The Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid is 100 years old

As it happens, only the Club serves the same purpose that it has served for many years, because it has everything, a bar and a theaterin joys and checa, in moments of civil war. But there is a fact in which this assumption applies miga as if it were true. First, history.

Palacios was clear: no hint of “mezquindad”, no “provisional styles”. When he presented himself in the competition for the club’s new headquarters in 1919, he was an expert in “unheard of architecture”, like Ramón Gómez de la Serna in Correos. Dibujada con unas fabulous lunar vistas in blue MadridAccording to the design, it was presented as a round Babylonian mass, held by a tower in the west and with Minerva in the east watching over the lovers.

The order was so impressive The referee chalked it up to exceed the permitted height of the horn, 25 meters. I just wanted to start: although three finalists were chosen, including the project of Eugenio Quintanilla and Secundino Zuazo, Palacio’s former collaborator, the competition was abandoned.

Somewhat bemusedly, our man – who I always assumed was happy with the bases – took the motion in the final vote of the membership. In May 1920 he became ganador for a clear majority. Zuazo took it regularly: “I helped him, but I always tried not to be influenced by him,” he said five years later. The critics were also very enthusiastic: “a temple in the Acropolis, based on the paper of a banking house” (Margarita Nelken, El Fígaro).

The building was expensive, more than 9 million pesetas anyway Palacios renounció sus honorarios de projecto – not to work – and Minerva quedó in limbo, the ban on playing during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera hizo mella in the details of the institution.

In all cases, it is an obvious story: if you suspect that a neighbor has gone underground and, as I said, Andrés Trapiello does not exactly mean that the club maintains the “feel of a big city casino”. Again, you know the finale. After its inauguration on November 8, 1926, the number of members doubled, and from the beginning the headquarters aspired to be the imaginary center of the best modern building in Madrid. It is questionable and also legitimate.

Modern is the definition, because modern shows an interest in the integrity of form and construction, which Circle escamotea with its conveniently hidden metal structure. So much so that Picasso stopped by his salons.

The language of the Circle is classic in the hyperbolic manner of the Palaces. At the top are small and gigantic arches, seemingly in orderthe columned chiquitita in the esquina, the columns of achaparradas, bombamientos and atalaya – for artists’ studios – descending from the lively and supple air of Madrid, as Azorín would say. It is monstrous and beautiful, a colossal work, but not confused, symmetrical, but enlivened by decisions and accidents that direct the eye to the surface; brilliant, after all.

Nowadays, get used to the virtuosity of your interior. Google, our Delphi, states that the Circle consists of three plants. Little does Google know, there are tens. Palacios, like a true Galician, returned the question: from where? Hacia Alcalá is 8, and sort of, because she is the one to count bastion of the west or not. If we enter Calle del Marqués de Casa Riera, there are 5 of them.

Of course, the adjustment must be due to the fact that there is no excessive jump in the circuit. Afterword, which in 2026 tenth: the pool recess in the basement, the entrance hall with windows or the theater on the second floor, with a vestibule more than 10 meters high, create a great hall of light in the form in which the dome of the living room peaks like a fountain of two The biggest steps come to break through among the lucky ones who come.

The collection of uses would be successful until the twentieth century, because the circle is characterized by the appeal of any limiting work: for your doubts, it is understood that the architect touched the wall without breaking it. Yes, y Contrary to the logic of a high-rise building, communications are led by (imperial) staircases and elevators are reduced to simple apartments on the wall. If some of you have wondered about your entrances, you’ll agree that it’s a minor glitch and that’s it.

Personal record: sometimes twenty years we called the radio to do a show. With the defunct pool, the studios lost their entire building footprint. But at the foot of the Minerva de Vassallo – it was installed in 1966, completing the building – we can see the station between the station, the location of the players along the Cordillera de Gran Vía and below, on its natural twin, the Sierra de Guadarrama. Let’s learn how to complain in Madrid. Larga vida al Circulo.