What Zaragoza, Spain looked like in the 1970s Through These Fascinating Photos

View of Calle del Saliente, in the Las Delicias neighborhood. This street, whose origin was in a branch of the Romareda irrigation channel, had its entrance on the Mosquetera road, and the exit on the Montevideo road, next to Oriente street, from which the inspiration for its construction was taken. peculiar denomination referring to the cardinal point of the east, or projection. The subsequent urbanization of the area turned the street into an alley with access and exit through Montevideo Street. In the background, the rear of the church of the Hijas de San José (josefinas) school, with the main entrance through Calle de la Duquesa de Beautiful villa.

In 1977, the block that formed Cerdán and Escuelas Pías streets was demolished, in the section of the current César Augusto avenue that leads from the Coso to the Central Market. In the background, the church of the Pious Schools.

San Lázaro Barracks, evicted from its military functions, in an image captured from the beginning of the Avenida de Cataluña. After the Confiscation of Mendizábal (1836-1837), the remains of the Mercedarian convent of San Lázaro and its site on the left bank, next to the Ebro River, were used for various purposes, such as a candle factory, a straw store and a pediment. Then it was, successively, municipal warehouse, correctional prison and infantry barracks, and again municipal warehouse. From 1874 it fell again to the Branch of War, which in 1888 finished the works on the building that the image illustrates, standing until the 1980s, when after Operation Barracks it was demolished by the City Council, and the site dedicated, mostly, to car and bus parking, with a green area in the vicinity of the Stone bridge, to the right and out of shot.

he entrance to Calle de Alfonso I from the Coso Alto, a recurring photographic motif in the city, is shown to be full of people on the occasion of the Pilar festivities. The luminous garlands guide the view in perspective, in the background, to the main dome of the Pillar. In the foreground, a city guard keeps the street closed to traffic for the occasion. The exposure of the image favors impossible overlaps between billboards and pedestrians.

At the time of capturing the image, these rental homes corresponded to numbers 58-76 on Paseo de Echegaray y Caballero, although those at numbers 58-64 (on the right) were already declared in ruin. Years later, in ruins or not, they were all demolished, and a modern building would later rise on their site.

Pictórica vista del río Ebro desde la margen izquierda, con visual de la fachada de la ciudad al paseo de Echegaray y Caballero. Sobresalen el cimborrio y la torre de la Seo, tras el palacio Arzobispal y la Casa de la Iglesia. Bajo el cimborrio, la marquesina de la estación de servicio Nuestra Señora del Pilar. Tras el puente de Piedra, todavía con su pretil metálico, y a la derecha de la calle de Don Jaime I, la Lonja y el Ayuntamiento.

Mudejar canvas of the wall of the Parroquieta de la Seo, in the first section of Calle del Sepulcro, between Plaza de La Seo (in the background, with a view of the Lonja and El Pilar) and Plaza de San Bruno (in the back of the photographer). At mid-height, the trace left by the demolition of the Archbishop's Arch stands out, and in the shadow of the Sevillian filigree of the 14th century, some vehicles adorn the picture, parked perhaps to enhance the aesthetic contrast.

The Casa de los Morlanes, from the mid-16th century, was so named because its façade was possibly carved by the sculptor Gil Morlanes El Joven, and even because this family would have lived there. In the last third of the 19th century it was the headquarters of the Piano Factory of Arilla, Menchaca y Compañía, and more recently the building became municipal property, which rehabilitated it and later dedicated it to various social and cultural services, including the Zaragoza Film Library, and since 1997 a new exhibition space in the basement. The square in the foreground, formerly the Synagogue, was later Seminary Square and now San Carlos Square, due to the immediate presence of the Royal Seminary of San Carlos Borromeo, on the right and in shadow.

Asso square, with a view of the facade of the 16th century house that belonged to the Campi family, and then to the La Balsa family, the La Balsa-Campi family (marquisate of the Palace), and finally the Asso family. That is why this square, called Ciria in the fifteenth century, in the eighteenth was already La Balsa, and from the mid-nineteenth century Asso. In its surroundings stood a good number of houses of noble or infanzona families. After the abandonment of this house at the beginning of the 1990s, the City Council took on the restoration of the façade, cataloged as an Asset of Architectural Interest. The owners, after completely demolishing its interior, built exclusive apartments and premises, with underground garages. To the left, facades of other old buildings, later demolished, and in the background, a stretch from Calle de Gavín to Calle Palafox.

Martín Carrillo street in an image centered on the side with odd numbers, where the plot left after the demolition of the No. 3 building stands out, the narrow access patio to No. 5, and the volume of No. 7, known as the house de Tejada, before its demolition. To the right, the church of Santa María Magdalena, and in the background, the homonymous square. At the beginning of the 1990s, an appreciable linear block of new houses was built here.

Banco de Aragón building inaugurated in 1951, at Coso 36-40 in Zaragoza, on the corner of Lieutenant Coronel Valenzuela, according to a project by Julián Laguna.

Since 1860, the Argillo Palace housed the Colegio de San Felipe for rent. In 1943, the palace was declared a National Monument and, since 1946, it changed ownership and use. The National Organization of the Spanish Blind shared space with the Colegio de San Felipe (transferred in 1958). In 1970, ONCE also changed its address. In 1977 the Zaragoza City Council acquired the building. Being a National Monument, the Ministry of Culture financed some consolidation interventions to stop its progressive ruin. In 1979 an agreement was signed between the Ministry and the City Council, aimed at restoring the building and using it as a venue for artistic workshops. image, aspect of the Plaza de San Felipe in the vicinity of the Palacio de Argillo, on the right, and the Church of San Felipe, in the background.

Holy Week procession in the Coso section of Plaza de España, with Calle de los Mártires in the background on the right. On the corner (Coso 39), the Las Vegas 2 coffee shop, where Oriental coffee remained for six decades.

Transporte Oruga Acorazado M-113 passes by a city bus on San Juan de la Peña Avenue, in the Picarral neighborhood, on its way from the military installations on the Huesca highway. For decades, the residents of the area had to endure the threatening passage of all kinds of military vehicles on their routes from the Arrabal Station to the maneuvering field, and vice versa, as is the case. The Picarral Neighborhood Association expressed to the civil and military authorities its rejection of this activity, which made urbanization of the area impossible: Every time maneuvers are carried out in the San Gregorio field, all the equipment is unloaded at the station ( of the suburb). The mobilizations and the passage of time eliminated them from the landscape. In the image, and to the right, the Los Molinos path begins.

Behind the wall on the left, the railway tracks. On the right, remains of the constructions attached to the Mobile Material factory and Carde y Escoriaza Constructions. In the background, Orús chocolate factory.

The Torrero cinema was inaugurated on January 27, 1953 and renovated in 1971. It closed in 1983 and its premises were reused for various uses, such as the headquarters of local television stations. It is located on Paseo de Cuéllar, very close to the Imperial Canal.

The Forest of Friendship was at the foot of the Cabezo de Buenavista, in the Primo de Rivera park, and was used as the setting for the Maja International beauty contest organized by the International Goya Association, which was held, as was traditional since 1966, in the Palacio de la Lonja, within the Spring Festival. In the image, the candidates for the fifth edition of this contest pose dressed in traditional attire

Calle de Castellví with the old residential building, warehouse and gate of its final section leading to Calle de Hernán Cortés, later replaced by two modern buildings. The shot has been made from the entrance to the bus station in Teruel, since 2011 reused by the municipal cleaning contractor. In the background stands out the building that makes a chamfer with the Paseo de Teruel, then occupied as a branch of Banco Zaragozano.

Eastern area of the Plaza del Pilar, in a view captured next to the lower door of the basilica and with the backdrop of the Plaza de la Seo. The decorative elements, in addition to a landscaped space at the foot of the Goya monument, make up one of the changing settings that have characterized this unique urban setting. To the right and in the foreground, replacement lads from the old Compulsory Military Service go to Pilar.

The turkey is Aztec, omnivorous, protean, and outrageous. It fits well in this city. In the image, a small flock of turkeys is paraded to advertise their sale by a plump pavero, on the side of the pairs of the Plaza de Lanuza. On the right and in the background, the south corner of the Central Market with Calle de la Torre Nueva. Behind the pavada, a group of people contemplates this traditional winter scene, associated with the imported Aztec celebration of the winter solstice, which would soon go from picturesque to disappeared in our payments.

Some soldiers on Hernán Cortés street, at the door of the homonymous barracks. In the background on the left, the corner of Banco Zaragozano with Paseo de Teruel.

The Zaragoza railway station, later called "Delicias" after the neighbourhood, was designed by the architect Luis Gutiérrez Soto, and inaugurated in 1932. The building was integrated into the group of buildings of the new Zaragoza Intermodal Station (project by the architects Carlos Ferrater and José Mª Valero). It was rehabilitated, and it was planned that it be refurbished as a railway exhibition space (works began in 2001), but something went wrong, and it is currently the inaccessible command post of the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona high-speed line of the imposing new Delicias station, next to what looks like a model, or toy. It is Well Cataloged of the Aragonese Cultural Heritage.

Image of 125 Madrid avenue with the old building leading to Unceta street (right), a sample of the type of buildings that characterized both sides of the old Madrid highway as it passed through the Delicias neighborhood. The capture allows us to observe the suspicious brick wall that is being raised on its ground floor, an unequivocal sign that this building's time has come, and it must take over from a new building generation that makes better use of the empty space above. from its third floor, reaching in height up to cousin number 7, and thus reaching its neighbor on the left. Between the cobblestones, the tram tracks of the Delicias line, which only had one year of service left: in 1971 It will be abolished and replaced by urban bus line 33.

The 1970s were very lavish in Zaragoza in terms of demolitions, whether by hand or machine, or both combined. This is one more example in an area far from the center. It is a picture of the section of Martín Cortés street between Escosura, from where the photograph was taken, and José García Sánchez, in the background. On the left, demolition by hand of the old plot of number 33 of the old Roche street, now Escosura, when this was the last home on what was then a long dirt-floored street that reached here from the Zaragoza-Valencia highway. , although it then continued in the form of a path that, after crossing the bank and the Rasa irrigation, to the left and through a path led to the Mosquetera path, and to the right, to the nearby Mobile Material and Construction Workshops. and even to the Cariñena railway station.
In this street of Escosura and at number 40, since 1964 there were the provisional facilities of the new parish of Nuestra Señora de la Almudena, one of those established during the large post-conciliar harvest of 1961-1971. After the construction in 1973 of the new block on the site of the image, which will receive number 20 on Martín Cortés street, this Almudena parish will be installed on its ground floor in more permanent facilities, at least until 2007, when the The Archbishopric sold the premises to move the parish to 71 Escoriaza y Fabro Street, in the northernmost area of ​​the Parque Roma urbanization.

View of the main access door to the abandoned El Cid Cavalry Barracks. Currently right here is the block of flats at No. 6 Benjamín Jarnés Street.It was created by Ramón Pignatelli next to the Coso de la Maestranza and the Real Casa de la Misericordia.

Mowing of herbaceous plants in a field to the west of the Polígono Gran Vía, with the background of the streets of the Counts of Aragón and of Asín and Palaces emerging from blocks of flats. On the right, the Sacred Heart school and the rose window of the Conciliar Metropolitan Seminary. In the foreground, the traditional agricultural practice of harvesting alfalfa or alfalfa, harvested with a dalla or scythe, harvested by hand, and loaded into a dump truck pulled by cavalry.

To the left and behind the panicle fields, the school of Santa María Reina, next to the old convent of the Sisters of Charity. Behind, blocks of flats on Calle de La Milagrosa, the Salesianos school and plots of the Ciudad Jardín Terminillo.

It was not until 1958 that a new project began to be built, which two years later saw the light as the Church of the Mother of the Savior. It was built next to a textile factory (cotton) from whose imposing chimney various pestilences emanated.

To the left, and immediately, the walls behind which the young and Jesuit church of the Mother of El Salvador was demolished, barely as an advertising support for traditional and racial shows. Immediately, the beginning of the Paseo de las Damas towards the Camino de las Torres and, in the background, the unique collegiate mass of the Sacred Heart, behind the tree-lined roundabout of Sasera. On the right, a tram composition pulled by Unit 51 descends from Torrero, which, in service since 1925, was retired a couple of years later, and scrapped in 1973. The line was closed a year later. after 88 years of service, to clear the streets of electric provincial relics.

From the Corona de Aragón Hotel, a high-rise view of the surroundings of the baroque church of Santiago el Mayor before the extension of Imperial Avenue. In the foreground and to the left, the site after the demolition of the old Military Hospital, with the imprint on the wall of the church of the arches of the great cloister of the convent of San Ildefonso. The vehicles appear parked in a battery where the disappeared Nueva de San Ildefonso square used to be, where Doctor Gómez Ulla street, the former Library street, converges from the right; and from the top San Ildefonso street, accompanied by the straight line of cars to Telesforo Peromarta street. The site in the center of the image indicates the progression of the demolitions in the large block of houses that reached Calle del Azoque and Plaza de Miguel Salamero, on the right.

The dense road traffic still includes tram elements. This capture was made by the Australian Lindsay Bridge on a bright day in June 1970, while passing through the city.

The metamorphosis of the Paseo de la Independencia, after its imposition as a motorway, sympathetically prompted the move of some of the buildings that flanked it, from the Plaza de España to the Plaza de Paraíso. Thus, the Plaza de Aragón began to undergo its particular building "transition", which in the image is dramatically contrasted between the bright, modern and attractive blocks, and the dark, old and gloomy mansions that disfigured the surroundings, and did little to help the image of a city like the new Zaragoza of the (economic) miracle. This flaw would be practically corrected in the following decade.

Next to the Casablanca service station, to the right of the image, a herd of sheep, riding goats, crosses the Vía de la Hispanidad, a recent name for the old Los Enlaces highway. On the left, the new Gran Vía industrial estate, renamed La Romareda. The image captures a moment of agreed transition between the rural world that characterized this outskirts of the city, with the modern world of tall blocks and highways for high-speed vehicles. A truck coming from the gas station waits patiently. The old Cariñena railway line used to cross this area until 1933. To the right, Calle de La Vía recalls the passage of this narrow-gauge train. In the background, a roundabout, the current Toulouse roundabout, at the confluence of the Paseo de Isabel la Católica, the Vía Ibérica and the Vía de la Hispanidad itself.

The sea of tracks that from the North Station, or Arrabal, led along the riverbank, passing the San Lázaro tunnel, towards Ranillas, the old railway bridge, and to the Delicias station, on the other side of the river Ebro. To the left, the San Lázaro barracks appears, at the start of the Avenida de Cataluña. On the right, part of the rear of the Franciscan convent of Santa Isabel. Above it stands the 10-storey development giant located between the streets of Sixto Celorrio and Sobrarbe. In the background, the easternmost pair of towers of the Metropolitan Church of El Pilar.

Plaza de la Victoria in a scene captured during the traditional celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of the Fire Department since 1953. In this square and to the right was located the municipal Fire Station enabled since 1907 in the old convent of Our Lady of the Victory of the Minimum Fathers of San Francisco de Paula which, disentailed in 1835, was reformed at the end of the century to make room for a Fire Station and Municipal Deposit, as well as some elementary schools for boys and girls, which led to the demolition of the convent church.

Avenida de Navarra in the section where, on the right, Calle de Leonardo Torres Quevedo ends, still with plot number 36, later demolished and replaced by an angular block, and the perimeter of the old and extensive corner garden with the old Logroño road, also later replaced by building blocks.

La Cartuja service station, centers an image captured with its back to the Miguel Servet Industrial Estate, at km 3,700 of the Castellón highway, almost halfway between Zaragoza and the rural neighborhood of La Cartuja Baja. This modern installation, which included a snack-bar service, was located next to a more veteran and traditional building next to the highway, to the left of the image, which was later demolished

Called in recent times "Casa Armijo" by the name of the last family that owned it, it is built on a plot of several houses sold in 1147 to the Seo by the Ponce de Fredalez y Estefanía couple, destined to house capitular dignities. This, in particular, was the home of the Archpriest of La Seo. In 1878, Francisco de Armijo reformed the building.
In 1971, the General Directorate of Fine Arts stopped the demolition of the house, which had already begun, conserving the façade to Don Juan de Aragón, part of the façade to Lucero and its corresponding bays that surround the patio.

Environs of the Magdalena, in the Asso square. On the right, Don Juan de Aragón street. In front, Martín Carrillo street. Above, stands the tower of the parish church of La Magdalena.

Located on Paseo de la Independencia nº 26, where the old Alhambra Cinema used to be, Cine Avenida was inaugurated in May 1968, with 930 seats. It will be closed in January 1979.

On the right, the remains of the old Casa de la Galera, later a school. Behind the fence with commercial signs, the Colegio del Carmen y San José de las Hijas de la Caridad de San Vicente de Paúl, in operation in that place since 1947, occupying part of the land of the convent of Santa Inés. In the center, tram unit number 80 of line 5, "Venecia-Delicias", coming from the neighborhood of Las Delicias. In the background, buildings that have disappeared from the corner of Avenida de Madrid and Paseo de María Agustín. On the left, partial view of the urban agency number 1 of the Caja de Ahorros de Zaragoza and the right tower of the Portillo church.

Tram unit 223 of line 4 "Arrabal" at its northern terminus, next to the San Juan de la Peña industrial buildings, and the block of flats at No. 182 of that avenue, ready to begin its journey to the south. At the end of that year, the line was closed.

With the pair of units of the 200 series (228, back to the "center", and 223, in the direction of the terminus of the line) that then provided service on the "Arrabal" tramway, or Line 4. On the right, walls of the old "Hierros Alfonso S.A." depot, whose backs were adjacent to the railway tracks that reached the Arrabal station, and in the center, the modern, pioneering and alpine block of nº 10 of San Juan de la Peña. To the left, out of plane, Valle de Zuriza street, leading to the recent park of Tío Jorge, former park of Jorge Ibort.
Barely two months after this image, the "Slum" line was closed.