Patterns in spanish urban mapping: a historical analysis

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The colloquium had more than 90 participants. The inaugural conference was given by Dr. Lucia Nuti of the Universitá di Pisa. There were 19 presentations divided into four sessions: the views of cities, urban military topography, urban cadastral maps and town planning maps and other cartographies. The event culminated on Saturday morning with a guided tour of Drassanes Reials and the Museu Marítim de Barcelona.

Each session was followed by a debate, which raised themes such as:

• the accuracy of the urban views of Wijngaerde, in which invented elements coexist with reliable representations that allow to identify archaeological finds.
• the introduction of contour lines in urban cartography: in connection with this, the detail of the survey carried out by French military cartographers in Barcelona at the beginning of the 19th century was contrasted with the scarce altimetric information of Spanish military cartography, at least until the 1860s.
• the utility of representing the terrain of the battlefields on large scales, which can be justified by different causes: the study of the terrain for the needs of fortification, its use as a didactic resource for military training, and also reasons of prestige.
• new collections of urban plans hitherto unpublished are presented: the series of urban plans produced by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional within the framework of the National Topographic Map project, the alignment plans elaborated by the municipalities, and the cartographic activity carried out by private companies, with aims ranging from urban management to tourism.