Glorieta de Emilio Castelar: The Grand Boulevard
Why is it significant?
From the edge of the roundabout, look at the white marble monument rising out of the traffic: a man in a frock coat, one arm outstretched, mid-sentence, surrounded by allegorical figures. And then look down the boulevard in both directions. It seems to run for ever.
Key Facts
| Place | Glorieta de Emilio Castelar: The Grand Boulevard |
|---|---|
| Address | Glorieta de Emilio Castelar, 28010 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.43510, -3.68920 |
| Part of Walk | The Marquis Who Built a City: Madrid's Salamanca District & the Castellana |
| Generated | Generated |
From the edge of the roundabout, look at the white marble monument rising out of the traffic: a man in a frock coat, one arm outstretched, mid-sentence, surrounded by allegorical figures. And then look down the boulevard in both directions. It seems to run for ever.
The man is Emilio Castelar, and the monument, unveiled in 1908, is by Mariano Benlliure, the most famous Spanish sculptor of his day. Castelar was a professor of history and the greatest orator of nineteenth-century Spain. In 1873 and 1874 he led the government of the short-lived First Republic, and people said that when he spoke in parliament even his enemies stayed to listen.
The boulevard is the Paseo de la Castellana, and it takes its name from a long-vanished spring and fountain, the Fuente Castellana. In the nineteenth century it was a fashionable promenade lined with aristocratic mansions and gardens, where Madrid society drove its carriages on Sunday afternoons. Then the city grew north, and the Castellana grew with it, until it became the spine of modern Madrid, some six kilometres long and still running, past ministries, banks and the football stadium of Real Madrid.
Most of those mansions are gone. In the boom of the 1960s and 1970s, palace after palace came down to make room for office blocks, a loss that still makes Madrid architects wince. The name changed too: after the Civil War the boulevard was renamed in honour of Franco, and it only got its old name back in 1980.
So stand here and you are at a crossroads of two Madrids: the nineteenth-century city of orators and carriages, and the glass towers marching north to the horizon. For the last stop, take Paseo del General Martínez Campos, the street running west from the roundabout. A few minutes along, behind a garden wall, a painter is waiting for you in the sunshine.