Madrid,
Last year, 150 were completed since birth in Porriño, in Pontevedra, by Antonio Palacios; Up to there he had moved his wide family from Madrid because of his father’s work, who was a public works assistant. It is said that early coexistence with plans, tools and machinery had to do with the desire that it would be one of the fundamental architects in the configuration of the image of Madrid for forming, precisely, in engineering and architecture, disciplines that when he studied, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, they shared subjects until the students should opt for their specialization in a branch or another.
He said he had sorted his ultimate decision (architecture, of course), against the criteria of his parents. They were his teachers, among others, Ricardo Velázquez Bosco (architect of Los Palacios de Velázquez and Cristal or the current headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture) or Manuel Aníbal Álvarez and among his references were also found, key figures of this moment as Violet-Le-Duc U Otto Wagner.
The study of Velázquez Bosco himself was, in fact, the first one in which he worked, between 1900 and 1902, until he joined his classmate: Joaquín Otamendi. The latter, well positioned socially, provided useful contacts among the Madrid bourgeoisie. The first joint project was the decoration of the Bridge of the Princess of Asturias.
It did not spend much time until, in 1904, Palacios was appointed chief architect of the Ministry of Development and Member of the Urban Planning Board, charges that combined with his work with Otamendi. With himself, in addition, he shaped his successful proposal as a communications palace, the current headquarters of the City of Madrid and Centrocentro, which now dedicates to the architect a sample derived from a research and dissemination project around the concept of metropolis that this author conceived for Madrid. His drivers are Javier García-Gutiérrez Mosteiro and Julián García Muñoz, doctors in architecture in the Polytechnic, and his axis is the study, precisely, of the Eminent Madrid projects of Palacios (it should be remembered that he also worked outside; in these first years, especially in his native Galicia).
While Antonio was selected as a jury member of the Architecture Section of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, Otamendi and he received important orders, as well as the Maudes Hospital or the workshops of the Catholic Institute of Arts and Industries, both in Madrid.
For a while, Palacios conjugated architecture with teaching, by exercising as an interim professor at the Madrid School of Architecture in modeling subjects, architectural details and decorative details; From the hand of that center he traveled to Egypt in 1911, a stay that would be relevant in his journey. However, by not achieving a place as a numerary professor of projects of architectural and decorative details (for drawing with Teodoro Anasagasti) he decided to put aside classes.
Another of his key works materialized in 1910: the Bank of the Río de la Plata approved the Palacios and Otamendi project for its Madrid branch, on Alcalá Street, coinciding with the appointment of both as officials of the new negotiated architecture and urbanism of the Ministry of Development. Antonio also assumed the position of President of the Architects Section of the Circle of Fine Arts, from which he participated in the search and selection of a new location for the headquarters of this institution and also of the organization of the First National Exhibition of Decorative Art in the Retiro Park.
The successes followed: in 1912 he was appointed president of the Central Architecture Society and not much later later the works of the Metropolitan of Alfonso XIII, the current Metro Madrid, and both Palacios and Otamendi started were indicated as architects of the company. Antonio would collaborate even in the development of the suburban for almost a quarter of a century and intervened in the construction of lines 1, 2, 3 and 4 and their auxiliary buildings.
The inauguration of the Communications Palace, which took place in 1919, would end this stellar professional duo. Otamendi accepted an architect post for mail and developed the rest of his career in the field of the public sector, but his friendship never lost.
Already alone, Antonio presented a proposal for the new headquarters of the Circle of Fine Arts. She was controversial: the jury discarded it, but most of the partners supported her, so the works of the building began in 1921. It was a stage for him of numerous European trips, and of more orders: those of the Matesanz house or the sanatorium of the Fuenefría in Cercedilla (the City Council of his town, Porriño).
In 1926 he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and received a good number of public tributes and recognition, but he would also have to face the demolition of some of his past projects, such as the Bridge of the Princess of Asturias or the temple of access to the Metro in Puerta del Sol, while initiating his latest great work, that of the Mercantile and Industrial Bank on Alcalá Street, 31, 31, the current exhibition hall of the Community of Madrid.
After the Civil War, his activity overturned it towards the intimate: he dealt with the design of his own home, in a lot that his wife and he had acquired in the plant and where he died in 1945.
Eclecticism, the rationality of the structures and the search for expressiveness in the use of the materials would be the seal of the architecture of Palacios. The projects examined in the Centrocentro exhibition, “Madrid metropolis”, are theirs best known in the capital (the Palace of Communications, the Hospital de Velleros, the Spanish Bank of the Río de la Plata – current Cervantes Institute – and the Circle of Fine Arts), but also emphasizes its contributions to Madrid urbanism of that time between Alcalá and Puerta del Sol: its buildings are left time they epattered the walkers for their monumentality, and defined the commercial and financial heart of the city in a key period for their modernization.
In the interiors favored accessibility and work spaces were rationally distributed; He appropriated the stone for facades, iron and glass to bring zenith light to the ships and brick to build the load walls. For their volumes, these works stood out in their surroundings without breaking the aesthetics of the set, a filigree exercise that did not require ornamentation.
“Madrid Metropoli. Antonio Palacios’s dream”
Centrocentro
CIBELES SQUARE, 1
Madrid
From April 8 to July 6, 2025
