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Prat de la Riba School

Date
1938
Archive
Municipal Archive of Girona
Document type
Textual
Reference code
CAT-AMGi-1-510744
Link to the online document
Description

Informative pamphlet published by Girona City Council. It contains the chronicle of the act of laying the first stone of Escola Prat de la Riba and illustrations of the construction project, by the municipal architect Ricard Giralt i Casadesús.
On July 24, 1938, Lluís Companys, president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, laid the foundation stone of the new building. Unfortunately, due to the Civil War, the construction of the building was never completed. In the 1960s, the old Prat de la Riba school was moved to nearby premises and the IES Jaume Vicens Vives was built on the lot that had been allocated to it in the 1930s.
The school was planned in a working-class neighborhood of the city, Les Pedreres, and had to replace the old and outdated school premises. It was designed as a structure in independent pavilions intended for classrooms, with first-class sports facilities, and also provided for the possibility of taking classes outdoors. The project therefore responded to the needs of the schools’ renovating currents that the republican government was betting on.
Giralt was part of the GATCPAC (Group of Catalan Technical Architects for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture) which was part of an international stream of young architects interested in the urban planning of cities, which had become large industrial and economic centers and, therefore, poles of attraction for migratory movements, and in the planning of works that were useful in solving the social problems of the moment.
This document is important at a European level because it is an example of the currents of renewal that were taking place in Europe at that time, both in the field of education and urban planning and architecture. In school architecture, the needs of the renovating pedagogical movements were combined, with new ways of educating that required new conceptions of space, where students were at the center.