Municipal library
Renovation of the former Reyes Católicos National School in Santa Fe as a municipal library
At the threshold between Paseo del Señor de la Salud and Pasaje Señor de la Salud, where the Ramal de la Ermita branch—coming from the Acequia Real Vieja—and the Acequia de la Pernala once converged, the Acequia de la Cava was born. Today, in that same place, the sound of water can once again be heard. The intervention begins with a careful reading of the site, where the agricultural memory and the trace of former hydraulic infrastructures reveal a fertile, irrigated, and permeable past. The proposal transforms what was once a sports court and an asphalt parking lot into a poplar grove: a domestic and agricultural landscape piece, humid and alive, complemented by an irrigation channel and a large reading pool.
In September 1931, during the inauguration of the first Public Library in Fuente Vaqueros—the village in the Vega where he was born—Federico García Lorca began his speech by describing that place as “built upon water,” where “everywhere the irrigation channels sing and the tall poplars grow.” The new public library, he said, was a symbol of hope, nourishment, and dignity. Almost a century later, this intervention in Santa Fe takes up that legacy: the memory of a fertile and shared territory, of a cultivated landscape that has disappeared in many places but still survives in the collective imagination. This library does not only aim to transform a former school into a new cultural space, but also to return to Santa Fe something that belongs to it: the murmur of water, the shade of the poplars, and the right to reading as part of its landscape and civic identity.
The project is conceived as a rewriting of the Vega landscape within the urban heart of Santa Fe. Through the recovery of the soil, the planting of poplars, and the introduction of surface water, the asphalt is transformed into a permeable, cultivated, and porous place. The irrigation channel accompanies the visitor from the entrance, tracing a route that culminates in a large pool that not only recalls traditional water basins, but also becomes a place to read, rest, and dwell. The perimeter of the pool—its water-retaining walls—becomes benches and stepped seating that accommodate both individual reading and collective activity, multiplying the spaces of the library beyond the walls of the building. Before entering the building, the path descends at one point into a semi-buried courtyard under the shade of the poplars, where the retaining earth is transformed into seating.
The poplar grove—a species strongly linked to the identity of the Vega and to the popular imagination of Santa Fe—recovers its place as an environmental, cultural, and ecological device. Its living and changing shade, its sound in the wind, and the seasonal falling of its leaves all contribute to creating an atmosphere associated with rural life, coolness, and calm reading. This operation is not separate from institutional efforts to recover the lost biodiversity of the Vega, where in the last twenty years approximately 85% of the trees of this species have disappeared, with important consequences for the ecosystem. In response, this intervention proposes to hybridize this planting with non-productive uses—cultural and leisure-related—intended for urban inhabitants, not on the outskirts but next to their homes.
At the same time, the former school is transformed to house the new municipal library. The architectural intervention has sought to restore the spatial clarity of the original building, removing additions and unnecessary partitions in order to reveal once again its vaults and proportions. A new concrete floor—in continuity with the exterior paths—reinforces the idea of fluidity between inside and outside.
The most significant operation is the creation of large arched openings running through the building. In the transverse direction, larger arches visually connect the different programs with the exterior landscape: the poplar grove, the water, and the rear courtyards of the adjoining houses, which become the domestic and living backdrop of the pool. In the longitudinal direction, a sequence of smaller arches articulates the different interior spaces of the library, generating diagonal relationships, transparencies, and visual depth toward the towers of the Parish of La Encarnación, or toward the landscape of Santa Fe’s domestic rooftops. The arch, already present in the logic of the original construction, becomes here—abstracted and homogenized in white—the structuring motif of the contemporary intervention, generating an interior that seeks to flow outward.
A new life begins inside what was once a school. Natural light filters in from every direction. The sound of water reaches the interior. Readers are dispersed between silent rooms and outdoor benches. And in this crossing of memories—of water, of countryside, of childhood—the space becomes a place to be, to learn, and to inhabit.
(1) Federico García Lorca, "Alocución al pueblo de Fuente Vaqueros": Speech delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Public Library of Fuente Vaqueros, September 1931.
