Castelao Building of the Pontevedra Museum

The Castelao Building is the principal exhibition building of the Pontevedra Museum, located on the corner of Padre Amoedo Carballo and Sierra Street in Pontevedra, Spain, on the edge of the historic centre. Inaugurated on 4 January 2013, this modern structure was designed to address the museum's chronic lack of exhibition space and now serves as the main venue for displaying the institution's permanent collections of Galician and Spanish art. On 2 December 2021, it was officially named in honour of Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, one of the founders of the Pontevedra Museum.

The project was first announced on 2 May 2003, during the inauguration of the extension of the museum's Fernández López building, when the director declared that a new museum building would be constructed between Cobián Roffignac and Sierra streets. Construction took place between 2004 and 2008 according to a design by architects Eduardo Pesquera and Jesús Ulargui. The building occupies the former site of the orchard of the Jesuit College, behind the college and the Church of Saint Bartholomew. Financing came from the Deputation of Pontevedra, with additional support from the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the Xunta de Galicia, and the Pontevedra City Council. The urban integration of the project required the creation of a new pedestrian street between Padre Amoedo and Arcos de San Bartolomé streets. The temporary exhibition space opened in July 2008 with the Art Biennial dedicated to the Maghreb, but the full museographic installation was not completed until the formal inauguration in January 2013.

The Castelao Building houses 23 permanent exhibition rooms devoted principally to painting, presenting the evolution of Galician art from the Gothic period to the present day. It also displays artistic production from other regions of Spain from the time of Goya to the mid-twentieth century. Three rooms are specifically dedicated to Castelao. The Spanish painting collection includes works by Goya, Fortuny, Rusiñol, and Vázquez Díaz, while the Galician art holdings feature renovators such as Maside, Torres, Souto, Colmeiro, and Laxeiro. Beyond the permanent galleries, the building accommodates temporary exhibition spaces, an auditorium, a cafeteria, and workshop areas.

The permanent galleries are organised to show the trajectory of Galician art across centuries, with particular emphasis on modern renovators. The Spanish painting collection is especially strong in works from Goya's era through the mid-twentieth century. The three rooms dedicated to Castelao constitute a significant memorial to the museum's founder, while the dedicated spaces for Galician renovators including Maside, Manuel Torres, Souto, Colmeiro, and Laxeiro document the region's modern artistic movements.

The building covers more than 10,000 square metres and comprises three upper floors, a ground floor, and a basement. Its most remarkable characteristic is its luminosity, achieved through a composition of two rectangular structures connected by glass walkways. The interior combines white concrete structural elements with granite floors and bleached wood flooring in the galleries. The smaller southern module is fully glazed to create visual lightness and to ease the transition to the museum's Sarmiento building, to which it is linked by two mid-height glass walkways. The larger northern structure is more massive and enclosed, with granite exterior walls and longitudinal glass security panels that admit natural light from the upper portions of the rooms, functioning as zenithal windows. In the basement, a 50-metre section of the ancient walls of Pontevedra has been preserved and integrated into the building.

The Castelao Building stands at the corner of Padre Amoedo Carballo and Sierra streets, on the northeastern edge of Pontevedra's historic centre. It belongs to the Pontevedra Museum, a provincial institution under the Deputation of Pontevedra. The building's public opening followed the January 2013 inauguration, with temporary exhibitions having begun in July 2008. Visitors can access the permanent collections across 23 galleries, attend events in the auditorium, use the cafeteria, and view the preserved section of the ancient city walls in the basement. The building is connected to the Sarmiento building via glass walkways, facilitating circulation within the museum complex.