Tetuán is the district par excellence of the capital of neo-Mudejar art with the largest number of buildings, 160, of this style, followed by other areas of Madrid such as Carabanchel, Méndez Álvaro, Puente de Vallecas, Pacífico, Aluche, Embajadores or Prosperidad.
Recently, the City Council has incorporated 319 buildings of popular neo-Mudejar architecture to the Catalog of Protected Buildings to protect them and guarantee their conservation. In this way, the city wants not only to protect works by the great architects of this style, such as José Espelius or Emilio Rodríguez Ayuso, but also more humble examples, without a recognized signature, located in working-class neighborhoods.
Of the 319 buildings, 253 are newly incorporated while another 66 were already included, but have now enjoyed a higher level of protection. Thus, to unique neo-Mudejar buildings such as the Aguirre Schools, the Atocha Station or the Matadero of Madrid, more than three hundred others have now been added in 15 districts of the city, headed by Tetuán, which is the one that welcomes the most, according to the City Council. it’s a statement.
It was the archaeologist José Amador de los Ríos who, in his entrance speech to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1859, spoke for the first time about this style, considering it “the most genuinely Spanish.”
The Madrid interpretation of neo-Mudejar has peculiar characteristics that reflect the traditional idiosyncrasy and the urban development and social changes experienced from the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. In addition to the aforementioned Atocha Station, Matadero or the Aguirre Schools, there are examples such as Las Ventas, the churches of the Virgen de la Paloma and San Fermín de los Navarros, the Museum and Institute of Valencia de Don Juan, the Hospital of the Red Cross or the El Águila Beer Factory.
The new additions of Madrid’s popular neo-Mudejar architecture to the catalog are located in 15 districts, led by Tetouan with more than 160 buildings; followed by Puente de Vallecas with more than a hundred; Latina and Carabanchel around twenty each; Linear City, 16; Usera, a dozen properties and Hortaleza with eleven. The districts of Salamanca, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Villaverde, Villa de Vallecas, Barajas, Moncloa-Aravaca, Retiro and Chamartín also have some examples of this style.
Among the buildings in Tetuán, for example, is the one in the San Rafael alley, with a plinth occupied by premises and homes with a different composition from the rest, or the house of the painter Marceliano Saenz de Santamaría, on Abel Street, 19, where The commemorative plaque that the Círculo de Bellas Artes dedicated to him in 1966 still remains; two two-story buildings on Alonso Castrillo street or modest one-story homes like those on Ana María street 21, 21 A and 21.B.
With this modification of the 1997 General Urban Planning Plan relating to the expansion of the Catalog of Protected Buildings, the Madrid City Council has added a total of 989 new buildings to this list in the first eight months of the current mandate.
