Madrid

Madrid is the capital of Spain, set on the Manzanares River near the geographic center of the Iberian Peninsula. Its symbol is a bear reaching up into a strawberry tree, cast in bronze at the Puerta del Sol. A plaque in the pavement of the same square marks Kilometer Zero, the point from which the distances of the national roads of Spain are measured.

Muhammad I, emir of Córdoba, built a fortress called Mayrit on a bluff above the river in the 9th century. Castile took the town in the 11th century, and Philip II moved the royal court there from Toledo in 1561, making it the capital of the Spanish monarchy. The Bourbon kings of the 18th century added the Royal Palace, wide tree-lined promenades and the building that later became the Prado. Charles III paved and lit the streets so thoroughly that he is still called the best mayor of Madrid. In the 1980s the movement known as the Movida made the city a center of new music, fashion and film, with Pedro Almodóvar among its directors.

Mahou, the brewer whose red star marks its beer, is based in the city, and El Corte Inglés grew from a small tailor's shop near the Puerta del Sol into a chain of department stores across Spain. ACS builds motorways, railways and ports abroad, partly through its German subsidiary Hochtief.

The Prado Museum holds the Spanish royal collection, with Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez and the black paintings of Francisco Goya among its works. Retiro Park, once the garden of a royal palace, has a glass and iron Crystal Palace built for an exhibition of the Philippine Islands in the 1880s. Real Madrid plays at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium on the Paseo de la Castellana, rebuilt in the 2020s with a retractable roof.