The image of the Primer Ensanche of Teruel through historical cartography

Abstract

The city of Teruel was in the 1920s without an extension plan that would allow it to grow beyond the limits of the hill that occupied the medieval city. The town’s architect, Luis González Gutiérrez, was commissioned to carry out the project of the Primer Ensanche of Teruel in 1930, where a new urban concept for the city was materialized, far from the medieval streets of the urban area. The importance of this neighbourhood meant the inclusion of it in the delimitation of the Historic Site of Teruel, declared as an Asset of Cultural Interest in 2010. The lack of a specific protection plan, along with its uniqueness, which endow it with its own identity within the whole set, it determined the need to elaborate a study that would allow to identify, revalue and preserve its historical, cultural, architectural, urban and landscape values, and for this purpose this research was carried out. The analysis of the different sources, mainly archival, has allowed to elaborate a discourse that gathers the formative process of the neighbourhood, recovering the evolution of its image, essential to be able to understand the main values of the historical consolidated image. In this process, the study of aerial photography and historical cartography, part of which remains unpublished, has been fundamental to establish its morphological and landscape development. Fortunately, the Primer Ensanche of Teruel meaningfully conserves the values of its original arrangement, as well as those that the development of the history has printed on it, which endows it with a high degree of authenticity, by which it deserves and it must be conserved.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.22.2019.23