Society in 19th-century Madrid
remained dominated by the landed aristocracy, with the poorer classes still
living in single-story slum housing and a full quarter of the working
population employed as servants in aristocratic households. A burgeoning middle
class emerged from 1837, when Church property was expropriated by the
government. Historians estimate that some 1600 Church properties were destroyed
in Madrid in the first four decades of the 19th century alone, leaving the new
bourgeois to pick up the pieces, and later art historians to gnash their teeth
and weep. Thanks to an injection of foreign, mostly French, capital, living
conditions were improved with the construction of street paving, gas lighting,
sewage and garbage collection systems.
Politics featured alternating coups between conservative and liberal wings
of the army followed by the short-lived republic of 1873 and the restoration of
the Bourbon monarchy in 1875. Spain
ended the century ignominiously, losing its navy at the Battle of Manila and her
remaining colonies, Cuba,
Puerto Rico and the Philippines,
to the United States.
The first decades of the 20th century saw improvements in Madrid
such as the electrification of the tramlines, the creation of the Gran Vía and
the inaugural metro line. Inward migration caused the city's population to
double from a 1900 figure of half a million to almost one million by 1931. With
housing shortages chronic, Madrid's
politics became increasingly radicalized. Opposition to the monarchy and calls
for constitutional reform grew louder, with socialists leading the way under
the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and General Workers' Union (UGT).
The Spanish Civil War
A repressive six-year military dictatorship was finally ended by Alfonso
XIII in 1930, and the ensuing municipal elections saw a coalition of
republicans and socialists carry the day. Three days later, the second republic
was proclaimed. Universal suffrage was introduced, Alfonso XIII fled the
country and Madrid was officially
recognized as the capital of the Spanish state. The joyful celebration was
sadly short-lived, however, as party infighting, calls for revolution, a series
of crippling strikes and the bloody suppression of a miners' revolt by troops
led by General Francisco Franco saw the country in constant turmoil. The
situation reached boiling point when the Frente Nacional or National Front was
beaten by the left-wing Frente Popular or Popular Front in the elections of
February 1936. Three years of bloody civil war began in July 1936 by rebellious
North African garrisons, led by Franco. Madrid
held the nationalists at bay until the surrender of March 1939, with fighting
heaviest in the northwest of the city.
Franco and the Restoration of Democracy
The victorious Franco made Madrid
his headquarters, ushering in decades of poverty, political repression and
chronic overcrowding. Economic woes lessened in the 1960s due to increased
foreign investment but discontent continued to rise. Franco died in 1975,
having earlier named Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso XIII, his successor.
With King Juan Carlos on the throne, Spain
made the transition from dictatorship to democracy with the appointment of a
moderate conservative government. Opposition parties and trade unions were
legalized, and a new constitution was written. Madrid's
first free municipal elections were held in 1979, and power has since been
shuffled between left-wing and right-of-center councils. In March of 2004, Madrid
was rocked with a series of terrorist bombings that killed many people on the
city’s transit system.