The Pérez Galdós Theatre

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: 1873 · Authors: Francisco Jareño y Alarcón

In 1918 a lamentable event took place which would affect the city for many years to come: it was the fire at the former Pérez Galdós Theatre. It was a quite beautiful building dating from 1873, which exactly 45 years previously, had been financed by the support of the people. That fateful night on Saturday 29th June revealed a thick column of smoke that awoke shocked local residents. The guard's piercing whistle sounded out around the whole area as soon as the theatre appeared to be sinking under a monumental ball of fire. 

At one o'clock in the morning flames could be seen pouring out of the large windows. The fire quickly brought the building down, but fortunately there were no victims, as at that hour there was nobody inside. But our coliseum now lay in ruins, a commanding three storey building, a symbol of cultural progress on the island, and which was a real work of art by Albacete-born architect Francisco Jareño y Alarcón.

[...] Its reconstruction took place in the following decade, with work started by architect Fernando Navarro. From 1924, with the intervention by young architect Miguel Fernández de la Torre, who achieved a magnificent coliseum, with excellent acoustic sound and some quite beautiful interiors, that to the day feature modernist paintings by the artist Néstor, the brother of the architect who was commissioned with all the decoration. The Pérez Galdós Theatre, the temple of lirical music, had thus risen from the ashes. 

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