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History

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Walk through Pamplona

Posted on 31/01/2017

Some years ago, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the city of Pamplona. The article went beyond the traditional topic of Sanfermines and talked about another interesting places around the city. If you want to read the complete article, please click here

Having this article on mind, I am writing about the last morning we went for a walk around Pamplona. We may have not seen all the city since it took us just one hour, and we visited just some streets, but it was totally worth it, so follow us and take a look of what we saw.

We visited some buildings of an area of Pamplona called I Ensanche. The word Ensanche could be more or less translated to “expansion”, therefore, it was the first expansion of the city. Now you may ask yourself why are we talking about “expansion”? Well, because of the walls surrounding the city. Until the last century, Pamplona was a city completely surrounded by a stone fortress. Nowadays despite it still has some remaining walls, the city has grown out of those edges. So, back then, the city was completely different from what we can appreciate today.

The first expansion was the first area where wealthy people could build elegant houses made by the most important architects of the end of XIXth Century and beginnings of the XXth Century. A public building, the palace of justice, was built at the same time as well.

Regrettably, some of those houses were demolished and today we can´t enjoy watching all of them. However, around this area there are still some amazing examples of the detail-oriented and versatile styles that define the architecture of that time. For example, it’s impossible to avoid looking at the beautiful buildings by Manuel Martinez Urbago in Modernist style. The team was astonished by the beauty of the gantries and overwhelmed by the delicacy of every little piece that decorated the room. The details and harmony in those spaces suddenly let us delightfully experience an atmosphere from other times.

We also enjoyed watching at the only house of Pamplona that is built in neo-mudéjar style. In the case of this particular building, materials are essential, since bricks are not only for used construction, but also for the decoration of its facade. With contrasting colors, geometric shapes and a harmonic combination of the bricks with the rest of materials, this is a beautiful creation that effortlessly stands out from the surrounding houses.

In the end, we spent such a nice morning contemplating all the ornamental details, admiring the sinuous beauty of each façade, balcony or hall, reconstructing the ancient majesty of those houses in our minds, and chatting about the historicist and eclectic style in Spain, that the time passed so fast we didn´t notice.

Each of us also learnt a little more about the city of Pamplona. We realized that knowing well a city is not as easy as it sounds. It does not matter if it is a small city or even if we have been living there for several years, there are always secret spots or hidden treasures that need just a little of attention to be discovered and admired.

This morning walk was totally worth it. It was a morning for learning to look at the beauty of a city. Cities do not need to be enormous nor monumental to please our sight with lovely spaces. Each of them has a past that defines it, a need for beauty that decorates it and a will to become a nice place to live in that shapes it. With this walk along the secret beauties of Pamplona, we learned that each city possesses a charm, a history and a heritage that must be enjoyed, preserved and given to the next generations for their own delight.

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Good morning Vitoria!

Posted on 17/01/2017

There are cities in Spain with a kind of magnet for foreign people. A magnet generated by their fame, product of their world reputation and a great marketing strategy perhaps, that create on you the need to tell you have been there.

Nevertheless, there are amazing cities, secret treasures well worth to visit that don´t get the attention they truly deserve.

Vitoria is a nice, beautiful place that’s worth the time you need to walk around its streets. It counts with great promenades, an interesting old town, the great Basque cuisine to delight all tastes, two cathedrals (an old and a new one) and a great offer of public museums.

At the beginning of January, we went to the Fine Arts Museum of this lovely city and we had a morning full of fun, not only in the museum but along our way as well: the road to the museum is through a great park surrounded by beautiful houses with rich ornaments, like one known as “Casa de las Jaquecas“ which translates to “the House of Migraines” due to the body expression of the sculptures that decorate its facade.

Once in the Museum, we had the opportunity to appreciate its interesting permanent collection, with paintings by Dario de Regoyos, Antonio Maria de Lecuona, Zuloaga, Madrazo, among many others, and an area dedicated to Fernando Amarica.

What makes this place even more interesting, is that the museum itself, is a stunning building. “…A grand residence commissioned by husband and wife Ricardo Augustin and Elvira Zulueta, and designed by the architects Javier Luque and Julian Apraiz in 1912 and finished at 1916“as it’s explained on the Museum´s brochure. It is a sumptuous and elegant construction in a historicist style with many details to be appreciated. If you want to know more about the museum, click on this link

Our visit to the Museum this time was focused on the house and the historicist style. Everybody enjoyed exploring the rooms, contemplating the chapel and got stunned by the beauty of the fine joinery all around the rooms, on ceilings and floors, that can´t stop calling for your attention.

Then, in order to make our visit more dynamic, we formed groups of three or four people, each group had to select two paintings from all the collection and afterwards, explain to the other groups the reasons of their choice

After we were done with our visit, we went to eat some “pinchos” or “tapas” and later we visited the great new cathedral, an impressive example of Neo Gothic construction that just like the museum, emphasized the protagonist role of historicist architecture in this trip.

During this year, at Patrimonio para Jovenes, we will be talking again about historicist style, an architectonic style loved by some people, and very despised by others. Feel free to choose by yourself, but in the meantime, don’t forget to visit Vitoria!

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Victoriana, in Memoriam

Posted on 20/09/2016

Victoriana, in Memoriam

A journalist named Nerea Alejos wrote about this story in the regional newspaper “Diario de Navarra” on 22 August.

Usually we are looking for stories, that are somehow or have something new. But sometimes just the opposite happens: stories are looking for us. For example, there was last year in Burgos with the matter of the “monster or Ravenna” at the Burgos Cathedral and now, we have Victoriana Arizaleta and in her memory, the yoke of a small bell on the bell tower of the parish of St. Roman in the village of Arellano, Spain.

1878

“In Memorian of Victoriana Arizaleta” and the year 1878. And nothing more, just ‘Jesus and Mary.’ A bell with no use nowadays but with the name of a lady.

At the beginning of the research, we asked the old people of the village. Alvaro de Goñi, has also been looking at the archives there an we supposed 1878 was the date of the Victoriana death. But to our surprise, it was the date of her birth.

Perhaps a well off woman, a kind of “patroness’?

We also worked with this theory, but it doesn’t quite fit. At the archive of the parish we’ve found the expenses for her funeral, which were quite normal. If she was rich, she (or her family) didn’t like putting on a show of her capabilities.

Things that we know

Born in 1878, she married a barber from the village of Salinas de Oro. The wedding was in Estella in the year 1901.

She had at least three children and worked as a midwife in Arellano and other small villages around. One of her boys, Santiago, had been the mayor of Arellano for years.

Victoriana took care especially with the birthing of very poor ladies and gypsies. This was reported to us by her granddaughter who now is more than 70 year old.

Victoriana cooked cheese just for the family, and liked to make artisanal works, crafts, and the very typical Spanish “Encaje de bolillos” that consist of making lace in a special way.

Devoted of the Heart of Jesus, we also found that Victoriana’s mother has a silver heart dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the very same church. A fact discovered by Alvaro de Goñi, a young man from Arellano. In any case, we don’t know who paid for the bell yoke with the name of Victoriana. It is supposed be done by herself.

… And things we propose:

Births, wars… love and death… a work in the silence of the small villages isolated without the communication of today ( Internet, motorway, mobiles and so on )… a woman, a bell, a name. A bell that perhaps would be appropriate to ring again, at least once every year, in memory not only of Victoriana but of all rural women of Spain.