First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Examines the wartime destruction and post-war rebuilding of three prominent sites in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. This title reveals aspects of the Spanish Civil War and the evolution of the Franco regime from an original and fruitful angle.

Gabriel Alomar Esteve (1910-1997) was an architect, town planner and historian. His early ideas in town planning were largely pragmatic, seeking to address problems of the quality of life and the future traffic circulation in the historic core of his native city, Palma, and its suburbs. He inherited plans for reform from previous generations of Mallorcan planners including Eusebio Estada (1843-1917), Bernat Calvet (1864-1941) and Guillem Forteza (1892-1943) who in turn were influenced by Idelfonso Cerdá (1815-1876) the Barcelona planner and his concept of the eixample or ensanche. Some of his plan for Palma was financed by the enigmatic Juan March but under the post-Civil War policy of autarky little of what he proposed was built. However, a short sojourn in the United States at MIT in the mid-1940s brought him into contact with American and British theories. Much of his practice developed during the Franco regime, although he had little sympathy for its politics. Later, he designed few other complete town plans but his influence on the social aspects of Spanish planning in the ’50s and ’60s was considerable. His subsequent professional practice was largely devoted to urban conservation and the development of green spaces in cities and towns. His ideas are located between Anglo-Saxon planning theories and Mediterranean urbanismo, when town planning as a discipline began to emerge from its origins in engineering and architecture as part of its transition from planeamientos to proyectos.

Antonio López García’s Everyday Urban Worlds: A Philosophy of Painting is the first book to give the famed Spanish artist the critical attention he deserves. Born in Tomelloso in 1936 and still living in the Spanish capital today, Antonio López has long cultivated a reputation for impressive urban scenes—but it is urban time that is his real subject. Going far beyond mere artist biography, Benjamin Fraser explores the relevance of multiple disciplines to an understanding of the painter’s large-scale canvasses. Weaving selected images together with their urban referents—and without ever straying too far from discussion of the painter’s oeuvre, method and reception by critics—Fraser pulls from disciplines as varied as philosophy, history, Spanish literature and film, cultural studies, urban geography, architecture, and city planning in his analyses. The book begins at ground level with one of the artist’s most recognizable images, the Gran Vía, which captures the urban project that sought to establish Madrid as an emblem of modernity. Here, discussion of the artist’s chosen painting style—one that has been referred to as a ‘hyperrealism’—is integrated with the central street’s history, the capital’s famous literary figures, and its filmic representations, setting up the philosophical perspective toward which the book gradually develops. Chapter two rises in altitude to focus on Madrid desde Torres Blancas, an urban image painted from the vantage point provided by an iconic high-rise in the north-central area of the city. Discussion of the Spanish capital’s northward expansion complements a broad view of the artist’s push into representations of landscape and allows for the exploration of themes such as political conflict, social inequality, and the accelerated cultural change of an increasingly mobile nation during the 1960s. Chapter three views Madrid desde la torre de bomberos de Vallecas and signals a turn toward political philosophy. Here, the size of the artist’s image itself foregrounds questions of scale, which Fraser paints in broad strokes as he blends discussions of artistry with the turbulent history of one of Madrid’s outlying districts and a continued focus on urban development and its literary and filmic resonance. Antonio López García’s Everyday Urban Worlds also includes an artist timeline, a concise introduction and an epilogue centering on the artist’s role in the Spanish film El sol del membrillo. The book’s clear style and comprehensive endnotes make it appropriate for both general readers and specialists alike.