Little-known wonders of Madrid: the Modernist church of the Almudena cemetery

Located in the heart of one of the largest cemeteries, not only in Spain, but in the world, such as the Almudena cemetery, few, in reality, are the people who know and, at the same time, visit the only church, of moving clearly Modernist roots, which exists in Madrid.

His vision, far from being shocking, taking into account the subjective reality of the environment in which it is located, constitutes, without the slightest doubt, a whole metaphorical poem, whose stanzas, bordering on the most surreal of symbolism, bring us closer to the charm of that janistic (reference Jano, two faces God) vision, in which the forms and designs of yesterday, are acquiring the compromising proportions of the present.

Or at least, of that present that tried to break molds in Spain at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when the science of Architecture, moving away from the chains imposed by the conditioning of Vitruvius and the prosaic jocularity of Ruskin, tried resolve the apparently irreconcilable differences between classicism and innovation that prevailed until then in universities, advocating the creation of more extroverted and impressive styles.

The proof of this, for example, would be the sensational designs that Antonio Gaudí made for that wealthy Catalan bourgeoisie, whose palaces, comparatively and metaphorically speaking, were worthy of the new Medici of the industrial era, where the ideas of this visionary architect, not Always accepted and shared, especially by the most conservative sectors of Architecture, they broke the mold, to the point of being, however, today, one of the quintessential tourist landmarks, whose strength and originality continue to seduce the fantasy of the spectators.

Far from attempting to compare it with the inimitable excesses of Gaudí's architecture, the modernist church of La Almudena - a work designed by the architect Francisco García Nava, whose first foundations began to be laid in 1914, at the same time that Europe was beginning the first of the two world bleedings- mixture, from the implicit alchemy to the designs, on the one hand, an avant-garde vision and on the other, the mortar of an architectural style from Madrid, such as neo-Mudejar, being one of the greatest examples of this style, set in the times of Arab colonization, the monumental Plaza de Toros de las Ventas.

It is also true that unfortunately, this church, like so many other historical-artistic elements of Madrid's immeasurable architectural heritage, went through difficult times in its history, which took away part of its original appeal, such as the epidemics that devastated Madrid and of course, the vicissitudes of a Civil War, where there was not enough to accommodate the large number of corpses that were deposited inside, waiting to be buried.

The lack, therefore, of a good part of the original interior ornamentation, supposes a great loss for the historical-artistic heritage of the city, but even so, its formidable plan, its magnetic elegance and those exterior ornamental elements -including the famous Faust, the Angel of Judgment that crowns its Byzantine dome and that according to legend, whoever hears the sound of his trumpet, is about to die- like the hawks, the bats - these nocturnal birds, which evoke death on the one hand and resurrection on the other the other- as well as other symbols, such as the opium poppy, complementary, in a certain way, to the famous fly agaric that are perpetuated so much in Gaudí's buildings, make this sacramental church one of the greatest architectural exponents of a Madrid, which It never ends well to know.

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