A reflection of the evolution of the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the leading example of architectural rationalism in the Canary Islands.

Having studied at the Madrid School of Architecture (Spain), he obtained his architecture degree in 1920. For a while, he went on to work in the firm of his former teacher, Secundino Zuazo. In 1922, he returned to his hometown, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he began to work on a range of private and official projects, including the project for the city’s urban assessment and the development of the Alcaravaneras district.

The search for the new international language of rationalism can be found in these first projects – initially quite poorly defined, though it quickly acquired more mature and forceful lines, an example of which can be seen in the Gran Canaria Inter-Island Council building, located on Calle Bravo Murillo in the capital of Gran Canaria, constructed in 1932. In this same period, he developed the recovery and definition of a regionalist style, alongside his brother, the symbolist painter Néstor (who dies away prematurely in 1938), in order to exhibit it as an identity capable of creating tourist and advertising attraction.

In the post-war period, as an eclectic style began to manifest itself within the modernist movement, the architect shifted towards the autarkic architecture imposed by the Canary Islands Economic Command, adding to a trend for the revaluation of the Neo-Canarian style that had already been in the making since the Civil War of 1936. This trend was crystallised with the Tejeda Parador, and later with the Casa del Turismo tourist office developed in the Santa Catalina Park in 1940, inaugurated in 1945 – as well as the Pueblo Canario, which included the Néstor Museum, dedicated to his brother, and the Santa Catalina Hotel, both completed in the 1950s.

From the 60s onwards, society started to open itself up to tourism, losing those stylistic criteria derived from authoritarianism in favour of a period of formal eclecticism, represented in various architectural elements – among which the Casa del Marino (Sailor’s House) undoubtedly stands out. This was one of the first projects bringing the local panorama back to the second modernity, though this was also ensured through a complex compositional balance that allowed it to connect once more with the most noteworthy architecture on the international scene. A key figure in the history of Spanish architecture during the rationalist period. As an urban planner, he was the first to harmoniously plan the development of the “great city” of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, divided between the old town and the port city. He is the architect of the city’s transformation into a great metropolis.