 90s, the neoliberal globalized city was introduced in which the city found itself in a situation of competition in which community funds became very important and there were monopolies that controlled the space for their maximum benefit. The diversity of phenomena gives rise to strong heterogeneity.
• - History of cities.
• - History of urban planning in Europe.
• - Urban planning legislation of Spain.
• - Urban planning in Spain.
• - Jürgens, Oskar.: "Spanish cities. Their development and urban configuration." MAP, 1992.
• - Hernando, Javier.: "Architecture in Spain 1770-1900." Chair, Madrid, 1989.
• - Fernando de Terán: "Urban planning in Contemporary Spain." Alianza Universidad, Madrid, 1980.
• - Urrutia, Ángel: "Spanish architecture of the 20th century." Chair, Madrid, 1997.