Vanguard in the Rearguard. The Church of Ribadelago (Zamora), 1960-63

Abstract

The church of Ribadelago was part of the second response given by the Directorate General of Architecture to the collapse of the Vega de Tera dam on 9 January 1959. The first proposal, rejected only a week later under the sign of the historicist language, the definitive project was fully inserted into the paradigm of modernity. The architects adopted the new formal and constructive currents consolidated in Occident, characterised by rationality, essentiality and functionality, with the church being the flagship of the village. Designed in January 1960 by Antonio Teresa Martín and with the intervention of the artist José Luis Sánchez, they did not skimp on solutions which the Liturgical Movement and the Modern Movement in an extraordinary proposal for the renovation of the religious architecture of the 20th century, demonstrating the precise turning point in official architecture between historicism and the avant-garde.