Pastor Bank Postcard, 1926

“Such a large building for living in A Coruña!”, wrote Manuel Azaña to his brother-in-law Cipriano Rivas Cherif while he was serving on a notarial tribunal in 1924. He was referring to the future Pastor Bank building, which was the tallest in Spain until 1929, when it lost that title to the Telephone Exchange on Madrid’s Gran Vía. The first skyscraper was built in a medium sized city, not in the capital.

The building that provoked such surprise in the man who would become president of the Second Republic was one of the symptoms of the profound change taking place in Spain’s cities. There had been significant flows of migrants from the countryside to the cities since the beginning of the century, and the big cities received large numbers of people coming from other parts of Spain. But not just them; small and medium sized ones also saw large inflows. Seville, Córdoba, Zaragoza and Valencia burst their city walls and began a somewhat chaotic process of urbanization. 

All in all, Spain’s urban population had doubled since 1900. Four million people lived lived in places with populations greater than 10,000, and a million more in centres with 5,000 or more. The first shantytowns, which their unhealthy living conditions, appeared in these years, and to deal with them plans for expansion were drawn up, like that in Madrid and projects for new districts in Badajoz, Salamanca, Logroño and Seville.

A change in place, from the rural world to the urban, was a symptom of the transformation of people’s lives. Urban life meant abandoning agriculture and the growth of the service sector and liberal professions. The building of the Pastor Bank, the most important in Galicia and one of the largest in Spain, was a fine reflection of this. The skyscraper’s construction followed the model of the Chicago School, which gave it a modern look, New York style as the locals like to say. A symbol of the modern Spain that was emerging bit by bit.

FMP