Gran Vía de Colón, in Granada, is the first “Big Street” being opened in the national territory of Spain. Unlike other works of expansion developed in Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza or Bilbao, this “sventramento” -italian word for demolition, best represented by the Haussmann project in Paris,- takes place in the heart of the medieval city. Its condition of main avenue remains until today and has become an extraordinary example of eclectic architecture of the first third of the 20th century, not only in Spain but in Europe. The historical researches performed do not take into account the architectural heritage preserved on this street. In this study, the construction process accomplished in order to carry out this important modernization project is analyzed, reinterpreted and represented through drawing as an analytic tool of the projective scales of the edification complex concluded in 1934. The aim is to recognise the architectural and constructive typology of this avenue through a research based on a critical analysis of historical documents containing administrative processes for construction licenses and public administration records as well as in situ studies of a representative sample. The information collected from primary sources come from the Sacromonte files -Fondo de la Reformadora Granadina- the historical records of Granada and the personal collection of the architect Francisco Giménez Arévalo –one of the artificers of this modernization process carried out between 1981, when the architect Modesto Cendoya y Busquets presented his project for Colón street, and 1934, when the his last building –Caja de Previsión Social de Andalucía Oriental -is concluded.
From the multifaceted point of wiew of an architect and through a transversal analysis of urbanology, architectural planning and construction, an unprecedented material is given to the identification of this unique heritage designed on a certain time (1890-1934) and space (between the former Paseo del Triunfo and Reyes Católicos street). Since the acknowledge of the results -named under Foto fija de la Gran Vía en 1934- and itspublication, an information of great interest is provided for a quality future management, beyond the legal decisions and protective measurements regulating the intervention of historical buildings.
This is not an historical dissertation but the memory of an incomparable construction project of modernization conceived from the territorial to the constructive scale by a group of entrepreneurs which were coherent to their time. With the approval of the institutions and society of that time and far from the debate between tradition and modernity, a reinventing project thinking of the future was embraced to overcome the shortcomings of hygiene, mobility and need of adaptation to the new technologies.
To this end, the 20% of the medieval area was given up, which agrees with the economical, artistic, cultural and technological evolution of that society. So, circumstances not confronted until then become valuable and lead to an implicit interpretation about explicit issues of that urban und architectural event, in which a group of architects developed fifty two buildings in a constant work of intertextuality during 36 years using the newest technology known about manufactural architecture at that time and taken from the surroundings of Vega de Granada.