Fray Albino School Group

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1939 · Authors: José Blasco Robles

In 1939 the architect José Blasco received the municipal commission to build a school group for the Toscal neighbourhood. The plot was located on a recently urbanised stretch of La Rambla, but still quite sparsely populated. The authorities of the new Francoist regime pressured for the centre to be inaugurated in July of that same year, as they wanted it to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The building was erected in barely five months, an unusually short period, to demonstrate the capacity and efficiency of the new regime governing Spain.

The rationalist-style building has a rectangular plan that differs from the conception of the façade, which features the development of a curved body for the stairs.   

The name of the school was a tribute to the figure of Albino González y Menéndez-Reigada, better known as Fray Albino, bishop of the diocese of Tenerife between 1924 and 1946.

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