Spain: The Francisco Franco Era Of Spain

The Francisco Franco era of Spain was a long and hard one for the Catalan’s. Franco was a Spanish general who seized power and ruled over Spain as a military dictator for thirty- six years until he died in 1975. During his regime over Spain, he implemented many policies to weaken the Catalan nationalism, Barcelona as a city, and expression of individual opinion and this was a major reason modernism was delayed in coming to Spain. During the last years of Franco’s regime, the people of Barcelona started talking about urban regeneration in the city and planning became the major topic of discussion and debate. In 1976, the beginning of the transition to democracy and urban regeneration in the city was under way. Oriol Bohigas had just become

Due to the advances in transportation and communication, the world is becoming more and more integrated. From business to culture, ideas and world views are being meshed together from globalization. So why should cities not adapt too? Why should they have a historic identity? The answer according to Rem Koolhaas is that a city shouldn’t have an identity it should be a “Generic City.” “Identity is for sharing the past and the past is getting less and less important.” What Koolhaas is trying to say here is that cities are too focused on their past and driving tourism up that they are doing a disservice to the city and to its citizens. For example, he mentions how Paris can only become more like the stereotype of Paris, it can’t be changed because of the way the city is set up and it can’t adapt to globalization. He argues that a city must shed its identity in order to work at the optimal production. A “Generic City” is one that doesn’t have a city center but is liberated from one and thus being liberated from identity. City centers have to constantly be maintained and modernized. They have to be exactly what the people need at all times and have to “be the oldest and the newest, the most fixed and the most dynamic at the same time,” according to Koolhaas. The city is then dependent on this city center and a city should never be dependent on a specific area. A “Generic City” is much more efficient by being exactly what

It describes how landscape is now turning into architecture’s basic building block and it’s a way of organizing horizontal surfaces according to Charles Waldheim. After the social and environmental disasters to cities of the industrial revolution, Cities needed to return to caring for the landscape and implementing it into the designing of architecture. A quote from Rem Koolhaas in 1998 perfectly describes this, “Architecture is no longer the primary element of urban order, increasingly landscape is the primary element of urban order.” This makes a city more sustainable, secure, flexible, and is cost efficient. Contemporary landscape relates to Poble Nou Park by Jean Nouvel because this area of Poble Nou is an area aimed at the development of economic and technological sectors and this park implements the landscape its built around. During the time the park was built the city was going through a very bad drought and this park was necessary for the condition of the irrigation system. So not only was the Park a way to add beauty to this developing economic area it was also necessary for the continued existence of the city. The other park that relates to contemporary landscape in Barcelona is Diagonal Mar Park by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue. This was part of the urban renovation of the forum in 2004.