MADRID

MADRID. Since 1561, Madrid has been the capital city and administrative center of Spain. At an elevation of 2,100 feet (640 meters), the city is located in the interior, near the Guadarrama and Gredos mountain ranges in an area of sparse rainfall (17 inches, or 460 mm, per year) and of hot summers and cold winters by Mediterranean standards.

Prior to the reign of Philip II, Madrid had no particular significance as a city. Muslim rulers constructed a fortress, or alcazar, at the site, and a system of underground wells supplied water. Under Christian rule, Madrid developed to the east of the alcazar. It was among the places visited regularly by the rulers of Castile, who had no fixed capital city. Chronicles report that Queen Isabella I (ruled 1474–1504) held public audiences and dispensed justice in Madrid's alcazar, and the first Habsburg ruler of Spain, Charles I (1516–1556; also ruled as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, 1519–1556), imprisoned Francis I of France in Madrid after his capture at the Battle of Pavia in Italy. East of Madrid, overlooking the fields, the Monastery of San Jeronimo stood, supported in part by royal donations.

By 1560, Madrid had grown to about 2,500 homes, or about 12,000 to 14,000 inhabitants. In 1561, Philip II (ruled 1556–1598) abandoned the tradition of a traveling court and settled in Madrid in the refurbished alcazar. He built the Escorial, at once a summer residence, monastery, and mausoleum, at a higher elevation northwest of the city to escape Madrid's summer heat. The complex, restrained in design, was the work of Juan de Herrera, and Philip II personally supervised its construction. Madrid itself was crowded with courtiers and administrators, and the people of Madrid were initially required to house them on the upper floors of their own residences. By the 1580s, the early theater works of Lope de Vega and Cervantes were being performed in Madrid; theater grew in popularity under the rule of Philip III (ruled 1598–1621), who briefly relocated the capital of Spain to Valladolid (1601–1606).

Although nobles were ordered to leave an increasingly crowded Madrid in 1611, the population had grown to over 100,000 by 1621. Madrid had no medieval city walls to limit its size, and it continued to expand. The San Jeronimo monastery was the eastern boundary of the city until Philip IV (ruled 1621–1665) constructed his own new palace, the Buen Retiro, outside the city proper and to the east of San Jeronimo. Philip IV departed from the more severe style of his grandfather Philip II; the elaborate grounds housed gardens, a lake, a theatre and a zoo. The first Bourbon ruler of Spain, Philip V (ruled 1700–1746), attempted to remodel the Buen Retiro in the French style. Later rulers settled in the Royal Palace, constructed at the site of the alcazar, which was destroyed by fire. Charles III (ruled 1759–1788) was the first to occupy the Royal Palace. An Enlightenment-era ruler, he opened the grounds of the Buen Retiro to the public and created an observatory, a botanical garden, and a Museum of Natural Science within the city.

Madrid played an important role in the development of Spain's economy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The heart of the Spanish empire, Madrid was nonetheless remote from the coastal cities that provided for and profited from imperial trade. Madrid, in fact, had to be supplied overland, having no navigable rivers nearby. Transportation costs thus made Madrid's own production of any goods other than merino wool too expensive to be profitable. It was said that Madrid manufactured only reputations.

From 1561 forward, Madrid's consumption of both subsistence and limited luxury goods also affected the economic development of other cities of the interior, notably Toledo. This effect was not immediate; as late as 1615, when Part II of Cervantes's Don Quixote was published, Sancho Panza's wife could request a hoop skirt from either Madrid or Toledo. But Madrid's population grew significantly during the reign of Philip III. By the 1630s, the city reportedly held more than 200,000 inhabitants and was the only interior city of this size in Spain. Madrid's demand for foodstuffs caused shortages and high prices in Toledo and elsewhere, driving migration to the capital. Madrid became a consumer of both goods and people, yet its demand for goods was not sufficiently deep or varied to encourage the economic growth of the interior. In the seventeenth century, even within Madrid, 75 percent of the population lived at subsistence level.

Madrid was first and foremost a political city, a capital deliberately chosen to be an administrative center, and if it acted as an economic link between coastal and interior Spain, it also undermined the economic development of the interior. Madrid can thus be considered a contributor to Spain's economic decline in the seventeenth century, rather than an engine of growth.

MADRID

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