Urban cartography of Almería City in the mid-nineteenth century: the plane of Perez Rozas and the topographic and cadastral map of the Junta General de Estadística

Abstract

The urban changes occurred in the Spanish cities of mid-nineteenth century, required an immediate response from the local administration to control and plan the urban growth. In 1863 the Almeria´s municipality hired former captain of the chief of the staff of the Army Joaquín Pérez Rozas to make a detailed urban plan of the city to provide a basis for a better urban planning. Consequently, the Junta General de Estadística became conscious of the growing need of this type of tools and started to develop cadastral and topographic maps of several cities (Almería, Cartagena, Cuenca, Granada, Madrid, Murcia, Soria and Toledo). The Instituto Geográfico Nacional keeps in its archives an important and almost unknown collection of plans of blocks of housed built in the 1860s. From all this rich cartographic material of great historical value and technical precision, this paper focuses on the documentation of the Andalusian city of Almeria. This paper analyzes several aspects of the historical context in which it was mapped, the urban space that was mapped, the chronology of the works and their authors.

Keywords: urban mapping, cadastral maps, Almería, Joaquín Pérez Rozas, Junta General de Estadística.