Edwin Lutyens in Spain: the Palace of El Guadalperal

ABSTRACT Although the work of Edwin Lutyens has received careful scholarly study since the 1980s, his projects in Spain remain very little known. Unfortunately, Lutyens was unable to complete his Spanish commissions, mostly because of the deterioration of country's economy and social order in the 1930s, and this has played a major role in keeping these projects in the dark. Furthermore the devastation caused by the Civil War obliterated most of the evidence once held in Spanish archives. This paper focuses on Lutyens's main commission in Spain, the palace of El Guadalperal, designed for the eighteenth Duke of Peñaranda as a country house on his estate in south west Spain. This decades-long commission, lasting from 1915 to 1934, represents a very significant and original work in Lutyens's output. The first version for the palace shows his capacity to adapt his architecture to the local climate and architectural traditions, while the second would have been, if built, his largest country house, approaching the grandeur and magnificence of the Viceroy's House in Delhi.