Complutense University of Madrid - The University at Ciudad Universitaria

The University At Ciudad Universitaria

The University greatly expanded during the 19th century, and its accommodations in central Madrid proved to be increasingly inadequate. Besides the greater number of students, after its move from Alcalá the University had been based in a number of preexisting, government-acquired properties – mainly aristocratic mansions and royal châteaux from centuries past, abandoned by their owners for more contemporary lodgings. Though they were not without their charm, the ancient buildings were not precisely ideal as educational settings, and the early 20th century witnessed the students of the Central University attending philosophy lectures and anatomy lessons in elaborate spaces that had served as ballrooms and salons only a few decades prior. Moreover, the haphazard collection of buildings was hardly conducive to the bureaucratic functions of the University as a whole, given that very few of them were actually grouped near each other on the Calle San Bernardo, and, as such, a significant amount of time was lost just in undertaking the distance between the University properties strewn about the center of Madrid in the attendance of routine bureaucratic tasks. This is not to mention the significant inconvenience to students enrolled in faculties too large to fit in a single building, or those who decided to take on multiple studies (implying multiple travels, from one building to another, across the center of Madrid, potentially several times a day).

This curious situation changed by the grace of His Majesty King Alfonso XIII. It was tradition in Spanish Kingdom that, upon the assumption of an important regal anniversary, the individual provinces and territories would make great shows of loyalty and affection towards the benign rulers by way of lavish and elaborate presents as a gesture of allegiance and affection towards the crown (donations of lands, construction of great monuments, and the gifting of enormous amounts of regional wares to the rulers).

To the surprise of many, however, Alfonso XIII declined the anticipated gifts commemorating the Silver Jubilee of his rule (having reached his majority in 1902), instead declaring that it was his dream that a new university should be built in Madrid, replacing the current, scattered, shabby institution with a fine center of learning, "a new Athens", whereby the perfection of the educational process would be achieved and the lives of students improved, with complete intellectual, moral and physical formation. What's more, he went on to declare that this should be the magnum opus of his reign, and that he would spend more upon this effort than he had previously ever invested on matters such as the battleships that had so recently played a part in the Moroccan Wars; this would be called, henceforth, la Ciudad Universitaria, or University City.

It was such that on 7 May 1927, a royal decree called into existence the Junta Constructora de la Ciudad Universitaria, and Alfonso XIII officially ceded the royal lands in the proximity of the Palace of La Moncloa, which at the time constituted all of the land between the Royal Palace and the Palace of El Pardo, today comprising a vast swath of western Madrid and stretching well outside the city limits.

The Junta was composed of a number of academics, architects, juridical and financial consultants, and presided directly by the King, although it should be made clear that while this was a government-funded project, it was in no way controlled by the government, the academics firmly holding the reins and the official organisms of the state represented on the board only by the Minister of Education and the Mayor of Madrid; it was the King's will that the University should be a project for the nation, but directed by the intellectual elite rather than it be compromised by the underhanded ways of politicians. It was for this reason that it was decided that the project should not be funded mainly by way of government funds, but rather via a special lottery, for which an enthusiastic and remarkably effective publicity campaign was organized; the lottery was so successful, in fact, that, combined with the generous donations of the ruling classes and numerous industries, the funds required for construction of the campus buildings were acquired by 1930. Meanwhile, the Weimar Republic and a number of South American nations graciously opted to donate the funds necessary to build the student residences for the University in a show of international intellectual solidarity.

Meanwhile, the Junta had decided that the new University of Madrid would require the innovative architecture befitting the "new Athens"; as such, a team of academics was sent out on an international expedition to visit the finest universities in Europe and North America, to combine the best of both continents and design the utopian academic setting. Mssr.'s López Otero, Cásares Gil, Dr. Simonena, Del Amo, and Julio Palácios, amongst others, set about a whirlwind tour which took them to 19 universities in the American northeast, as well as to Paris, Lyon, Oxford, Berlin, Hamburg, and numerous other European cities, all in an effort to discern the best possible building structure. The architectural tendencies of the era, however, ended up having a greater influence than the academics' visits to Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, La Sorbonne or the University of Berlin; while the final plans from this period are hardly recognizable to anyone familiar with the contemporary campus, the buildings from the era that managed to survive the design revisions, the Civil War and the Franco regime, betray the period's fondness for the German Bauhaus movement. Indeed, the original buildings, exemplary amongst them the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Odontology, are a paean to structural functionalism and the graceful utilitarianism of the 1920s.

It is of some irony that Alfonso XIII, who wished the new University to be the defining triumph of his reign, never got to see any of the buildings through to completion, much less inaugurate any of the classes. Deposed in 1931, he found himself exiled in Rome when, on 15 January 1933, Manuel Azaña, President of the Second Spanish Republic (and former professor, as well as graduate, of said University), officially inaugurated the first classes in the new University of Madrid campus in the mostly finished School of Philosophy. During the Second Spanish Republic the Schools of Philosophy, Pharmacy, Medicine, Odontology, Architecture, Agronomy, Chemistry and Physics Sciences would be completed, as well as the Clinical Hospital, the Del Amo Foundation, and the Velazquez House, which housed the School of Diplomacy.