| Francisco Jareño y Alarcón | |
| Birth Date: | 24 February 1818 |
| Birth Place: | Albacete |
| Death Place: | Madrid |
| Nationality: | Spanish |
| Occupation: | Architect |
Francisco Jareño y Alarcón (24 February 1818 – 8 October 1892) was a Spanish architect, author of one of the most remarkable official buildings of the Reign of Isabella II of Spain.
Jareño was born in Albacete on 24 February 1818.He entered the diocesan seminary as a young man to pursue ecclesiastical studies, remaining there for nine years. In 1833 he left it to enter the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, where he graduated in 1848, at the age of thirty, after completing a brilliant academic career. Thanks to a scholarship, Jareño had the opportunity to go abroad and travel, over a period of four years, to various countries in Europe.He had the opportunity to learn about how iron was used as an architectural element in several European cities. Upon his return, and with new financial aid from the State, he would travel to England and Germany again.He returned to Madrid in 1855, where he was appointed Professor of Art History at the then Special School of Architecture.
Of his first years of practice, the project of the Central School of Agriculture of Aranjuez of 1856 stands out, the first work that is known of Jareño, as well as the intervention, in collaboration with Nicómedes Mendívil, in the disappeared Spanish Mint, built in the space that today occupies the Plaza de Colón (Madrid). Between 1874 and 1875 he was director of the School of Architects, as well as a permanent academic of the Royal Academy of San Fernando (1867), Knight of the Royal and Distinguished Order of Carlos III (1858), Grand Cross of the Civil Order of María Victoria (1872), among others.