(1914-1998)

The documentation of the period and measured drawings of the buildings were the best means for studying and conserving historical heritage, which the architect Luis Cervera Vera, who died in Madrid on 25 August at 84 years old, dedicated his life to. The cathedral of Astorga, the cathedral and colleges of Santa Cruz and San Gregorio de Valladolid, the churches of Santa María de Fromista and of Lugareja, the walls of Madrigal de las Altas Torres and the plazas of Arévalo and Ducal de Lerma are among the monuments which he restored. The main object of his work as researcher was El Escorial and Juan de Herrera, to which he dedicated more than fifty texts with meticulous biographic and artistic details, and through which he became interested in Vitruvio and the Spanish Renaissance treatises. A member of various Fine Arts academies, among those that of San Fernando, the Academia de la Historia and the Hispanic Society of New York, Cervera Vera was also a notable bibliophile. A result of his passionate dedication to history are more than two hundred publications, the latest of which left the presses only days before his death.