On Friday, 3 February, more than two hundred people gathered at the Athenaeum in Santander to present the work “Juan de Castillo. From Master Stonemason to Universal Architect”, edited by the Anuero Town Hall with the collaboration of the Cántabrian Society of Writers and other groups such as the Alceda Group and highly regarded Portuguese experts who came at the call of the SCE for the publication of this book. The participation of the Cántabrian Society of Writers was therefore decisive in ensuring that the Town Hall of Arnuero placed its trust in our organisation for the publication of this important work. The event was chaired by the mayor of Arnuero, José Manuel Igual, and the president of the SCE, José Ramón Saiz, with the mayoral table including the presence of the daughter of Ms María Ealo de Sá (Carmen Ealo) and the councillor from the Santander Town Hall, Pedro Nalda.
The mayor of Arnuero, José Manuel Igual, opened the event in which he highlighted the support of the Corporation that he leads – the Councillor for Culture was present at the event – to help bring to light the figure of this great character, whose birth has been commemorated for more than five centuries, discovered in its local, national and international dimension thanks to the research work of María Ealo de Sá. He paid tribute to the Cántabrian Society of Writers as a group and to all the co-authors and collaborators on the work, highlighting the work of the coordinator, María Luz Quiroga.
Igual thanked the daughter and other family members of Ms María Ealo de Sa, wishing that they would convey to Ms María “our recognition and thanks for all your research, for dedicating many hours and days to the work of giving historical value to this master stonemason, whom researchers grant, for our pride and satisfaction, the title of universal architect”.
In his greeting, the president of the SCE, José Ramón Saiz, stated that the event’s spotlight began by recognising the excellent work of all those who had taken part in the book, and that the SCE had managed for a board of directors to begin the project and for the current board to culminate it by editing the work in collaboration with the Arnuero Town Hall. “A piece of work – he said – which we hope will be sufficiently publicised so that today’s people of Cantabria will come to know and recognise the great work of this great artistic genius of Cantabria, as was Juan de Castillo”.
As was made clear at the presentation by the coordinator and the co-authors, and also in the mayor of Arnuero’s remarks, the book presented has as its main purpose to highlight the different aspects of the life and work of Juan de Castillo linked to the social and cultural traditions of Trasmiera and to the historical moment of the two kingdoms, that of the Crown of Castile and that of the House of Avis of Portugal, as determining contexts.
To all this is added – as explained by the coordinator María Luz Quiroga – the significance of the evolution of Juan de Castillo, the subject of a shift in paradigm in the development of architecture as both a concept and an art, from the peninsular tradition of late Gothic to Renaissance classicism – linked to the humanist spirit of the Reformation in Europe – which entailed the modernisation of spaces and villas.
The book presented consists of three parts: beginning with the most important milestones in the life and work of Juan de Castillo; the second part, with the technical and artistic perspective in its most transformative aspect of the work of Juan de Castillo; and finally, the third part refers to the warm gaze of his countrymen of origin, on him and on his family, as a sincere homage of admiration and debt to the past; in short, an approach to the roots of this land, which represents the memory of one of its most illustrious and influential sons, as was Juan de Castillo.
