"The starkness that Machuca, along with his contemporary Diego de Siloe, introduced into Spanish architecture was the dominant feature of the Escorial—the extraordinary building that epitomized Spain's architecture after mid-century and was Philip II's monument to posterity. Philip's architects were Juan Bautista de Toledo and, after Toledo's death in 1567, Juan de Herrera. Both architects knew Italy and Toledo had practiced architecture there. He designed the Escorial, thirty miles northwest of Madrid, as an enormous rectangular precinct enclosing a royal palace, a monastery, and a church. The cornerstone was laid in 1563, and the complex finished in 1584. The period of its construction corresponded to the years of the Catholic Reform after the Council of Trent, and the building's astonishing severity and sobriety were indicative of both the religious spirit of Spain and of Philip II's own fervent Catholicism. His was a strict, ascetic faith, reflected in the Escorial's unadorned faŤades, rigid rectangular layout of spaces, and square towers marking each of the four corners of the building."

— Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p333.