The Venice Architecture Biennale is the World Architecture Fair, where periodically all countries show what they are doing with architecture for the progress of society. It is a forum where general trends are pointed out and what the majority of the world thinks should be attempted. At least that is what it is intended to be.

Well, the 2016 Biennial is possibly the most interesting of the last decades; and it is more a laboratory than a showcase.

The curator was the last award Pritzker: Alejandro Aravena.

He proposed a Biennial open to 'those who tread the ground' of architecture, not only to architects, who can sometimes see it from particular points of view somewhat distant from society; and Paolo Baratta, President of the Biennial proposed the same: we must have all the possible agents of the decisions and actions with which the space in which we live is designed.

And against that backdrop it is very comforting that the 2016 Biennale's Golden Lion has gone to Pabellón de España.

And very deservedly so.

The design of the sample is excellent; the curators -Quintans and Carnicero- have made an elegant and sober design , effective in its message and very low cost; that alone represents Spanish architecture very well.

They have also been able to interpret with mastery the intentional guidelines that the coordinator of the Biennials of Spain -Mangado- pointed out to them when he entrusted them with the assignment: it was not about showing off but about showing what we do here; and that is why in the halls there are works by almost one hundred Spanish architects, young and mature, and built all over the country; a group that represents a great hope for Spain, and from the Biennial, for the world.

An example to follow and a reference letter.

No other pavilion showed such an abundant and forceful production and so in tune with the present social need.

We should be celebrating, even more than if we had won an Oscar, because it is not a triumph of one, but of all.

It is a triumph of Spain and its way of teaching architecture; although it is also a challenge: to defend this way of serving it, without fanfare or stridency, which in Spain have often come, let us not forget, from the hand of surnames with many consonants.

In addition to what appears in the Spanish Pavilion, the 2016 Biennial contains many more lessons: the French pavilion, the Japanese pavilion, the subtle textures of Wang Shu, the works of Chowdhury in Bangladesh or Chipperfield in Sudan..., the pavilion of Thailand... offer records that allow us to think optimistically about the satisfaction that architects can offer, even without means, wanting to serve, whether in the hyper-technologized West or in the poorest and most remote sub-Saharan desert.

And the best and most complete sample of this is the one offered by Spain; or those of us who have shown it best; thanks to Mangado, Quintans and Carnicero.