Madrid

Overview

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain, a city of about 3.48 million people on the Manzanares River in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula (Britannica; CityPopulation.de). It became the seat of the Spanish court in 1561 and the official capital in 1607, and it is the country’s arts and financial centre, home to the Prado Museum and a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of arts and sciences (Britannica; UNESCO World Heritage Centre).

The city sits almost exactly at the geographical heart of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Meseta, an undulating plateau of sand and clay, at about 2,120 feet (646 metres) above sea level — one of Europe’s highest capitals (Britannica). The Manzanares River borders it on the west and south (Britannica Kids). The city also hosted the 1991 national meeting of families of people with deafblindness after which APASCIDE was founded.

From Moorish fortress to capital

Madrid began as an unlikely capital. By the 900s it was a small fortress town of Muslims from northern Africa, and the Christian king Alfonso VI captured it in 1083 (Britannica Kids). Its earliest role was a small Moorish fortress on a rocky outcrop, part of the northern defences of Toledo, about 43 miles (70 km) south-southwest (Britannica). It remained small and unimportant until it became the Spanish capital: in 1561 King Philip II made it the centre of his royal government, and in 1607 King Philip III made Madrid the official capital (Britannica Kids).

Madrid was chosen for its obscurity, not its advantages: it lacked ties with an established non-royal power, lies on no major river and has no mineral deposits or other natural wealth (Britannica). The dramatist Lope de Vega joked that the city’s magnificent bridge over the unimposing Manzanares meant either selling the bridge or buying another river (Britannica).

Under the patronage of Philip II and his successors, Madrid developed into a city of curious contrasts, preserving its old, overcrowded centre, around which developed palaces, convents, churches and public buildings (Britannica). When the city was first made the capital, the king obliged its inhabitants to let a floor of their houses to ambassadors and visiting dignitaries, prompting single-storey building and casas a la malicia (“spite houses”) with a one-storey facade (Britannica). The last of Madrid’s four sets of city walls was built in 1625 and was not demolished until 1860, by which time the population had quadrupled (Britannica). Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte, who briefly interrupted the Bourbon line of kings, demolished convents to create open space, earning the nickname El Rey Plazuelas (“King of the Small Plazas”); the Plaza de Oriente was cleared of 56 houses, a library, a church and several convents (Britannica). Madrid suffered heavy bombing in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and grew greatly in the second half of the 20th century (Britannica Kids).

11 March 2004

On the morning of 11 March 2004, 10 bombs exploded on four trains in and around Atocha Station from 7:37 am, leaving 191 dead and more than 1,800 injured, three days before Spain’s general elections (Britannica). The government and media immediately blamed ETA, a Basque separatist organisation whose 30-year campaign had claimed at least 800 lives; the interior minister, Ángel Acebes, claimed “There is no doubt ETA is responsible” (Britannica). The next day an estimated 11 million Spaniards, including 2.3 million in Madrid, demonstrated against the violence (Britannica). As the investigation turned towards the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, protesters in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities chanted “We want to know the truth before we vote” (Britannica). With some 90 percent of Spaniards opposed to Prime Minister José María Aznar’s support for the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Islamic connection put Iraq atop the agenda, favouring the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which won an upset victory on 14 March; José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero became prime minister three days later (Britannica). In October 2007, 18 Islamic fundamentalists of mainly North African origin and three Spanish accomplices were convicted of the bombings and seven others acquitted, in what Britannica calls one of Europe’s deadliest terrorist attacks since World War II (Britannica).

The city today: people, climate, layout and economy

The census series from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) shows a city that shrank for two decades, bottomed out around the 2001 census, and has grown in every count since — reaching 3,477,497 in the municipal register of 1 January 2025 (CityPopulation.de). In 2025, 701,954 residents were aged 65 or over, and 738,016 were born in the Americas, against 2,460,377 born in Spain (CityPopulation.de).

Census / register	City population
1981 census	3,158,818
1991 census	3,010,492
2001 census	2,938,723
2011 census	3,198,645
2021 census	3,277,451
2025 register (1 Jan)	3,477,497

Source: CityPopulation.de, from Instituto Nacional de Estadística data.

The climate matches the altitude: cold, crisp winters with sharp winds, partly because of the nearby Sierra de Guadarrama, and summers consistently dry and hot, sometimes above 100 °F (38 °C) in July and August (Britannica). Average temperatures run 41–75 °F (5–24 °C); rain falls from under 0.5 inch (11 mm) in July to about 2 inches (50 mm) in October, the rainiest month (Britannica).

The old centre is a maze of small streets around a few squares near the imposing Plaza Mayor, contrasting with stately Neoclassical buildings and grand boulevards (Britannica). The Puerta del Sol (Door of the Sun) is the city’s heart, from which the busiest streets spread, and the older section centres on the Plaza Mayor, a large square built in the 1600s (Britannica Kids). Each barrio (quarter) has its own style — “Los Madriles” (“the Madrids”) — and the lower quarters below the Plaza Mayor toward the river are still poor, albeit picturesque (Britannica). Madrid did not spread into the open spaces around it, not even crossing the Manzanares River until 1948, but the city has extensive parks and more open space overall than Paris: El Pardo and Casa de Campo are survivals of hunting parks, and the Retiro is the site of a former royal palace (Britannica). Construction of the Valdecarros district in the southeast, expected to house about 150,000 residents, began in 2007 (Britannica). Pollution can be intense and severe traffic congestion is common (Britannica).

Economy and government

Madrid is Spain’s centre for banking and insurance; construction and services such as tourism and publishing also bring money to the city, many Spanish businesses have their headquarters here, and factories make cars, airplanes, electronics, plastics and rubber (Britannica Kids). The wider region’s economy is the strongest in Spain: the Autonomous Community of Madrid has the largest GDP of any region, a 19.8% share of Spanish GDP in 2024, and GDP per capita of €44,749 in 2024, the highest in the country and 37.1% above the national average (CaixaBank Research). Those are regional figures: the region holds 7.2 million people against the municipality’s 3.48 million. Professional and industry-related services dominate the regional economy, at 44.4% against 30.2% nationally; agriculture (0.1%) and manufacturing (5.5%) matter far less (CaixaBank Research). Regional unemployment was 7.0% in the fourth quarter of 2025, and 9.2 million foreign tourists came to the region in the year to February, spending a record €18.177 billion (CaixaBank Research).

Measure	City (municipality)	Autonomous Community (region)
Population	3,477,497 (register, 1 Jan 2025)	7,170,000 (2025)
Share of Spain	About 7% of national population	14.5% of national population
GDP per capita	Not stated in sources read	€44,749 (2024)
Share of Spanish GDP	Not stated in sources read	19.8% (2024)
Unemployment	Not stated in sources read	7.0% (Q4 2025)

Sources: CityPopulation.de for the city; CaixaBank Research for the region.

The city is governed by a mayor and the region by a president, and both were re-elected on the same day: in the elections of 28 May 2023, the conservative Partido Popular (PP) — in charge regionally since 1995 and municipally since 2019 — won absolute majorities at both councils, re-electing regional President Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida (Morningstar DBRS).

Arts, science and the UNESCO landscape

The Prado’s building had its start in 1785, when Charles III commissioned the architect Juan de Villanueva to design a natural science museum; construction was interrupted during the Napoleonic Wars, but it was completed under Ferdinand VII in 1819 and opened as the Royal Museum of Painting (Britannica). In 1868 it became the National Museum of the Prado after Isabella II’s exile; she had enlarged the collection with paintings from the royal palaces (Britannica). Its holdings were the art collected by the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs: Charles V’s collection was enlarged by Philip II, both kings patrons of Titian, and Philip IV commissioned his court painter, Diego Velázquez, to buy paintings in Italy (Britannica). Today the Prado holds the world’s most complete collections of El Greco, Velázquez and Francisco Goya, plus works by Hieronymus Bosch, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt (Britannica). A 2002–2007 wing by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo added more than 235,000 square feet (22,000 square metres) (Britannica).

One famous painting left the Prado. In 1981 Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) joined the collection, but in 1992 it was permanently transferred to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía — a controversial move that defied Picasso’s wish that it hang amid the Prado’s great masterpieces (Britannica). During its 2020 COVID-19 closure, the Prado resolved to show more works by women and non-Europeans (Britannica).

On 25 July 2021 UNESCO inscribed “Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences” on the World Heritage List, on the basis of criteria (ii), (iv) and (vi) (UNESCO World Heritage Centre; La Moncloa). The Paseo del Prado was the prototype of a Hispanic alameda (tree-lined avenue) from the 16th century, and UNESCO calls it the very first green space designed within a European capital in the Modern Age, a model of strong influence in Spanish America (UNESCO World Heritage Centre). With the Gardens of Buen Retiro it forms a 200-hectare cultural landscape of buildings for the arts and sciences, industry, healthcare and research (UNESCO World Heritage Centre). The three main green areas (75% of the property) are listed as Properties of Cultural Interest (Bien de Interés Cultural), the highest legal protection, with 30-plus other elements and 35 major buildings (UNESCO World Heritage Centre). With the inscription, Madrid became the first declared historic urban landscape in Europe, and the second in the world after Rio de Janeiro, while Spain reached 49 World Heritage sites (La Moncloa).

Frequently asked questions

When did Madrid become the capital of Spain? Philip II moved the Spanish court to Madrid in 1561, and Philip III made the city the official capital in 1607 (Britannica Kids). Britannica’s main article agrees, though its FAQ box wrongly gives 1561 — a contradiction flagged in this profile.

How big is Madrid? The city had 3,277,451 people in the 2021 census and 3,477,497 in the municipal register of 1 January 2025 (CityPopulation.de). No metropolitan figure is given here, because published metro numbers depend on the definition used and no single figure was verified in a fully-read source.

What is the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro UNESCO site? A 200-hectare cultural landscape at the urban heart of Madrid, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List on 25 July 2021 under criteria (ii), (iv) and (vi) (UNESCO World Heritage Centre; La Moncloa). It centres on a 16th-century tree-lined avenue, the first green space designed within a European capital, and the Buen Retiro gardens.

What happened in Madrid on 11 March 2004? Ten bombs exploded on four commuter trains in and around Atocha Station during the morning rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1,800 (Britannica). The attacks came three days before a general election, which the opposition PSOE then won.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not repeat Britannica’s FAQ-box claim that Madrid became the official capital in 1561 under Philip III; Britannica’s own main text, summary entry and Kids entry contradict it.
• It asserts no metropolitan-area population; only the city census series and the 2025 municipal register figure are given.
• It makes no claim about the Royal Palace beyond its position facing the Plaza de Oriente.
• GDP, unemployment and tourism figures are regional (Autonomous Community) figures, never city figures.
• It does not describe Madrid’s metro system, airport, football clubs or districts beyond Valdecarros, and makes no claim about post-2023 politics.
• It does not assert a 192nd victim of the 2004 bombings.