La maqueta de Cádiz de 1779. Utilidad militar o metáfora de poder

Abstract

At the end of 1776, Carlos III launched a project whose objective was the creation of a collection of scale models of the most important fortified towns of the Kingdom. The leader of this project would be his minister of war, the Count of Ricla, who would rely on the renowned corps of military engineers for its implementation and development. The head of this corps was the engineer and Italian architect Francisco Sabatini. Although the project started strongly, the only model actually created was that of the city of Cadiz, completed in 1779. Having analysed the geometric characteristics of this scale model in great depth by means of measuring with a 3D laser scanner, and having extracted data concerning this project from the manuscript documentation preserved in the archives, we delve further both into the causes that led to the sudden termination of this project, and into the knowledge held in that era on these models, which were very much present in other European Courts. While it seems, initially, that these models were tools in the service of military strategy analysis, we question whether this was the true intent of this project or whether it was to produce objects that could represent the true power of an empire at a time when supremacy in Europe and the Americas was at stake.