Roberto Ercilla was an energetic defender of good architecture in a world where the profession is undervalued. His works –oozing elegance, refinement, and precision – have done much to build the orderly and highly livable city that is modern Vitoria, a place endowed with the capacity to integrate old and new without trauma. There Ercilla always worked with wisdom, whether in the historic core or on the outskirts, continuing the saga of the Basque capital’s finest builders, including Justo Antonio de Olaguíbel, the neoclassical architect mentioned by Colin Rowe in the book Collage City. Over these past deades, Ercilla was surely the best architect in the province of Álava, and among the best in the Basque Country. But he built and left a mark elsewhere too: in Ibiza, in Extremadura, and more recently in Andalusia, where he produced one of his finest examples of exactness, gentility, and beauty – if one can still use that word without blushing. He was a veritable virtuoso of good construction and detail, with no displays of it unless it was necessary, and a cultivated, polished spirit, true to a popular saying that describes the Alavese people but can well apply to Alavese architecture.