MIGUEL SERRANO
He always tells it in the same vein, with the same words, so it may well be true. He says that there were only eight people on the bus. They had spent the whole night dancing - hundreds or thousands of people in that club - and in the morning they returned to Zaragoza, now there were only eight of them, eight people on the bus, all returning from the same thing, from the big party celebrating youth. The night had come to an end much earlier, but it was raining, the day was really overcast, so the rain was somehow prolonging the night. She listened to the sound of the rain on the roof of the bus; she could see the shapes formed by the drops of water on the glass, wandering, unexpected trajectories. From her seat she overlaid the shivering drops with the movement of the people walking in the street, searching for similarities. Nobody spoke. Then she realised that she didn’t have an umbrella with her and that when they reached the end of the journey she was going to get wet. There was no sound inside the bus, just the pitter-patter up above, on the roof. The people walking in the street were also moving along in silence. How many times had she seen in that same spot large movements of silent people, during the Three Kings Parade, the queue gradually making its way towards the Flower Offering, the Crystal Rosary, processions. Slowness and solemnity, history. It was then that she saw the silhouette of the Carmen Gate in front of her and thought: “How strange everything is, that gate has been there for thousands of years, but now it is no longer a gate: you can’t go in or out. Before it used to mark the boundary of the city. I don’t know what it means now. And I feel tired, we have nearly arrived and I’m going to get wet.” She was hardly surprised by the squeaking of the wheels on the tarmac or the shaking of the engine, like that of a plane about to take off.
He always tells it in the same vein, with the same words, so it may well be true. He says that there were only eight people on the bus. They had spent the whole night dancing - hundreds or thousands of people in that club - and in the morning they returned to Zaragoza, now there were only eight of them, eight people on the bus, all returning from the same thing, from the big party celebrating youth. The night had come to an end much earlier, but it was raining, the day was really overcast, so the rain was somehow prolonging the night. She listened to the sound of the rain on the roof of the bus; she could see the shapes formed by the drops of water on the glass, wandering, unexpected trajectories. From her seat she overlaid the shivering drops with the movement of the people walking in the street, searching for similarities. Nobody spoke. Then she realised that she didn’t have an umbrella with her and that when they reached the end of the journey she was going to get wet. There was no sound inside the bus, just the pitter-patter up above, on the roof. The people walking in the street were also moving along in silence. How many times had she seen in that same spot large movements of silent people, during the Three Kings Parade, the queue gradually making its way towards the Flower Offering, the Crystal Rosary, processions. Slowness and solemnity, history. It was then that she saw the silhouette of the Carmen Gate in front of her and thought: “How strange everything is, that gate has been there for thousands of years, but now it is no longer a gate: you can’t go in or out. Before it used to mark the boundary of the city. I don’t know what it means now. And I feel tired, we have nearly arrived and I’m going to get wet.” She was hardly surprised by the squeaking of the wheels on the tarmac or the shaking of the engine, like that of a plane about to take off.
Puerta del Carmen (Agustín Sanz, 1792-1795), a vestige of the Sieges and the First Carlist War.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Colegio Joaquín Costa, the work of Miguel Ángel Navarro (1929). A tribute to Joaquín Costa and to his new educational ideas in the 1920s.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
The Pablo Serrano Museum and Aragonese Institute of Contemporary Art and Culture. The work of architect José Manuel Pérez Latorre (2011).
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Plaza Basilio Paraíso. The Elíseos building, with its Classic decoration, was designed by Teodoro Ríos Balaguer in 1945.
© Angélica Montes
AUDIO
© Angélica Montes
Paraninfo building of the University of Zaragoza (Ricardo Magdalena, 1893), the former Faculty of Medicine. Main entrance with the figures of four constructors of knowledge: Piquer, Servet, Asso and Elhuyar.
© Ernesto Sarasa
© Ernesto Sarasa
Paseo de Sagasta, the old road of bourgeois urban development that linked the city centre with the district of Torrero.
© Angélica Montes
AUDIO /
VIDEO
© Angélica Montes
The image of the middle classes in the early 20th century. Galleries on the corner of the Art Nouveau-inspired Retuerta house (Juan Francisco Gómez, 1904).
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Close-up of the façade of the modernist-style residential building on Paseo de Sagasta, designed by Félix Navarro Pérez in 1903.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Patio de la Infanta (1550), in the premises of Ibercaja's main office since 1980.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Plaza Aragón with the monument to Justiceship, unveiled in 1904 in memory of the institution that embodies the ancient liberties
of Aragon.
© Angélica Montes
of Aragon.
© Angélica Montes
Paseo de la Independencia. Its arcades still recall the Paris boulevard transplanted in Zaragoza in the 19th century.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Paseo de la Independencia.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
Octagonal tower on one of the buildings on Paseo de la Independencia.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
The Neo-Mudéjar style is also present in the Paseo de la Independencia. Façade of the Post Office and Telegraph building (Antonio Rubio Marín, 1926).
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
A Renaissance sky. Door of the Church of Santa Engracia, carved in alabaster by Gil Morlanes, father and son, between 1513 and 1517.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
The Plaza de España, with the monument to the Martyrs of Religion and the Fatherland (1904), links the Calle Coso with the Paseo de la Independencia.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes
“Sleeping Woman” at the junction of Paseo Constitución and Paseo de la Independencia. Stone sculpture by José Julio Bueno y Gimeno, 1919.
© Angélica Montes
© Angélica Montes