Born in Carballiño (Ourense) in 1936, Manuel Gallego Jorreto is this year’s winner of Spain’s National Architecture Prize, given by the Public Works Ministry. This is his second time to land the award. In 1997 he was commended for a work, the Fine Arts Museum of A Coruña, and now it is an entire career that has been officially acknowledged by the jury, on which sat Rafael Moneo, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Elías Tores, José Antonio Martínez Lapeña, Fuensanta Nieto, and Manuel Blanco, among others. His is a silent career anchored to context, rigorous in form and poetic in material, at once laconic and civic, that remains exemplary in the current architectural scene.