Previous state

True to the strategies of defence that prevailed in the Middle Ages, Teruel grew around the peak of a hill and was surrounded by a wall. Topography thus dealt with the problem of security but also posed the problem of ensuring enough drinking water for the population within the walls, which were frequently under siege. The solution was found in the 14th century with the construction of two underground tanks that collected and accumulated water channelled from the rain that infrequently fell upon the city. Known today as the Aljibe Somero and the Aljibe Fondero, these are large underground cisterns of similar dimensions – each of almost a hundred square metres – and covered with brick vaults. They functioned as tanks until well into the 19th century, after which they began to be used as rubble dumps and, during the Spanish Civil War, as shelters. They are located under the former market square, the centre point of the urban fabric that received the water running down from the city’s highest neighbourhood, the Jewry, and then distributed it to other parts of the city on the different slopes of the hill.

With a pronounced slope dropping in a southerly direction, the square has a triangular perimeter, defined by the streets running into it along the lines of water drainage, and is completely surrounded by a portico beneath which are numerous shops. It is officially known today as Plaza Carlos Castel but popularly called Plaza del Torico because of the fountain that presides over it, dating from 1858 and distinguished by the statue of a small bull (torico) standing on a column. Among the beautiful buildings that comprise its three facades are two exquisite examples of Modernism, the Casa del Torico and the Casa la Madrileña, both of them work of the Tarragona architect Pau Monguió i Segura. Until quite recently and despite its heritage value, dynamic character and central location, the square was invaded by vehicular traffic. The lighting did nothing to draw attention to its architectural quality and the paving urgently needed renovation.

Description

Beneath the square, the intervention has enlarged the area open to the public – which formerly consisted only of the Aljibe Fondero which, as its name indicates, is deeper than the Aljibe Somero – to a surface of more than four hundred square metres completely paved in natural stone. Access to this space is by way of two stairways at the foot of the mausoleum in the adjacent Plaza de los Amantes and a passageway connects the stairways with the Aljibe Fondero, in the south of the square. A new tunnel has been opened up to join the two tanks, leaving visible some sections of the “Albellón”, a parallel pipe which was used for drainage. At the Aljibe Somero there is wood-finished tiered seating so that groups of visitors can watch an audiovisual presentation of the city’s heritage showing, in particular, its subterranean water-related routes.

At ground level, the paving of the square has been replaced with basalt slabs, some of which have been expressly designed to contain long cavities of different orientations. This has made it possible to inlay, the length and breadth of the square, a total of 1,230 lighting elements consisting of strips of electroluminescent light-emitting diodes (LED). The lighting strips trace on the dark basalt paving a scattering of luminous segments that, by means of varying their orientation and density of grouping, reproduce the square’s patterns of water drainage. The pattern thus translates the lines of flow of the rainwater and the curves, bifurcations and eddies it generates on meeting with obstacles on the surface (for example, the Torico Fountain) and below the ground (the two tanks). In their above-ground projection of the two cisterns, the luminous segments are so arranged as to follow the same orientation, and their density is reduced in order to express the static nature of water in a state of quiescence.

Given the limited dimensions of the square and in order to avoid any rivalry with the ground-level luminous pattern, the general lighting is subtle. A graze-lighting system has been affixed for the old lamp-posts that are joined to the facades and this uses the vertical faces of the buildings as a reflecting screen. In keeping with European Union criteria for minimising light contamination, the façades are bathed in tangential light in a descending direction. A false ceiling has been placed in the portico around the perimeter to conceal the now-renewed cables, which once hung visibly off the facades. The face of this ceiling is lit with diffuse lighting and the Torico Fountain is illuminated by concentrated clusters of lighting elements set on some of the facades.