Single-family homes for the Patronato de Construcción de Casas Baratas

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1936 · Authors: José Enrique Marrero Regalado

This set of twenty-nine two-storey single-family homes located on a municipal plot on the other side of the Barranco de Santos was designed by the architect José Enrique Marrero Regalado at the beginning of 1936, before the outbreak of the Civil War. The municipal idea was to house part of the less favoured population of the city in them. 

Marrero's proposal consisted of designing modest semi-detached buildings in pairs, arranged on the plot facing the perimeter roads, leaving a common central space as a garden area. The façade is composed based on the volumes of both floors and the alternation of access arches with window panels. Initially, they were conceived with a front garden, but the lack of budget prevented this idea from becoming a reality. 

The lower floor houses a kitchen-dining room, a small toilet and a bedroom; the upper floor, smaller in area due to the setback from the alignment of the first floor, has two bedrooms.

The construction of this group of homes, which today we might call "social", was an initiative emanating from the republican municipal corporation just before the outbreak of the Civil War; although the idea was so remarkable that the rebel side made it their own and, after coming to power, completed the urbanisation, renaming it "Barriada Generalísimo Franco".  

The location of this modest group of homes was, at that time, on the outskirts of the city.  Both the construction of the Serrador bridge and the new market helped its complete integration into the urban fabric.

Since the inauguration of the first group of homes in July 1937, the complex has undergone numerous and varied renovations, which has caused the original essence of uniform rationalism to be definitively lost.

28.46242, -16.25241