Madrid, Spain – 1961 – This photograph shows one of the largest school grounds in Spain in the early 1960s: a spacious open courtyard, bordered by a row of trees and dominated by the old building and the new wing on the right — opened in 1961 — of the Salesians of Paseo de Extremadura. The building, with its straight, simple lines, rises over several storeys and conveys the image of this Salesian house growing with determination. The history of this project actually began in 1925, when Salesian Cooperator Rosa Cáceres de la Torre donated an estate of over 20,000 m² in memory of her late son, Miguel Cisneros Cáceres, himself a Salesian Cooperator. That gesture of generosity enabled the school to be established on a humble, sparsely populated hill in the Alto de Extremadura district. It was no small act: it was the seed that, decades later, would make possible the construction of this 1961 building as a symbol of continuity, gratitude and the future.
