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The Noticias De Los Arquitectos: Towards a 'National' Definition of Spanish Architecture 1

The Noticias de los arquitectos is well known to Spanish architectural historians and has been cited often since it was first published. However, its double authorship and wider international context have largely been ignored, even though it was born in direct response to a book on architectural history that was written in Italy, and participates in the broader European architectural debates with its discussion of the origin of the Gothic. This last point is of particular importance, since Cean Bermudez used these debates to try to distance the Spanish architectural tradition from the broader European tradition in order to posit a 'national' definition of Spanish architecture. As all these points are interrelated, let us look first at the origin of the book. This had a noticeable impact on its content and will be dealt with in the second part of this essay.An attempt to vindicate Spanish architectureIn 1768 the Italian theorist Francesco Milizia published his well-known Vite de piu celebri architetti d'ogni nazione e d'ogni tempo precedute da un saggio sopra l'architettura.2 This book represents an important achievement in the history of architecture and constitutes an essential source in the field. The declared objectivity of the Enlightenment notwithstanding, this work is known to be biased by the author's thoughts and prejudices. Similar to most other architectural theorists of the period, Milizia viewed the Baroque as 'the enemy of Classicism'.3In his work, Milizia does not mention any Hispanic architect, with the exception of the ancient builder Julio Lacer.4 He does include the Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, without ever having visited it, as he never travelled to Spain. He described it as 'amazing', though only regarding its size,5 whereas Spanish intellectuals described it as the Eighth Wonder of the World; furthermore, Milizia wrongly attributed the Escorial to Italian and French architects, saying the plans were by Vignola and its construction by Louis de Foix, and made only a cursory reference to Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, the true architects of El Escorial.6 To be fair, Milizia was neither the first nor the last to make such an erroneous attribution, which seems to date back as far as sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.7In order to understand how offensive this misattribution was to Spanish intellectuals, it is important to consider the context in which they lived. During the eighteenth century, Spain had fallen behind other European nations. This was the consequence of, on the one hand, its former glory days as an Empire and, on the other, the decadence begun during the second half of the seventeenth century, which, in the words of Jesus Astigarraga, brought 'an endless series of stagnant and retrogressive institutions, social values and public policies'.8 To some Enlightenment thinkers, Spain was one of the main negative models of the eighteenth century in Europe.9 For instance, Montesquieu identified Spain as a counter-example of the Enlightenment10 and Nicolas Masson de Morvilliers included a very critical article on Spain in the Encylopedie Methodique, leading to an intense controversy in which Llaguno himself participated.11In this context, and following the change in ruling dynasty, the Spanish Enlightenment constituted an economic, political, scientific and cultural project structured to address the problem of the country's backwardness. As a result, there was an emphasis on cultural progress in the fields of literature, history, science, and architecture, considered 'the most useful and excellent' of the arts. Spanish decorative Baroque12 was viewed as the culprit that led to the decadence of the arts, and was ultimately associated with the crisis of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 This led the major intellectuals of the period to appeal for the 'restoration' of classical architecture, and focus their gaze on the Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial. …