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The Gran Vía in MadridThe Spanish Capital’s Historic Main Street is 100 Years Old
As one of Madrid's most famous landmarks celebrates its centenary, the symbolic avenue is changing character with more shops and fewer cinemas and cafés.
The plan to create a broad boulevard through the centre of Madrid was conceived a century ago in 1907, and work began three years later. It was inspired by the grand avenues of Paris, but ended up looking much more American than French. The idea was to link the growing neighbourhoods of Salamanca to the east of the city with Argüelles in the west, as well as opening up the cramped centre. Back then, the heart of Spain’s capital city was a dark labyrinth of twisting lanes, which had been expanding in a totally unplanned way for four centuries. As urban development goes, this was a pretty drastic scheme. Clearing the path for the new road meant demolishing more than 300 houses and dozens of little shops. 14 entire streets disappeared, and more than 30 were affected by the work. The First SkyscrapersThe new avenue provided the opportunity developers from both Spain and abroad had been waiting for to build on a grand scale. After decades of extremly limited possibilities, architects were suddenly able to introduce new trends and Spain’s first skyscrapers appeared on the Gran Vía, providing the headquarters for the banks and other financial institutions that were being founded in the Spanish capital. The Gran Vía was Madrid’s chance to move into the modern age and become a great 20th-century European capital. It was built in three stages, stretching over four decades. One of the most striking skyscrapers is the Telefónica building, built with American capital in 1929 as the headquarters of Spain’s national telephone company. The enormous structure heralds the beginning of the second stretch of the Gran Vía, where the buildings reflect the Art Deco features in vogue at the time, but are more obviously influenced by what was happening in New York and Chicago. One of the last buildings to be constructed was the Torre de Madrid, at the end of the Gran Vía in the Plaza de España. Erected in the 1950s, it has 32 storeys and was one of the tallest buildings in Europe at the time. Madrid in the MoviesThe film producer Samuel Bronston set up an office there, and started to shoot movies in and around Madrid. The film stars he brought to the city used to frequent the bars and cafés along the Gran Vía, creating a new, cosmopolitan atmosphere. There were lots of cinemas, along with private clubs, dance halls, nightclubs and cafés. Cocktails at ChicoteA real Madrid institution ever since it first opened its doors in the 1930s is the Chicote cocktail bar at number 12. A haunt of Ernest Hemingway, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Luis Buñuel, it has retained its original décor, with curving banquettes in bottle-green leather and is as fashionable today with a media crowd as it ever was. The 21st CenturyIn the 1980s, the avenue lost a lot of its elegance, with fast-food joints replacing the traditional cafés. Now, nearly all the cinemas have been turned into fashion stores and there are traffic jams at all hours of the day and night, the noise levels are higher than ever and it is difficult to make your way through the crowds. But love it or hate it, the Gran Vía is as much an essential part of Madrid as the Prado Museum.
The copyright of the article The Gran Vía in Madrid in Spain Travel is owned by Annie Bennett. Permission to republish The Gran Vía in Madrid in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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