Grandes Almacenes La Reconquista, Melilla
A department store of flowing floral stone on Melilla’s grand avenue, the high point of Enrique Nieto’s modernism.
At a glance
The Grandes Almacenes La Reconquista stand on the Avenida Juan Carlos I Rey, the wide central avenue of Melilla’s Modernista quarter. The building was raised by Enrique Nieto, the architect trained in Gaudí’s Barcelona who settled in this Spanish enclave on the North African coast and filled it with modernism. Built between 1915 and 1917, it placed a department store on the ground floor and mezzanine, with rental apartments above. It is often called the cream of Nieto’s floral modernism, and it reopened to the public on 24 June 1917.
Key facts
- Location: Avenida Juan Carlos I Rey, Ensanche Modernista, Melilla
- Architect: Enrique Nieto
- Built: 1915–1917
- Style: Melilla modernism (floral)
- Today: a former department store within the city’s protected historic ensemble
History
Melilla grew fast in the early twentieth century, and its new Ensanche became one of the great showcases of Spanish modernism, thanks above all to Enrique Nieto. Having worked in the circle of Gaudí in Barcelona, Nieto moved to Melilla around 1909 and spent his career building there for every community in the city.
The La Reconquista building went up between 1915 and 1917, with the contractor José Bonet Amat, and it reopened on 24 June 1917. Its lower floors held the Grandes Almacenes La Reconquista, a modern department store, while the upper floors were let as apartments, a typical mixed building of the boom years.
The store has since closed, and the building is now known as the old or former Almacenes La Reconquista, but it remains one of the landmarks of Modernista Melilla and forms part of the city’s protected historic-artistic ensemble. Among Nieto’s many fronts along the avenue, it is regularly singled out as his finest.
What you see
The façade is a tour de force of carved and modelled ornament. Flowers, leaves and curving whiplash lines spread across the stone, gathering around the windows and rising into a crown at the top of the building. Nieto handled the surface as Gaudí had taught him, turning a commercial block into a piece of botanical fantasy.
Where the streets of Barcelona had given him his vocabulary, the open avenue of Melilla gave him room to use it boldly. The building is best read from across the avenue, where the whole composition, base, balconies and flowered crown, comes together as a single Modernista gesture.
Practical information
- Open: exterior viewable from the avenue; the building is in private and commercial use
- Cost: free to view the façade
- Best for: the flowered Modernista crown above the avenue
- Time needed: 10–15 minutes
Getting there
The building is on the Avenida Juan Carlos I Rey in central Melilla, a short walk from the Plaza de España and the other Nieto façades of the Ensanche.
Nearby
- Antiguo Economato Militar — Nieto’s modernist front a few doors along the same avenue
- Casino Español — Nieto’s society building nearby
- Sinagoga Or Zaruah — Nieto’s synagogue in the Modernista quarter
Sources
- Melilla Monumental (melillamonumental.es) — Edificio de La Reconquista
- Melilla Turismo (melillaturismo.com) — Modernismo melillense
- Wikimedia Commons — image source and licence
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