Telefónica Building: The Skyscraper in the Line of Fire
Why is it significant?
Tilt your head back at the tower on the corner of Gran Vía and Calle de Fuencarral: storey upon storey of pale stone and baroque ornament, stepping up to a height of almost ninety metres.
Key Facts
| Place | Telefónica Building: The Skyscraper in the Line of Fire |
|---|---|
| Address | Gran Vía 28, 28013 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42040, -3.70160 |
| Part of Walk | Avenue of Shells: Madrid Under Siege and the Road to Democracy |
| Generated | Generated |
Tilt your head back at the tower on the corner of Gran Vía and Calle de Fuencarral: storey upon storey of pale stone and baroque ornament, stepping up to a height of almost ninety metres.
When it was finished in 1929 for the national telephone company, it was the tallest building in Madrid, and for a while one of the tallest in Europe. Underneath the Spanish costume it is pure American engineering. The company was then controlled by the American giant ITT, the original plans came from the American architect Louis S. Weeks, and the young Spaniard Ignacio de Cárdenas dressed the steel skeleton in the decoration of old Madrid.
In the siege, height became a curse. From the top floors, Republican officers could watch the front lines in the Casa de Campo and correct the fire of their own guns, so for the besiegers this was the most obvious target in the city. Shells struck the tower many times. The steel frame held, the building stayed in service, and Madrid kept talking to the world through its cables.
Every foreign journalist's story had to pass through this building. The Republic's foreign press censorship office worked here, and one of the censors was the writer Arturo Barea, who later told the story of those nights in his memoir The Forging of a Rebel. Correspondents read their dispatches down the telephone line under the censor's eye, with the walls shuddering around them... the news of the siege literally left Madrid from inside the target.
Photographers loved the tower for the same reason the gunners did: it was the one shape everyone recognised. Today the company's headquarters have moved to the edge of the city, and the old tower hosts the exhibition space of the Fundación Telefónica. From here, carry on along Gran Vía to the point where it flows into Calle de Alcalá, and look for the building crowned by a bronze goddess with a spear.