Rafael de La-Hoz

Rafael de La-Hoz died on 13 June and could not pick up the gold medal bestowed on him by Spain’s Council of Architectural Institutes. The widow Matilde Castanys had to do it for him, in a ceremony held at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts where their son Rafael recalled his father’s enthusiastic mood and Luis Fernández-Galiano took stock of his career within the context of Spanish architecture, particularly his contribution to modernizing postwar Spain without prejudice to the lessons of history, an adamance that binds him to other colleagues of his generation who have previously been conferred the medal, among which are Alejandro de la Sota, Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún or Miguel Fisac. With an extense built biography that has Córdoba (city of birth) and Madrid (city of adoption) as its main points of reference, De La-Hoz also played an eminent institutional role, through professional associations as the UIA and the Directorate-General of Architecture, posts which he assumed from an understanding of architecture as a service to society.