Rita Fernández-Queimadelos

Rita Eugenia Fernández Benedicta Queimadelos (1911 - 26 September 2008) was a Spanish architect. She is considered the second, sometimes the third female architect in Spain. The first female architect to officially sign her own architectural projects in the state. She is also the first female architect in Galicia.

Early life and education Rita Fernández Queimadelos was born in 1911 in A Torre, a village in the municipality of A Cañiza, in the province of Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain. She was a daughter of Domingo Fernández y Fernández and Modesta Queimadelos Vázquez, merchants and owners of a haberdashery in the center of Orense. In 1929, women gained access to the School of Architecture in Madrid for the first time. She became the third female architect in Spain after Matilde Ucelay Maortua who graduated in 1936, and María Cristina Gonzalo Pintor who graduated the same year as Fernández Queimadelos. At the same time she worked as a freelance architect for the Crist real estate agency in Murcia and in Madrid. There she opened a studio and worked as a provincial architect building schools from 1960 to 1967.