Housing policy in Spain between 1939 and 1976. The residential phenomenon as a catalyst for urban growth

HOUSING POLICY IN SPAIN BETWEEN 1939 AND 1976 The residential phenomenon as a catalyst for urban growth La política de vivienda en España entre 1939 y 1976. El fenómeno residencial como motor de crecimiento urbano KEYWORDS PALABRAS CLAVE ABSTRACT RESUMEN Recibido: 27/ 09 / 2022 Aceptado: 29/ 11 / 2022 Daniel Navas-Carrillo 1, Javier Ostos-Prieto 2, Juan-Andrés Rodríguez-Lora 2 1 University of Malaga, Spain 2 University of Seville, Spain Residential Neighbourhoods Modern City Urban Growth Public Policies 20th Century Urban Planning Social Housing Barriadas Residenciales Ciudad Moderna Crecimiento Urbano Políticas Públicas Siglo XX Urbanismo Vivienda Social The research focuses on the study of public housing built in response to the urgent housing needs in Europe throughout the 20th century. These developments share many of the characteristics of their European counterparts. The Spanish case presents certain peculiarities in its development. The research aims to analyse the context -social, economic and politicalthat conditioned the massive construction of housing in Spain between 1939 and 1976. An analysis is made of the approved urban planning legislation, housing regulation and the identification of the responsible bodies. La investigación se centra en el estudio de la vivienda pública construida ante las urgentes necesidades de vivienda existentes en Europa a lo largo del siglo XX. Estos desarrollos comparten muchas de las características con sus homónimos europeas. El caso español presenta ciertas peculiaridades en su desarrollo. La investigación persigue así analizar el contexto –social, económico y político– que condicionó la construcción de vivienda de forma masiva en España entre 1939 y 1976. Se realiza un análisis de la legislación urbanística aprobada, la regulación en materia de vivienda, así como la identificación de los organismos responsables. HUMAN REVIEW | 2023 | ISSN 2695-9623 International Humanities Review / Revista Internacional de Humanidades https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v18.4869 © GKA Ediciones, authors. Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 2 - 17 1. Introduction The public housing complexes of the so-called first periphery of medium-sized European cities are taken as study object. This work defines it as the urban expansion area built in response to the ‘urgent quantitative housing needs existing in Europe at the end of the mid-century wars as a response to the rural-urban population transfer’ (Molina Costa & Rubio del Val, 2010, p. 16). They are also recognised as areas that have grown without an overall idea, ‘urbanised territories where the construction of the city is absent’ (Arteaga Arredondo, 2009, p. 17) and which take the precepts of the modern city set out in the Athens Charter of 1933 (Le Corbusier, 1989). This urban manifesto was born in the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture. Its aim was to confront the social and political urgencies that classical urban planning had been unable to resolve by breaking down the city into functions. Thus, it ‘took for granted the Fordian specialisation of space and, with it, the city of the residence’ (Pie Ninot, 2009, p. 2). These developments share many of the same morphological and typological characteristics as their European counterparts. However, housing policies in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands have certain peculiarities. The divergent political contexts mean that cities in each of the countries present differences in their development. In Spain, is influenced the housing development by a socio-political context under strong control from the State after the Civil War. In this sense, housing policy during the Franco regime was not unrelated to the economic guidelines that followed. The stages that can be identified in those years are Autarchy, Stabilisation and Development. Specific legislation on housing was passed, but with the same objective: to respond to the persistent housing problem. First from the point of view of the necessary reconstruction of a country, and later as a response to the overcrowding that plagued urban centres. Figure 1. Aerial views of the neighbourhood ‘Los Pajaritos’. Seville. Source: Patronato Municipal de Casas Baratas. According to Terán Troyano (1996, p. 177), the approval in 1956 of the Land Law radically changed the form of city growth based on public housing. Until that time, small-scale developments had been possible within the first urban extensions, especially in large cities and even in the historic city. However, the appearance of the Partial Plan favoured the construction of large urban pieces built as a unit, which have traditionally been known as neighbourhoods or residential areas. They should be understood as operations in which the phases of subdivision, urbanisation and building are managed in a unitary manner (Ferrer i Aixalá, 1982, p. 4). These are characterised morphologically by being pieces with sufficient entity, minimum units with clearly defined urban limits that allow the city to be built independently. In this sense, the research assumes this definition in order to establish some limitations, both in terms of the scale of these projects, and the time in which they were carried out. For a better understanding of the process, a general survey of residential production between 1939 and 1976 should be undertaken. The subsequent detailed analysis should leave out of the study the first projects that were aimed at the reconstruction of the so-called Devastated Regions or those built by the National Institute of Colonisation (INC). 2. Objectives and methodology The main aim of the research is to approach the context -social, economic and politicalthat conditioned the construction of housing on a massive scale in Spain after the Civil War. The research is mainly structured in two phases. The first one has an introductory nature, with the definition of the object and subject of study. In order to do this, it has been necessary to address a series of basic concepts from which to articulate the conceptual construction of this work. It is important to point out that the purpose of this introduction is to highlight the point of view from which the work has been developed. For this reason, once the research has been conceptually and theoretically framed, the work has approached the research that is being carried out on the national and HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 3 - 17 international scene. This allows us to set specific objectives for the development of this work and to assess the degree of relevance of the study. The second phase of the work was aimed to build a general framework for the construction of public housing between 1939-1976. This has been done through the analysis of the approved urban planning and housing legislation. In addition, the bodies responsible for the construction of public housing during this period covered by this research have been identified. This allows for a greater scope in understanding the characteristics that define the groups of housing built in the country. This last research phase requires an important bibliographic and documentary search to link the knowledge generated by other researchers. For this purpose, in addition to research publications, professional work or legislative documents, experts, researchers and specialist professionals were consulted. On the other hand, the amount of information to be managed in different phases of the research has required the development of systematisation processes by means of registers of each of the documents analysed in order to be able to draw relational conclusions more easily. 3. State-of-the-art Several authors have approached the object of study - barriadas, polígonos de viviendas, grand ensembles, housing estate, Grofsiedlugen, Wohnbezirk, Siedlungen, etc. - from different disciplines and approaches. Typological and morphological studies are frequent, but in most cases, they are carried out at the local level. It is not common to find bibliography that carries out a comparative analysis on a more global level. Thus, we will now analyse the referential framework in each of the three contexts. Carlos Sambricio is one of the main authors responsible for the study of public housing from a global conception for Spain. His publications provide an exhaustive approach from which to adequately build part of the theoretical body of research (Sambricio, 2003; Sambricio & Sánchez Lampreave, 2008). It is also interesting to analyse the work being carried out by Javier Monclús and Carmen Díez (2015, 2018) in the ‘Urban Landscape and Contemporary Project’ group at the University of Zaragoza for their international defence of these projects. This approach also characterises the research carried out within the ‘Social Housing, Basic Habitability and Urban Heritage’ research group led by Luis Moya at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. This group has evaluated the level of adaptation of international references to the social, political, and economic context of Spain (Moya González, 2008). They are similar to many of the contributions made at the International Congress ‘German and Italian models for Spain in the post-war years’ (Pozo & López Trueba, 2004) or the publication ‘Social Housing in Europe’ (Scanlon et al., 2014). From an overall view Alba Zarza Arribas and Josefina González Cubero have analysed the image of post-war Spanish housing through photography (2016), fiction film production (2017) or documentaries and official newsreels (2019). They are part of the research work of the ‘Architecture and Cinema’ group at the University of Valladolid. Its main line of work focuses on the relationships that can be established between architecture and other artistic manifestations. Social housing estates have also addressed since the assessment of their urban quality (Martínez-Espinosa et al., 2021) or their public spaces (Monclús Fraga et al., 2017; García Pérez et al., 2020; Bambó-Naya et al., 2022). In cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville, a large number of new housing units were built in response to the serious problems of overcrowding at the time. This justifies the fact that a large part of the studies on public housing during this period focus on the large cities of our country. Sambricio (2004) and Moya González (1982) systematically compiled the characteristics of its urban growth, which was a reference for the development of many cities in the rest of Spain. In other geographical contexts, we can point to the research of Gaja Díaz (1989) for the case of Valencia, the approach to residential areas in Barcelona by Ferrer i Aixalà (1982), the research about the case of Albacete by Gutiérrez Mozo and Caro (2015) or the publication of Bernal Santa Olalla about Burgos (2001). In the case of Andalusia, the works of Reinoso Bellido (2005) on the construction of Malaga and Fernández García (2005) on the residential architecture of Granada in the 1950s are particularly noteworthy. Equally significant is the doctoral thesis of Queiro Quijada (2016) developed at the Department of Urban Planning of the University of Seville. He studies the production of public housing between 1913 and 1986 in the case of the city of Seville. The Municipal Housing Company of Seville has organised recently an exhibition about the 100 years of public housing development in the city (Capilla Roncero et al., 2019). The cataloguing of social housing built in Seville between 1939 and 1979 has also been addressed. (Domínguez Amarillo et al., 2017). Also noteworthy are works focussed on the energy issue, which also carry out an exhaustive preliminary study, identifying the characteristics of public housing in Cadiz, Seville, and Cordoba (Domínguez Amarillo, 2016; Martínez Hervás, 2018; Blázquez de Pineda, 2019). Finally, the Andalusian case has also been analysed from a comparative point of view with other European and international contexts (Navas Carrillo, 2020; Pérez Cano et al., 2022). HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 4 - 17 Similarly, as a result of the transformation policies of the agricultural space for the settlement of self-sufficient peasants in rural areas, the so-called colonisation settlements arose. These were intended to slow down the strong migratory processes from the countryside to the city. More than 300 settlements were built by the National Colonisation Institute. It was created in 1939 and it was dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture. This also justify the exhaustive research that the scientific community has carried out on all of them. Public housing has also been extensively analysed from the technical and constructive aspects. The obligatory reference is the work of the Spanish Society for the History of Construction. It was founded in 1996 to ‘contribute to the promotion and dissemination of work on this subject’ through the organisation of a biannual congress and the production of collections of relevant texts and publications. Also noteworthy is the compendium of doctoral theses on the theory and history of construction. Among others works, the research highlights the theses of Díaz Gómez (2008) on the construction techniques used in the construction of low-cost housing in Catalonia between 1954 and 1976, and Azpilicueta Astarloa (2004) on the construction of post-war architecture in Spain (19391962). Both works provide an overview of the main construction systems used in the building of public housing at the time, without ignoring general considerations on public housing development. It is also a reference the monographic work on the Experimental Housing competition organised by the National Housing Institute in 1956 (Fernández Isla & Espiga Romero, 1997). It includes various articles which analyse the construction solutions used in the aforementioned competition, but also deal with their contextualisation in the national and international panorama. European and North American references in the mass housing production in Spain in the 1950s are analysed. These arrived through architectural magazines, as well as through the trips made by the administration and the academic world to find out about the techniques and processes that were being used. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the patrimonialisation of social housing (Spoormans, 2018). In this respect, significant progress has been made in countries such as France (Amougou, 2006; Veschambre, 2008; Kaddour 2013; Bertier et al., 2014), the UK (While & Pendlebury, 2008; Pendlebury, Townshend & Gilroy, 2009) or the Netherlands (Kuipers, 2008; Zijlstra, 2013; Spoormans et al., 2019; Havinga et al., 2020,). Although less developed, it is also being addressed in other contexts. Although less developed, it is also being addressed in other contexts: Hungary (Benko, 2015), Serbia (Dragutinovic et al., 2017), Czech Republic (Duraj et al., 2017) or Latin America (Valencia, 2017). In Spain, the study of the patrimonialisation of social housing is more recent, with authors such us Díez de Pablo (2015), Moya González et al. (2017), Gómez Villa (2019) or Navas Carrillo (2019, 2020). The analysis of the state-of-the-art in the different fields involved has made it possible to study the object of study in a way that constitutes a real advance in the subject. An extensive bibliography has been found on the official development complexes built in Spain between 1939 and 1976. The studies range from a general overview of housing and planning policies to a specific study of the typological aspects that define these buildings. There are also publications that allow us to analyse the peculiarities of Spanish context within Europe as a whole. Most of this research focuses on the largest and most functionally important cities. They are the main recipients of the rural-urban migratory processes and reveal that a range of cities on a smaller scale are still to be studied. 4. Results Several authors (Cabrero Torres-Quevedo, 1992, p. 492; Barreiro Pereira, 1997, p. 98; Sambricio, 2000, p. 46) establish 1954 as a turning point in the production of public housing. The Limited Income Housing Law was passed, which meant a significant advance in typological, constructive, and even urbanistic aspects. In addition, this year coincided with the end of the autarkic period and the normalisation of relations with the outside world in the country. It should also be mentioned that in 1953 a first preliminary draft of the land law had been drawn up, which included the main contributions of the final document. This milestone makes it possible to structure the housing policy developed during Franco’s regime (table 1 and figure 3) in three specific stages or phases of development. Table 1. Housing regulation, urban planning legislation and bodies responsible for the construction of public housing HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 5 - 17 between 1939-1976 Instruments and elements analysed in the theoretical framework Date of reference Housing regimes VPR_Viviendas Protegidas (Protected Housing) VBO_Viviendas Bonificables (Discounted Housing) VTS_Viviendas de Tipo Social (Social Housing) VRR_Viviendas de Renta Reducida (Low Income Housing) VRM_Viviendas de Renta Mínima (Minimun Income Housing) VRL_Viviendas de Renta Limitada (Limited Income Housing) VSU_Viviendas Subvencionadas (Subsidised Housing) VPO_Viviendas de Protección Oficial (Officialy Protected Housing) 1939 1944 1954 1954 1954 1954 1957 1961 Housing plans RD_Regiones Devastadas (Devastated Regions) INC_Colonización Medio Rural (Colonisation Rural Environment) PDV_Plan Decenal de Vivienda (Ten-Year Housing Plan) PVS_Plan de Vivienda de tipo Social (Social Housing Plan) PSV_Plan Sindical de Vivienda (Trade Union Housing Plan) PQV_Plan Quinquenal de Renta Limitada (Five-Year Limited Income Plan) PNV_Plan Nacional de la Vivienda (National Housing Plan) 1939-1957 1939-1976 1944-1954 1954-1960 1954-1960 1956-1960 1961-1976 Urban legislation EMU_Estatuto Municipal y el Reglamento de Obras, Servicios y Bienes Municipales (Municipal Statute and the Municipal Works, Services and Property Regulations) BRL_Ley de Bases de Régimen Local (Law on Local Government Bases) LOS_Ley de Ordenación de Solares (Ordinance Plots Law) LSU_Ley sobre Régimen del Suelo y Ordenación Urbana (Land and Town Planning) 1924 1945 1945 1956 Responsible organisations INV_Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda (National Housing Institute) OSHA_Obra Sindical del Hogar y Arquitectura (Union for Housing and Architecture) GU_Gerencia de Urbanización (Urban Development Management) 1939 1942 1956 Source: Own elaboration, 2020. In the first of these, the construction effort was very limited, both in terms of authorised promoters and quantity. It was a time when priority was given to the reconstruction of the areas devastated during the war and the colonisation of rural areas. In terms of typology and construction, it is well defined the single-family dwellings, with one or two floors, using local practices. These were contrasted with modern solutions that were far removed from the techniques that had remained intact in the collective knowledge and were intrinsic to each place (Chueca Goitia, 1947). Likewise, there are clear references to ideologically related European regimes, such as Germany and Italy (Hurtado Torán, 1997, p. 51-52). In this sense, in the design of the developments built after the Civil War, a typology of a ruralising character was preferred, which arose as a response to the economic, social, and material means of a context of crisis (López Díaz, 2003). The second phase can be considered a transitional stage characterised by the cultural and ideological influence of other countries, especially the Anglo-Saxon world, and which will be key in the modernisation of the housing sector in our country (Pérez Escolano, 2013, p. 37). The new legislative framework not only seeks to improve the functional and construction standards of residential typologies, but also sets itself the priority objective of increasing the rate of housing construction. It proposes incorporating private initiative and rationalising construction processes by increasing the degree of industrialisation, reducing costs and execution time. Gradually, the single-family typology was replaced by high-rise construction, which was conditioned by the obligation to install lifts in buildings with more than four floors (Temes Cordovez, 2009, p. 1428). The legislative changes also entailed a restructuring at the organisational level. In 1957, the Ministry of Housing was created as the sole state body responsible for supervising the production of public housing. HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 6 - 17 Figure 2. Housing group ‘San Franscisco Solano’ in Montilla (Córdoba). Reference of the typological and constructive evolution in 1950s. Source: Hogar y Arquitectura, 9 (pp. 4-6). However, it is in the third stage that there was a significant increase in the pace of housing construction. Favoured by a climate of economic growth, the number of dwellings built even exceeded initial forecasts. Consideration should be given to the development of new measures to encourage private participation, to the detriment of public actions, subject to exceptional cases not provided by private initiative. The work of the Urban Development Management (GU) in the provision and preparation of land throughout the national territory should also be highlighted. This new legislative framework favours national institutions to assume the lack of housing as a generalised problem. They also pay attention to intermediate scale cities. However, it is in the third stage there was a significant increase of the housing construction. It was favoured by a climate of economic growth, the number of dwellings built even exceeded initial forecasts. It must be considered the development of new measures to encourage private participation, to the detriment of public actions, subject to exceptional cases not provided by private initiative. The work of the GU in the provision and preparation of land throughout the national territory should also be highlighted. This new legislative framework favours national institutions to assume the lack of housing as a generalised problem. They also pay attention to intermediate scale cities. HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 7 - 17 Figure 3. Temporal identification of the instruments and elements analysed in the theoretical framework. Source: Own elaboration, 2020. 4.1. First period (1939-1954): limited building effort after the Civil War The years following the Civil War were characterised by a significant drop in the quality of life of citizens as a result of the severe economic recession. It was not until 1954 that the pre-war per capita income was reached (Carreras et al., 2005, p. 1337), so this date was chosen as the end of the autarkic period. It also coincides with the passing of the laws on social housing, minimum and low-income housing, and finally limited-income housing. The latter represented a qualitative leap in the policy developed up to that point. To the consequences of the Civil War, serious material and human losses, depletion of natural resources, reduction of production (agricultural, livestock and industrial), and destruction of important infrastructures, especially railways (Carreras & Tafunell, 2003, p. 285), the blockade suffered by Spain at the international level must be added. Although Spain declared its neutrality in the Second World War, Franco was ideologically aligned with the Axis Powers, so the victory of the Allies meant its isolation in foreign policy. For Franco’s leaders, autarchy was the only economic policy that guaranteed a country’s political and ideological independence (Gómez Mendoza, 2000, p. 37). Together with the strong protectionist and interventionist policies of the state, they marked the evolution of this first period, positioning themselves ideologically with the totalitarian European regimes prior to the Second World War (Germany and Italy). This interventionism was reflected in multiple sectors of the country’s economy, including the construction industry. It is well known that this policy was articulated through the limitation of private initiatives, price controls and the rationing of access to basic necessities. It must be also considered the regulation of industrial investment, which began in 1939. Prior authorisation from the Ministry of Industry was required for the installation of new industries and the transfer or extension of existing ones (Decreto de 8 Septiembre 1939), while the installation of so-called industries of national interest was subsidised (Ley de 24 Octubre 1939). In 1941 the National Institute of Industry was created. This body would assume control of industrial promotion in Spain until 1980 and would regulate the supply of raw materials to the industrial sector by establishing numbers. The state purchased the entire production at a price below the market price. This measure, which in principle sought to facilitate the distribution of products in a post-war scenario, triggered a drastic fall in production in favour of other goods with higher profitability. This process, which is described by Caruana de las Cagigas (2006, p. 692) for the agricultural sector, can also be analysed for industrial production. In the construction of social housing, these dynamics would have important consequences in the supply of materials and in an almost non-existent industrialisation of the construction processes. As will be analysed below, the main measures adopted by the State were aimed at guaranteeing the supply of a certain number of tonnes of cement or steel for the construction of social housing. This would be impossible to achieve given the rate of HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 8 - 17 domestic production. It should be recalled that imports were practically non-existent, which would have helped to remedy this situation. López Díaz (2002, p. 301) recognises that the interventionist policy of the 1940s in Spain ‘was a brake on economic development and became the period of greatest economic recession [...] multiplying the effects produced by the disasters of the war. Lesser effects than in most European countries which, however, produced a much slower recovery in our country’. Within this general framework, the state also had to solve the housing problem. At the same time, the reconstruction of the regions destroyed during the Civil War, the improvement of conditions in rural areas and the problems of overcrowding in the big cities had to be resolved. Independent bodies as the General Directorate for Devastated Regions and Reparations, the National Housing Institute or the National (INV) and the National Institute of Colonisation (INC) were created for this purpose, but they shared a common objective: the promotion of housing for the most vulnerable classes. Figure 4. Neighbourhood ‘Federico Mayo’ in Ayamonte (Huelva) and Carranque in Malaga. Source: Municipal archive of Ayamonte & Isla de Ariarán, 23-24 (p. 365). As the first regulatory reference in the field of housing, we must mention the Law establishing a Regime for the Protection of Low-Income Housing and creating the National Housing Institute, in charge of its application (Ley de 19 de abril de 1939). In addition to establishing a new housing regime under t protection, its approval brought with it the creation of the National Housing Institute, for the promotion and regulation of its construction. This body was also to be responsible for programming housing construction. However, it was not until 1943 that the First Housing Plan was approved, which envisaged the construction of 350,000 subsidised housing units between 1944 and 1954. A year later, in 1944, the Law on the Reduction of Contributions and Taxes on the Construction of Rental Houses for the so-called ‘Middle Class’ was passed (Ley de 25 de noviembre de 1944). The government began to rely on it, albeit still incipiently, on private investment to increase housing construction. This complementary scheme for low-income housing would be consolidated with the Decreto-Ley de 19 de noviembre de 1948, which modified the Law of 25 November 1944, whereby they began to be known as subsidised housing. In anticipation of the results that will be analysed below, it can be mentioned that public housing production in this period was characterised by falling short of the targets set. This would lead to a significant increase in the housing deficit. Beyond the quantitative issue, ‘the scarcity of products and their lack of quality would not only produce a poverty of construction and finishes but would also serve to guide architects in the adoption of construction types, shaping an architecture stuck to traditional systems’ (Azpilicueta Astarloa, 2004, p. 81). 4.2. Second period (1954-1960): significant progress towards modernisation of public housing It is difficult to establish a clear boundary for the change in economic policy that took place in Spain in the 1950s. There is a certain consensus in the literature that the change of course must be analysed within the international context of the Cold War. This had resulted in the division of the victors of the Second World War into two factions, the Western or capitalist block and the Eastern or communist bloc. The tension, which began at the dawn of the end of the war, reached a point of maximum tension in 1950 with the Korean War. Franco’s government took advantage of this conflict to take a clear stand against communism and, consequently, in favour of the United States. Although the support did not go beyond paper, this position precipitated the country’s international opening. In July of the HUMAN Review, 2023, pp. 9 - 17 same year, the US Senate approved a granting of a $62.5 million loan to Spain. In November the United States defended the lifting of sanctions against the Franco regime before the UN General Assembly. The lifting of the veto on Spain meant the return of foreign ambassadors and diplomats, and the country’s entry into UNESCO and other international organisations. At that point, contacts between the two countries began, which would lead to Franco and Eisenhower signing the Madrid Pacts in 1953. These established three main lines of collaboration between both nations. While the United States guaranteed economic support through access to credits and the supply of war materials, Spain authorised the installation of military bases (Rota, Morón, Zaragoza and Torrejón de Ardoz), in a geostrategic position for American interests in Europe. In the same year, a new Concordat was signed with the Holy See, culminating the process of opening up with Spain’s entry into the United Nations in 1955. All these circumstances marked the end of the country’s period of isolation and the beginning of a long-distance race to catch up with the technological and industrial level of the world’s leading powers. A new economic period began, characterised by a strong commitment to industrialisation (Carreras, 2005, p. 360), also in the field of construction. As an example of this process, López-Groh (2009, p. 27) describes the growing trajectory of the automobile industry in Spain (Seat and Fiat in 1950, Renault in 1951 or Citroën in 1958), which is still a reference index for testing the economic evolution of a country. Figure 5. Prefabricated elements of Alvarez Castelao’s proposal in the 1954 Experimental Housing competition. Source: Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, 193 (p. 10). The signs of the opening up of the country also had a considerable impact on social housing. In this respect, Sambricio (2000, p. 46) argues that 1954 was a turning point in the way of understanding and valuing social housing, through typological, constructive, and even urbanistic aspects. It is a process that began at the end of the 1940s. The new social, union, and limited income housing regimes, their regulatory development and the technical ordinances that standardise their construction, should be considered as the mandatory milestones that consolidate this significant advance in the modernisation of both the theoretical paradigms and the construction processes. One of the objectives of this new legislative framework was to increase the degree of industrialisation in the construction of social housing, with the aim of rationalising processes, reducing costs and execution time. This fact will be key in the analysis of the degree of innovation achieved in the construction of social housing, established as the subject of study in this work. In terms of housing planning, the Social Housing Plan (1954-1960), the Trade Union Housing Plan (19541960) and the Five-Year Plan (1956-1960) were launched during this period. The Trade Union for Housing and Architecture (OSHA) took on a leading role in these plans as the main construction agent at the service of the National Housing Institute. The forecasts for housing construction increased considerably, and consequently the number of homes finally built. As will be analysed, the results in quantitative terms will be close to the estimates. The government begins to lose weight in the direct construction of housing, in favour of an incipient private initiative. In fact, in 1957 a new category of housing was created, within the limited income housing, the so-called subsidised housing. They sought to consolidate private development by granting non-refundable subsidies. This was the first major legislative measure adopted by the Ministry of Housing created in the same year. As will be analysed below, it meant the unification of the different institutions related to housing construction under the same governing body. 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