Xavier Chérrez – Raquel Cantera – Gary Skotnicky – Juanjo Tenorio – Lidia Soto – Natalia Martínez –
A church of great size that was finished around the year 1612, and started in 1560 over a previous church that is reported from 1084, already dedicated to San Estéban.
The construction in the Catholic Kings style, a transition between gothic and renaissance, began to fail from the construction of the tower; due to the underground characteristics, united to the asymmetric distribution of the loads in the southwest corner of the complex.
The tower began to diagonally tilt towards and in southwest direction, dragging its adjacent walls and with them the set of groin vaults of the church.
Over the course of 400 years, the cracks widened inexorably until they reached more than 20 cm, crossing the entire thickness of the solid brick masonry walls of more than one meter thick.
There is evidence of previous failed interventions aimed hiding the damage with structurally inconsistent fillings or repairing the damages without addressing the cause.
In 2010, we began monitoring the progress and analysis on the pathologies that damaged the building. Subsequently, around 2014 following the detachment of bricks from the tower onto a vehicle, studies were authorized to develop a strategy to contain the towers’ movement and to avoid further damage and its eventual collapse.
The analysis of the underground began, a project that requires new foundation and subsequently restoring walls and vaults.
As of today the work continues, the vaults and walls have generated a great number of surprises. The severity of these have turned out more serious than expected. The successive failed attempts to repair the building have been efficient in hiding the number and extension of said damages and therefore have extended the time and level of intervention.
Currently, the complex has been stable for two years and is furnished with a new structure that has increased the building’s height by 75 meters between the base of its foundation and the top of its tower.
The new situation of the complex has made it possible to recover the original entrance on the south facade and to refurnish the square into the new access.