El Gobierno Civil de Almería y el historicismo de posguerra

Abstract

The architecture ofthe Francoist period, as indeed the whole historical period in itself, has usually been considered aesthetically insignificant, whereas it really determines in large measure the present -day aspect of our towns. Representativeness, classicism, magnificence: these were the concepts which dominated the aesthetic ideals of the regime's ideologues, and they took shape in the style of the public buildings built in the 1940's, since this architecture had to retlect the "new order" established after the end of the Civil War in April 1939. This did not, however, involve such a radical break with previous architectural values as has so readily been supposed, that is, the rationalist avantgarde movement of the 2nd Republic as opposed to the classicist reaction of the Dictatorship. This fact is symptomatic of the very tragedy which the Francoist period embodied: an inability to generate original aesthetic values, and thus a dependence on "borrowings" from earlier periods, which led to this period being considered 'historicist'. The Civil government building in Almería is an excellent example ofthis architecture, clearly the product of a particular historical epoch and a significant architectural feature, characteristic of part of the recent history of Spain.