AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Edificio Telefónica is a 1930 landmark on the corner of rúas San Andrés and Mantelería in A Coruña's historic Pescadería quarter. Built as the city's first automatic telephone exchange, it is one of the earliest examples of Telefónica's purpose-built network architecture in Spain — a concrete industrial shell dressed in stone façades designed to blend seamlessly with the surrounding old town.↗↗
Today the building stands empty, its telecom equipment removed after Telefónica finally vacated in late 2024. The city council plans to acquire it for public community use, making this a moment when visitors can study its protected façades up close before new life transforms its ground floor.↗↗
Born from a Telephone Revolution
In August 1924, King Alfonso XIII granted the newly formed Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España — a subsidiary of New York's International Telephone and Telegraph Co. — a monopoly over Spanish telephony. The catch: within five years, the company had to build a brand-new automatic network across seventeen cities, including A Coruña and Vigo in Galicia. The result was a crash programme of exchange-building that reshaped urban Spain in under a decade.
