Las Exposiciones de 1929 en la prensa española no especializada."Todo es belleza y paradoja en este pabellón"

Abstract

Las Exposiciones Universales han albergado a lo largo del siglo XX algunos de los ejemplos más relevantes de arquitectura moderna. La atención sobre estos eventos por parte de la prensa generalista ha servido históricamente como vehículo de difusión de la arquitectura moderna. Las exposiciones celebradas en España en 1929 supusieron uno de los primeros ejemplos de este fenómeno de divulgación entre el público no especializado.

The year 1929 is a key moment in the evolution of “modern” architecture in Spain. The incipient avant-garde movements had had few opportunities to make themselves known by the general public, beyond some specific experiences. For a few months, the country became the center of international architectural interest thanks to twoexhibitions in Barcelona and Seville. The architecture proposed in both events has been the subject of numerous studies. The aim of this paper is to study how non-specialized press helped to disseminate these architectural proposals among its readers, not used to the tendencies of modern architecture. It has been analysed the impact of the two most important newspapers of the time, ABC and La Vanguardia. Although most of the architecture exhibited was still influenced by the eclectic tradition of the 19th Century, the subjects addressed in the articles and, mainly , the way in which they were written, allow us to contemplate how Spanish society began to know the architecture proposed by the avant-gardes. In this way,the German pavilion of Mies van der Rohe of the Barcelona exhibition became the first purely modern example that got through to the Spanish public by the pages of the daily press.