Enrique Nieto y Nieto

Biography.

- Born on October 6th, 1880 or 1883 (historians do not agree on this date), Enrique Nieto y Nieto started his degree in Architecture in 1987. Once he finished, he collaborated on the works of Casa Milá in Barcelona designed by Antonio Gaudí. On May 14th, 1909 he arrived in Melilla. From that date to 1921, Enrique Nieto gradually settled in professionally our city building great modernist buildings. During the 1920s, Enrique Nieto projected some Art Nouveau buildings, but it could already be seen new formal classic or baroque elements. Finally, its architecture went for Art Deco. After he got the place as the city’s architect in 1931, Enrique Nieto carried out town commissions with a very personal touch, based on Art Deco and pre-rationalism. The architect retired in October, 1949 and died five years later of a heart attack (January 20th, 1954).

His work in Melilla.

- Enrique Nieto y Nieto was the leading figure of the architecture in Melilla from 1909 to his death in the mid 1950s. He brought Art Nouveau to the city, to the classicist streets of Melilla and the arrival of new forms coming from the Catalan Art Nouveau, full of flowers and of ornaments inspired by European models. In the 1930s, the architect went for the experiment of different new forms, all of them following an ornamental line. This style led him to the trend that would characterize his work in the 1940s: Sgraffito Architecture, in which the Art-Deco ornamentation and volumes of aerodynamic architecture blended together. Despite the controversy risen when trying to assess the number of works carried out by Enrique Nieto in our city, some experts, like the historian Antonio Bravo Nieto, assure that the Catalan architect carried out a total of 457 projects, although he took part in more than 1,000.

Most Outstanding Works.

• C/ García Cabrelles, 1 y 3 (1928)
• C/ General Prim, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16, 20 (1909-1910)
• Cine Nacional (1929)
• Avenida Juan Carlos I, 1 (1915-1916)
• Edificio "La Reconquista", Plaza Menéndez Pelayo, s/n (1915)
• Edificio "El Acueducto", c/ Reyes Católicos, 2 (1928)
• Casa de Tortosa o antiguo Economato Militar (1914)
• Casino Militar (1932)
• Sinagoga Yamín Benarroch, c/ López Moreno (1924)
• C/ López Moreno, 2, 14 y 20 (1924, 1923 y 1928)
• Palacio de la Asamblea (1933-1948)
• Edificio de "El Telegrama del Rif" (1912)
• Cámara de Comercio, c/ Cervantes, 7 (1913)
• Mezquita Central (1945)
• Avenida de la Democracia, 8
• Mercado del Real (1932)
• C/ Cardenal Cisneros, 2 (1935)
• C/ Cándido Lobera, 2 y 4 (1933-1935)
• Monumento a los Héroes de España (1941)