Rationalist Route II - 12. Fuentes Tobacco Factory

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Rationalism route · Year: 1937 · Authors: Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre

[...] the Fuentes Factory rises with an air of absence before the bustle of Pío XII street and the other streets that delimit the block it occupies. It is true that it houses various commercial activities, but this enigmatic building, constructed from rationalist designs by the aforementioned Miguel Martín, seems as detached from the time of the passers-by as the four clocks that surround its tower. The constructions that have proliferated around it over the years make it difficult to have a perspective to check the time on them, and the building seems so absorbed and so indifferent to people's curiosity that, when the reporter tries to find out more about its history, few seem to know that originally it housed an important tobacco factory.

(Extracted from the article Zona de fumadores by Mariano de Santa Ana [La Provincia, 19/08/2015])

The current building has little to do with the original project by Miguel Martín Fernández de la Torre of 1937. The changes in the design came about because the architect himself was not the director of the work. However, basic aspects remain: interlinked volumetric bodies, a lower part of great horizontality, large windows to provide light to the industrial work inside, large openings at street level for the traffic of raw materials and goods and, especially, a tower that breaks with the entire horizontal scheme of the building.

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