Thesis title: La cultura del restauro in Spagna nella seconda metà del Novecento. Rapporti e sinergie con l'Italia
In the study of architectural restoration in Spain, the second half of the 20th century should be understood in historical terms, rather than from a rigid chronology, as the period from the Civil War (1936-1939) to the Transition to Democracy (1975-1979). This phenomenon would only be completed with the process of decentralisation of powers in 1986. The period from 1936 to 1986 covers five fundamental decades in the political and social transformation of Spain. It will also be a period of cultural and patrimonial transformation, as - with other dates - it will be in Italy and Europe in general.
We started from the consideration that the historical situation of both States was exactly the opposite in these decades. The succession of dictatorship, war and republic in Italy had the opposite process in Spain. We have considered it essential to go back in time on certain occasions. For example, when dealing with the Civil War itself, we realised that certain fundamental trends were beginning to take shape, or rather the conceptual frameworks of the following decades. We are referring, in the first instance, to the questioning of the autonomy of restoration as a discipline.
The research stemmed from our interest in interpreting the restoration that resumed in Spain during the second half of the 20th century, as well as analysing the contemporary influence of Italian restoration culture. A particularly fundamental period for European heritage had been overshadowed with implications of a different nature in Spain. The successive central restoration services (Servicio de Defensa del Patrimonio Artístico Nacional (PAN), Comisaría del PAN or Servicio de Monumentos) had not been analysed until now, beyond the specific projects. To this end, we have delved into the documentation of the General Archive of the Administration, the IPCE or those of Education or Culture.
Moreover, the specific process of the reception of Italian influence in this field had not been the subject of precise prior investigation. We have tried to complete it through the documentation of the Spanish Academy in Rome and ICCROM, as well as through the archives mentioned above. The references we found in the publications of the time focused mainly on prestige and self-justification. For these reasons, we found several trends mixed together, which actually exhibit a high degree of antagonism towards each other.
For this same reason, we also wanted to start from the analysis of the training received in the two Spanish Schools of Architecture, as well as the architectural historiography of the period, which had a great influence on the training of these restorers. This historiography was largely indebted to a post-war regenerationism that decided to recover the generation of 1898, ignoring an entire generation, that of '27 and identified with the Republic, which had contributed to Spanish culture with the so-called Silver Age.
This was the case of the Marquis of Lozoya, who became the Director General of Fine Arts (1939-1951) and who in 1930 had produced a work based on what he called the ‘romantic conception of history’. This was also the case with the publication of a seminal book in 1947, called the ‘Invariantes castizos de la Arquitectura española’ (The Invariants of Spanish Architecture) by the architect, restorer and professor from Madrid, Fernando Chueca Goitia, based on a re-reading of the work of Miguel de Unamuno ‘En torno al casticismo’ (On Spanish Identity), a collection of essays published in 1895.
Against that background, Leopoldo Torres Balbás emerged after the war with clear ideas and a vast knowledge. He suffered from being purged and disqualified as a restorer while he was busy proposing pro-conservative criteria. Until now, his numerous and very interesting critical annotations regarding the restoration of the forties and fifties have not been discussed as a whole. These are writings that reveal the fundamental role that this great figure could have played in the Spanish restoration after the war.
One of the great difficulties in dealing with this period was the lack of specialised publications on the restoration during the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). However, this does not mean that there has been no development in theory or practice in Spain. We have considered that not only the projects, but also their works on the history of architecture and even their drawings, are elements that have defined the vision and sense of the various restorers. Many of them stood out as historians of architecture and indirectly explain to us how they approached their restorations. For this reason, we have focused on the rigorous work of Félix Hernández Giménez as an architect-archaeologist and that of Francisco Íñiguez Almech who, despite his ambiguous attitude, was fundamental in the forties and fifties. Luis Cervera Vera also contributed his interest in documentary study as a way of warding off pastiche.
Once the point of view of the architect-restorer has been interpreted, it is possible to analyse his relationship with international influences. We have understood the Spanish Academy in Rome as a reality distinct from that of Spain, which was used from the perspective of foreign policy to promote a specific image of the country abroad. The Academy's regulations that we have been studying show these hesitations when dealing with restoration and the history of architecture. International modern architecture at that time displaced all interest in history, as a protest against the monumentalist historicism promoted by the State in the 1940s. The Academy was an opportunity seized by the Regime to convey a superficial image of modernity through its scholarships, as well as the pavilions and international exhibitions financed for this purpose.
The debate that had arisen between organic architecture and restoration criteria was of great interest to Spanish architects, as it shed light on how to approach the environment in historic cities. They adopted the museums in historic buildings of Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini, Franca Helg, Franco Minissi and BBPR as a point of reference, while rejecting the Brandian theory of restoration based on the premises of structuralist analysis, which they did not fully assimilate.
From the SDPAN management (1963-1969), From the late sixties, Gabriel Alomar promoted the arrival in Rome of architects to be trained as restorers by ICCROM. Relations were strengthened and real exchanges between the two countries began, especially through Italo Carlo Angle, Guglielmo De Angelis d'Ossat and Franca Helg and thanks, above all, to Alberto García Gil in his pioneering direction of the Monuments Service (1971-1974). Over the following two decades, young Spanish architects participated in this course as well as in the Scuola di Perfezionamento and later in the Specializzazione. They mainly dealt with restoration from an educational standpoint, whether in universities or in other administrative centres (Centro Segovia, Instituto de Restauración de Monumentos y de Conjuntos, CETRA), rather than from their own professional practice.
As a consequence of the initial cultural exchanges with Italy in the latter part of the sixties and seventies, tools such as photogrammetry were introduced in Spain by figures including the architect Antonio Almagro (1974). Other methods, such as the "archaeology of architecture", were introduced in the eighties by the archaeologists Luis Caballero Zoreda and Alberto López Mullor. These tools influenced a renewed interpretation of historical architecture and progressively transformed the gaze of the architect-restorer. This transformation was further influenced by additional Hispanic developments, which contributed to shaping a progressively more material-focused perspective on restoration.
The final chapter discusses how the successive central services created in Spain during our period dealt with the restoration of monuments, their surroundings and the historic city. We have studied the various attempts at improvement and renovation by means of unpublished archival documentation. Through the interpretation of this documentation, we have been able to discern the initial expectations of the various actors involved and to observe how these expectations were often frustrated or only partially assimilated.
Finally, we have included an extensive documentary appendix, divided into the documentation of the service itself, the minutes of the Advisory Council or the projects dealt with, as well as long and rich interviews with Alberto García Gil and Antoni González Moreno-Navarro, two of the most representative personalities who were kind enough to share their experiences and opinions of this period.