Tangier’s Catholic missions is, perhaps, Antoni Gaudí’s most unknown project. «Both the Spanish State and the Marquis de Comillas saw in the Franciscan missions an effective resource to create points of influence and establish centers that strengthened their interests … In Morocco, ”says Concepción Peig and Manuel Arenas, co -authors of ‘Gaudí in Tangier’ (Base Editorial).
His research moves us toAs Catholic Missions of Africa in the biennium 1892-1893. The Marquis de Comillas is Claudio López Bru, son of Antonio López, founder of the transatlantic company. Between 1886 and 1889 the transatlantic obtained from the Spanish government several steam browsing lines to join the ports of Cádiz, Malaga, Algeciras and Barcelona with Tangier, Larache and Ceuta. The economic interests of the Naviera motivated the Constitution in Tangier of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and the Spanish Shopping Center.
Supported by ministers such as Segismundo Moret and Romero Robledo, López Bru “struggled to be present in the tango life creating the first public lighting company,” says Peig and Arenas. Economic activity with the construction of the Tangier-Fez railroad, the European neighborhood, a Moroccan bench and a textile factory that did not get to be conjured with the social and religious patronage: creation of Catholic schools and missionary expansion.
A simulation of the ‘Skyline’ of Tangier if Antonio Gaudí’s temple had been built
With the Franciscan missions Claudio López consolidated his company’s financial expansion in North Africa and the Spanish presence against French competition. In this context, the Marquis contacts the prefect of the Franciscan missions, José Lerchundi: build a secondary school “which could be used onwards, be it for school, be it for a higher school, be it for convent …”. The indeterminate tone of the proposal conceals the ultimate goal: a Catholic temple in Tangier.
In Africa there was no diocese or vicariate, PEIG and Arenas highlight: “Catholic churches in Tangier – all treated by Franciscans – were very small to host the growing number of parishioners dignity.” The idea of the Cathedral throbbed in the correspondence between the Marquis and the Franciscan prefect. Discretion that Peig and Arenas attribute to colonial tensions: «Strengthening the presence of the Church through the Franciscan Spanish branch did not interest the International Community of Tangier, especially to France, which sought to sign up for that goal to grow its presence and prestige in Morocco ». What were “missions” on the role “was ‘Sotto Voce’, a future cathedral and the headquarters of the diocese,” they warn.
The project had Lerchundi, López and his wife, María Fernández-Gayón and Barié, promoter of the association of ladies of María Immaculate and the Spanish Government.
Güell Palace
And it is now when Antonio Gaudí enters the scene. The Marquis did not hesitate to choose the architect of the pavilion of the transatlantic company in the universal exhibition of 1888 or the palace of his brother -in -law Eusebio Güell. In December 1891 Gaudí must have accepted the order. Between January and May 1892, the architect traveled to Tangier with the Marquis de Comillas to meet with Lerchundi. The Catholic missions project was ready in October 1893: a multifunctional building that would group the missionaries until then disseminated. “It was about improving the social fabric of schools and hospitals that the Franciscans had worked since the fourteenth century, the knowledge of the Moroccan society of Lerchundi helped Gaudí adapt their project to the territory,” says Peig and Arenas. A project that It is known by a photograph of the main facade and a set of the set of the set. The image is dated in Barcelona 1892-1893 and carries the signature of Gaudí.
Another drawing of the date unknown and attributed to Juan Matamala, narrow collaborator of the architect, shows the workshop of the Sagrada Familia: Three people contemplate in one of the walls the plan of the Catholic missions of Africa.
In his Gaudí Tangier project he was in mind that The temple could not collide with the Muslim religion. The architect, underline Peig and Arenas, put his work with the environment. Communicate Christianity with Islam in the spiritual dimension: “An eclectic project that was not neo -Gothic, orientist, or modernist, which is always attributed to Gaudí.” Contemporary architecture with new solutions: «The towers were not bells, but conductors of air and the zenith light topped with pigeon sculptures, an oriental motive; What seemed cloisters were Moroccan houses, versatile modules to house schools, library and a translator school, ”they explain.
Although it was said that the Gaudinian project did not come true because it is too ostentatious to house the Franciscan order, the project of the missions in Tangier It was not done due to lack of moneybut by the tense diplomatic situation. France and Germany monopolized colonial power at a time of Spanish decline as the last nineteenth of the XIX: “Spain wanted to strengthen its presence through the Franciscan mission, but France put the veto in the Holy See,” they conclude. Tangier’s spirit survived in the subsequent works of Gaudí. This will be remembered by the architect César Martinell: «In a visit that the second Marquis de Comillas and his wife made to the Sacred Family they told him that the temple towers were like those of that project (Tangerino), and he replied that yes: that The time elapsed had not changed his mind.
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