Arquitectura milagrosa: Hazañas de los arquitectos estrella en la España del Guggenheim

The opening of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry worked miracles in Bilbao. Thanks to this prodigy of iconic architecture, the city flew from post-industrial grayness to the brilliance of the tertiary economy. Mayors and regional presidents from all over Spain saw the Bilbao example as the key to their future. A spectacular building with a posh signature –Calatrava, Hadid, Herzog & De Meuron, Foster, Eisenman…– seemed to them a guarantee of global visibility, a magnet for tourists and a stimulus for the local economy. Valencia, Zaragoza, Madrid, Barcelona or Santiago experienced this frenzy. They hired the stars of the international architectural firmament, neglecting the proportion between the need and the price of the monumental works they commissioned. Llàtzer Moix reviews these feverish years and his impressive works but, sometimes foolish. He does it through a report, put together after traveling to the scenes of these episodes and interviewing their protagonists, which confirms him as a reference in the field of cultural journalism.