24 April 2012
Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series
IMAGE AND REPORTOF TWO LINEAGES FROM BAZTAN BEYOND THE FRONTIERS OF NAVARRE
Nuevo Baztan, the impossible dream of Juan de Goyeneche
Dr. Beatriz Blasco Esquivias.
Complutense University of Madrid
Originally from Arizcun, in the Baztan Valley, Juan de Goyeneche (1656-1735) had to emigrate to Madrid during his adolescence, completing his trainingat the Jesuit Imperial high school, where his tutor was Father Bartolomé Alcázar. From him we know that Goyeneche soon stood out at the Madrid Court as treasurer to Charles II and Mariana of Neoburg, as well as being an assistant to the Navy, publisher, a businessman and entrepreneur with a novatora ideology. Implicated in favour of the Bourbon cause during the War of Succession, he then developed his most ambitious dream: the foundation of Nuevo Baztán, a new industrial city located in the natural region of Los Páramos, in the district of Alcalá de Henares, destined to put an end to the depopulation of the area and to balance the weakened Spanish balance of payments by establishing a series of factories of sumptuary objects at his own expense: fabrics (hats, chamois, ribbons), spirits and colognes, waxes and soaps, confectionery and fine glass, from agreementin accordance with the economic theories of Jean Baptiste Colbert.
To carry out this ambitious territorial and urban operation, Goyeneche entrusted the architectural projectto José Benito de Churriguera (1656-1725), with whom he established mutual affection. Churriguera had made his mark at the Court in Madrid in 1689, when he was awarded the placede teaching assistantdel Trazador Mayor de Obras Reales, although his defence of Archduke Charles of Austria during the War of the Spanish Succession was to put the brakes on his degree programat the Court of Philip V. Despite the political differences that must have existed between the two, Goyeneche and Churriguera's understanding was total in the planning of Nuevo Baztán and the results are still visible, despite the deterioration of the urban complex B.
Palace and church of Juan de Goyeneche in Nuevo Baztán
The town of Nuevo Baztán stands out for the rigour of its plan, its functionality and the modernity of its urban layout and its architecture, both domestic and stately, as well as for the boldness of the artistic language and the beauty of the main nucleus made up of the Goyeneche Palace, the attached Church of San Francisco Javier and the three squares that surround it, namely: the placedel Palacio; the placedel Mercado and the placede Fiestas. Churriguera improved access to Nuevo Baztán from Pozuelo del Rey, laying out roads and building bridges, and provided Nuevo Baztán with the most modern infrastructures of the time, such as a sewage system network. The death of Goyeneche, the failure of the factories, the diaspora of the workers and the neglect of the public administrations condemned Nuevo Baztán to the state of oblivion and withdrawalin which it finds itself today, with no trace of the industrial facilities that constituted its raison d'être and with an erratic policy of rehabilitation of its historical, architectural and urban heritage, which was a paradigm in Europe at the time.
Coat of arms of Juan de Goyeneche in the Palace of Nuevo Baztán