History of Madrid

The area around Madrid was occupied by villas in Roman times, but there is no archaeological evidence of an actual town until after Ad 800.

Scattered evidence suggests that a small, walled town—referred to as Mageritah, Maricen, or Mayrit—appeared following the Moors’ conquest of Spain in about AD 854.

In 1083, Christians from the region of Castile captured the Moorish kingdom of Toledo, which ruled the small town of Madrid.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the kings of Castile used Madrid’s Alcázar, a fortress built by the Moors, as a hunting lodge.

The kings also occasionally called the legislative body, the Castilian Cortes, to meet there.

In the mid-15th century Henry IV, king of Castile and León, founded the Royal Monastery of San Geronimo, with extensive lands that included the area that is now Retiro Park.

The Monastery Church still stands behind the Museo del Prado near the park.

In the 16th century Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as Charles I of Spain) called the Cortes to meet in Madrid at least twice during his reign.

The most important meeting took place in 1528, when the members of the Cortes swore their loyalty to Prince Philip, Charles’s son and the new heir to the throne of Spain.

As Philip matured, he wished to separate his entourage from that of his father’s court in Toledo. Therefore, beginning in 1550, Philip used the Alcázar in Madrid as a residence.

Madrid was then a mid-sized Castilian town. Five years after Philip became king in 1556 as Philip II, he chose Madrid as the permanent seat of his court.

Philip II rarely traveled out of Castile, and to govern his distant provinces effectively, he needed a permanent base for his large staff of secretaries, lawyers, accountants, and bureaucrats.

Once the court was permanently established in Madrid, the city grew rapidly.

An increasing number of aristocrats, feeling a need to be near the king, built palaces in the city.

These changes attracted thousands of merchants, bankers, construction workers, and servants.

Estimates based on household numbers suggest tremendous growth: in 1600 Madrid had almost 100,000 people, and by 1630 it had from 150,000 to 175,000.

By 1590 Philip II had modernized the Alcázar palace with a Renaissance facade and had begun building the Plaza Mayor. His son and successor, Philip III, completed the Plaza Mayor in 1619.

The next king, Philip IV, and his first minister decided that the Alcázar was inadequate for royal needs, and in 1534 they built the Buen Retiro Palace.

This palace was located between what are now Retiro Park and the Paseo del Prado, including the grounds of the Monastery of San Geronimo.

It was a sprawling complex of palaces, gardens, tennis courts, and stables, but most of it was destroyed when the French occupied Madrid during the Peninsular War (1808-1814).

The small part that still exists is now part of the Museo del Prado complex.

Madrid's population stopped growing from 1630 to 1720 because foreign wars and the decline in silver from Spain’s American colonial empire bankrupted the Spanish government.

The monarchy could no longer afford the development and expenses that drew people to Madrid.

In addition, King Charles II died in 1700 without any heirs, causing a major international war over the succession to the Spanish throne.

During this struggle, known as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), Madrid was alternately occupied by forces from both sides.

By 1720 Madrid’s economic base was recovering from the war, and the city began to grow again. By 1800 the population reached 200,000.

The outcome of the War of the Spanish Succession brought a new dynasty of French Bourbon kings to Spain.

About the same time, silver production began to revive in Spain’s American colonies, bringing greater wealth to the monarchy and the city.

In 1734 a huge fire destroyed the Alcázar palace, and construction of a new Royal Palace began in 1738. This was the first step in a sweeping series of construction projects in Madrid.

Over the next 60 years the next three kings, Philip V , Ferdinand VI, and Charles III, built many major buildings and monuments.

These include the Basilica of San Fernando el Grande, the Casa del Correo on the Plaza Mayor, the Royal Customs House (now the Treasury Department), the Museum of Natural Science (now the Museo del Prado), the Botanical Gardens, and a Royal Observatory.

These kings also constructed a network of boulevards and streets, including the Paseo de Recoletos and the Paseo de Prado on the east side of the city, the Paseo de San Vicente along the Manzanares River on the city’s west edge, and several others along the southern boundary.

These changes helped establish Madrid as a progressive European city during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In the first half of the 19th century Madrid, and Spain as a whole, struggled through the Napoleonic Wars and a civil war over which line of the Spanish monarchy should rule.

These clashes, combined with independence movements in the Spanish colonies that depleted a main source of Spain’s wealth, caused serious economic problems.

Political reforms in 1836, however, led the government to sell church-owned land within the walls of the old city.

These reforms fostered a new period of growth for the city as the empty lands within the walls were developed.

The Royal Opera House was built in the 1850s, and in the same decade development of the first large area outside the old walls was started.

The National Library Building was begun in the 1860s, as was the Bank of Spain in the 1880s.

By 1900 new neighborhoods had grown up all along the eastern and northern edges of the old city.

In 1898 Madrid installed its first electric trams, and in 1910 the city began the first demolitions for the creation of the modern Gran Vía. This major street enables traffic to move freely through the old city.

By 1919 the first line of the Madrid subway was in operation between the Puerta del Sol and the new districts north of the old city.

In 1926 the city began its first attempts at creating a long-term plan for development as a modern metropolis.

The following year construction began on University City, now home of the University of Madrid.

The 1930s were chaotic for Madrid, as they were for the rest of the country.

In 1931 a new democratic republic was founded in Spain as part of a period of dramatic social and political upheaval.

The country became polarized over heated issues, including expansion and modernization of Spanish education, separation of the Catholic Church from the Spanish government, and revolutionary changes in labor and economic relationships.
Madrid became the scene of intense political unrest, strikes, and riots.

Death squads representing both the political far right and far left began striking their enemies.

The situation continued to worsen, and in July 1936 a group of military leaders led a rebellion against the government.

Because the rebellion succeeded in some areas of Spain but was stopped in others, the country entered a bitter three-year civil war.

As the capital of Spain and the seat of the government, Madrid was an important city during the war.

Initially, Madrid resisted the rebellion due to military troops and voluntary worker militias who fought against the rebel troops.

In late 1937 madrileños, assisted by international volunteer troops known as the International Brigades, again resisted a fierce siege of the city by General Francisco Franco and the rebel forces.

For most of the war, the frontier between the rebel forces, known as Nationalists, and their opponents, known as Republicans, ran along the Manzanares River and through what is now the Parque del Oeste.

The Nationalists regularly attacked the western district of the city and the university with artillery bombardment, and the entire city suffered frequent bombings by German planes assisting the Nationalists.

Madrid was so important during the war that when the Nationalists finally occupied the city in March 1939, the Spanish Civil War was over.

Following the Nationalist victory, General Franco began a nearly 40-year rule of Spain. Although Madrid remained the capital, it was deeply scarred by the war.

During the first 15 years of Franco’s rule, Madrid was impoverished due to a lack of capital and industry.

The economy gradually improved after 1950, bringing a flood of people into Madrid.

The Franco government, however, had few resources and no policy to deal with this immigration. As a result Madrid became surrounded with huge temporary slums.

After 1960 the government began a massive housing program to construct thousands of cheaply built high-rise apartments, and by 1970 most of the temporary slums had been eliminated.

After Franco’s death in 1975, life in Madrid changed as Spain shifted to a system of democratic government. For example, the material standard of living rose dramatically.

Madrileños gained better housing, more education opportunities, and more modern conveniences. However, during this time traffic in Madrid became a serious problem.

During the 1960s, Franco’s government tried to make room for cars rather than regulating them. They bulldozed boulevards, installed a huge parking ramp under the Plaza Mayor, and built overpasses in major plazas.

In an effort to improve traffic conditions, the democratic government began a new plan of urban development, halting the destruction of boulevards and streets and implementing more systematic control over the traffic problem.

The city developed traffic and parking regulations, renovated plazas and parking lots as playgrounds and parks, and removed unsightly overpasses.

In 1983 Madrid became the capital of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, which was created under a 1981 law.

The region grew as an industrial center to become the wealthiest autonomous community in Spain.

In 1992 Madrid was designated as the cultural capital of Europe, which focused international attention on the city and its arts.

By the late 1990s Madrid had become a large, dynamic city working to handle the issues surrounding its growth.

Madrid was the site of the worst terrorist attack in Spain’s history in March 2004 when ten bombs detonated on four commuter trains during the morning rush hour, killing at least 191 people and injuring more than 1,500.

A Spanish judge later concluded that al-Qaeda was behind the Madrid bombings in apparent retaliation for Spain’s participation in the United States invasion of Iraq.