With its exquisite Alhambra, High Renaissance palaces, sturdy provincial town halls and fine baroque fountains, the Pueblo Español revels in its own fakery. Laid out over two-and-a-half hectares and surrounded by city walls and towers, the Pueblo is a glorious collection of replica buildings from all over Spain: 73 monuments juxtaposed along 15 streets and around 12 squares. There’s also a Roman temple, baths complex and vast theater.
But in a world where soft drinks are sold as “the real thing”, where people travel huge distances to queue for hours to strain to see the genuine Mona Lisa behind bullet-proof glass, and where tourists are encouraged to seek out an authentic encounter with “the real Spain”, this staged attraction has long been derided by many who pass through Palma.
Which is unfortunate; this Alhambra may not be real but the buildings here are no stage sets. Each was carefully built between 1965 and 1967 using “real” materials and by a “real” architect, the renowned Fernando Chueca Goitia.
Chueca, who died in 2004 aged 93, is most famous for finishing Madrid’s cathedral, but he also drew up ambitious plans for Madrid’s mosque, added an extension to the Prado museum, designed striking public buildings, and restored cathedrals and palaces throughout Spain. He somehow found ten years in his busy agenda to head Spain’s National Contemporary Art museum and, later, to sit in the Senate.
He wrote prolifically and, for much of his life, was the greatest authority on the architecture of Spain. He was a natural choice, therefore, to develop a new tourist attraction in Mallorca, aimed at cashing in on the 1960s mass tourism bonanza.
Of course, there was nothing new about building a fantasy town like this. As the architect pointed out, Marie Antoinette liked to play shepherdess in her Petit Hameau, a mock farming hamlet on the grounds of Versailles. And the World Fairs of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century were often dotted with imitation towns. The Irish Village at the 1893 Chicago World Fair caused a sensation and came complete with cottages, a Blarney castle with a plaster replica Blarney Stone plus a cast of dairymaids, rosy and buxom.
When Barcelona hosted the 1929 Exposición Internacional, the Spanish government, under dictator Primo de Rivera, was eager to show that the country was stable and unified, despite signs that it was rapidly unraveling. The Poble Espanyol, a dreamscape of Spain’s widely different regional buildings and monuments all harmoniously sitting together, was the answer.
But Palma’s Pueblo Español was not envisaged as a temporary structure. And as Chueca pointed out, “the permanent nature of the project meant that the planning and construction of the Pueblo had to be as close as possible to the building of the real thing. It was laid out like so many Spanish cities, which were not planned but, rather, made themselves as they went along.”
First, Chueca and his team laid out the city walls, following the course of the winding San Magín stream and the contours of the land on a hill between Palma and Bellver castle.
“Then, just as happened in the past with defensive walls, we opened three main gates according to where they seemed most natural and obvious,” explained the architect. “And from there, the streets just grew organically.
“These general lines allowed the buildings to fit in with each other. Over the course of the construction some buildings required us to alter the urban fabric we’d initially laid out. So, while the whole process of building the city was compressed and accelerated, the developmental process was quite similar to a natural one. And this makes the Pueblo more real.”
Also adding to the illusion of reality is the use of real materials. “Stone is stone,” pointed out Chueca. “Brick is brick, wood is wood, the iron on the balconies and window grates is real iron, wrought with hammer and anvil.”
To naturalize what would otherwise have been a disconcerting juxtaposition of styles and geographical locations, Chueca endeavored, as designers in Barcelona had in 1929, to endow his town with the characteristics of a typical, functioning town. “It would have no sense if it were just an empty shell, bereft of human life and activity.” he warned.
So the buildings were occupied with shops selling traditional crafts and wares, bars and taverns hosting flamenco shows, and regional restaurants.
“The Pueblo is a spectacle and it should have the rhythm and movement of a spectacle,” said Chueca. “Of course the Pueblo itself can’t move – but the visitor can and, as he moves through the space, he should feel absorbed by what he sees.”
He should also be educated. Chueca always hoped that his Pueblo would do more than merely entertain. He was passionate about art and architecture and believed in the didactic purpose of his creation, explaining that just as the best way to understand the difference between a van Eyck and a Velazquez was to go to a gallery or museum and see them both hanging side by side, the same applied to buildings. “Everything is out of place. One house has come from Cadiz, another from Galicia. There’s a baroque palace next to a mosque. And the contrast allows us to better appreciate and value each building.”
The result is deliciously disconcerting. Indeed, it works so well that you’re scarcely aware you’re seeing a collage made up of fragments of Spain. Arriving, you pass through Toledo’s commanding city gate, the Puerta de Bisagra, then through the patio of a Toledan convent, to be greeted by a typical house from the Canary Islands. Continue past the (sadly) closed doors of a Madrid tavern, across a famous Cordoban plaza, through Sevilla’s Jewish quarter and into the Arab baths of Baza.
Suddenly, the Alhambra’s Patio de los Arrayanes beckons. Dazed and confused you emerge into the striking Plaza Mayor, inspired in part by that of Chinchón, near Madrid, and presided over by the monumental façade of the town hall of Basque town Vergara and the Valencian church tower of Santa Catalina. Beyond lies a labyrinth of streets and alleyways – and the rest of Spain.
In 1975, Italian thinker and writer Umberto Eco traveled across the US. After visiting corny sideshows, wax museums, both Disneyland and Disney World, he concluded that we like to create realistic imitations that don’t merely reproduce reality, but try to improve on it. As in fiction and culture, we yearn for things that are more exciting, more beautiful, more inspiring, more terrifying, and generally more interesting than what we encounter in everyday life.
Chueca clearly envisaged his village as such a fantasy: “These kinds of reconstructions with little windy streets and neat little squares, where no car can go, are all about a desire to escape from increasingly hectic city life, to get back to nature, to the straightforward simplicity of other places and other times.”
The thing about the Pueblo Español though is that now, almost 60 years after being built, it’s no longer just an imitation, a clever fake. It’s a thing of ingenuity and beauty in itself. It’s real.
