ABSTRACT
Spain incorporated the reinforced concrete technique more than two decades after France and Germany. In central Europe, reinforced concrete structures of considerable size and complexity were being built in 1890, while in Spain it was not until 1893 that the first reinforced concrete construction, a simple open-air water tank, was built in Puigverd de Lleida, by the military engineer Francesc Macià with a Monier patent. In 1898, the first two buildings with a reinforced concrete structure in Spain were completed under the guidance of François Hennebique. These two isolated cases based on designs imported from France nevertheless played a key role in definitively introducing this building process in Spain.
At the same time in Paris, most of the pavilions designed for the 1900 World Expo were being built in reinforced concrete. At the turn of the century, reinforced concrete buildings had reached maturity both as a technology and as a design practice. And despite the late uptake of the material in Spain, the works carried out in the very short period between 1900 and 1906 clearly show that the country had reached practically the same levels in technique and construction using reinforced concrete as other pioneering countries.
The hypothesis of this study is based on the assumption that the cement and reinforced concrete patents registered in Spain between 1884 and 1906 were one of the factors that provided Spanish technicians and companies with solid construction expertise in the use of reinforced concrete.
