Vegaviana, Caceres (Spain), c.1958

The exhibition ‘Colonization Towns: Glances at an Invented Landscape’ – open to the public from February to May 2024 – is appropriately adapted to the work that Museo ICO in Madrid has for three whole decades now been doing to spread the word about architectural culture, and to reflect on the reach and interpretation of its image.

For the first time, the wider, uninitiated public has the opportunity to learn about a controversial theme, one which was condemned to oblivion for years because it was demonized for being one of the major architectural projects carried out by the Franco regime, determined as the latter was, during the early postwar period, to literally revive the Arcadia of a rural society as the lifeblood of an agrarian economy. The program involved the creation of new irrigated land, the construction of 300 new settlements, and the consequent mobilization of some 60,000 families as settlers...[+]