Reassessing Spanish Modernity Discourses through Mass Media

Through relevant figures of Spanish architectural scene of the postwar period, this paper will resume the statement that architecture will only become modern if it is allied to media (Colomina, 1994) and by doing so, it will displace theory and criticism of architecture to the pages of newspapers. While conventional theory portrays Spanish architecture of those years as a practice that seeks autonomy from political constraints, newspapers showcased a new architecture with a mission, the need to redefine an identity that could blend into Europe. The images published by the press are not graphic documents related to the definition of the proposal; it was frequent to find architects surrounded by promoters and politicians. Comparing architect's autonomous discourse with this other one creates a theoretical framework that underlines, among others, the alliance between architecture and politics, a bond that goes far beyond "style". Again, the relationship between word and image reveals the dualities between theory and practice and questions ideological assumptions that underlie the received vision of architecture through the autonomous discourse elaborated by architects and specialized critics. To explore this relationship this paper analyses as case-studies some of the most relevant buildings that shift towards modernity such as Corrales and Molezun's Spanish Pavilion for the 1958 Brussels Expo, a building presented in the media from the late 1950s until today, and a few other constructions under the similar conditions. The paper compares the appearance of those buildings as an episode of architecture theory to their presence in general media, and discusses that while the former would lead to an anthology of essays and academic texts, the latter offers a more realistic perspective that reunites voices and actors, towards the definition of a discourse built in the intersection of photographs, films, exhibitions or even the reconstruction of the building themselves, which can be extracted from the media.