A cultural and architectural icon for Galicia

Galicia's "City of Culture" rises from the top of mount Gaiás, a gigantic icon reflecting the age-old tradition of St James the Apostle and a futuristic vision of an increasingly interdisciplinary world.

Back in 1999, the Galician Regional Government, or Xunta, launched an international competition to design and build a city of culture for the 21st Century. The objective was to revitalize the region's vocation as an important travel destination, popular for its hospitality. In a tough contest, the design proffered by architect Peter Eisenman's firm triumphed for "both its conceptual singularity and exceptional harmony with the chosen site".

ACCIONA is immersed in making this ambitious project a reality

The 700,000m2 site chosen was Mount Gaiás. More than 100,000m2 of this plot is taken up by buildings designed to provide a symbolic representation of the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, subtly blended with its immediate surroundings.

ACCIONA is immersed in realizing this ambitious project and has had the honour of inaugurating the first two buildings: the Galician Library and Archives. The first, with a surface area of over 15,000m2, takes up six floors and has the function of centralizing all Galicia's bibliographic collections. But the large library, with a capacity for more than one million books, will only be the most visible part of a management centre whose huge digitalization programme will allow greatly expanded access to all the region's libraries.

The Galician Archives, an adjacent building of nearly 12,000m2, complements the library. It contains all the public and private documents that must be preserved for their institutional, historic and cultural value.