What moved, and where everything is now
Three of the square's four landmarks were lifted out during the works and put back in different places. Older accounts give their positions by reference to banks along Calle de Alcalá, several of which are now shops and hotels.
- Kilometre Zero went back in March 2023, in the position it had before — but it now sits at the centre of a large compass rose, with the names of every Spanish provincial capital engraved around its points. The rose is new. The plaque still marks the origin of the six radial national roads, which is the fact older accounts get right.
- The statue of Charles III — which is not ancient; it went up in 1994 — was moved in April 2023, a seventy-tonne operation over two days, and now stands inside the new oval fountain, turned to face the Casa de Correos. The two old fountains are gone.
- El Oso y el Madroño, the bear and the strawberry tree, was moved in March 2023 to the eastern end of the new line of benches. It is by Antonio Navarro and was installed in January 1967; this is at least its fourth position in the square.
- La Mariblanca stands at the other end of the same bench line. She is a copy; the original is in the Museo de Historia de Madrid, which older accounts call the Municipal Museum.
Two things about the rebuild are worth knowing because they look like oversights and are not. There are no trees in the square — the metro and suburban rail tunnels run under about nine-tenths of the surface, so there is nowhere to put roots, and the planting went into the surrounding streets instead. And the shell-shaped canopy over the suburban rail entrance, which everyone calls la ballena, the whale, is still there: replacing it was the one element of the scheme that was dropped as unworkable.
The bear and the tree do not explain the name
Older accounts state that "Madrid" derives from the Spanish word for the madrone or strawberry tree. It does not. The bear and the tree are the city's heraldic arms — a device, and probably a pun — not an etymology. The name is generally traced instead to the Arabic Mayrit, from the watercourses on the site, with a possible Romance root underneath it. The arms came long afterwards.
What happened here
This square is where a good deal of modern Spanish history has physically taken place, and older accounts reduce that to a note that one might see a protest.
- 2 May 1808. The rising against Napoleon's troops began in this square. Goya painted it — the charge of the Mamelukes is the Puerta del Sol, and the firing squad of the following dawn is the companion picture. Both hang in the Prado, fifteen minutes' walk away, and seeing the square and then the paintings in that order is the single best thing this cluster of pages can suggest.
- May 2011. The indignados occupied the square for weeks in the 15-M movement, an encampment that drew international coverage and reshaped Spanish politics. It is the most significant event in the square in living memory and no older account written afterwards mentions it.
- Demonstrations remain routine, because this is where Spain comes to demonstrate. They are lawful, announced and almost always uneventful.
The clock, and the grapes
The low brick building on the south side is the Casa de Correos, built as the post office in the eighteenth century. It is no longer anything of the kind: it is the seat of the Presidency of the Comunidad de Madrid, the regional government. Older accounts translate the name literally and leave the reader thinking it is a working post office.
Its clock tower is the centre of the Spanish New Year. The sequence matters because people get it wrong and lose their grapes: the ball on the tower drops first, then four quarter-chimes sound as a warning, and only then come the twelve strokes — one grape to each. Tens of thousands fill the square; it is free; there is a rehearsal on 30 December.
The custom is usually traced to 1909 and a glut of grapes in the Levante, growers giving them away and claiming they brought luck. Madrid's own tourism service presents that as the most popular of the origin stories rather than as established fact, and it is worth passing on the same way. The broadcast has run since 1962, so rather longer than the forty years older accounts give it. In 2018 the clock was put back an hour for the first time in its history so the chimes could also be broadcast on Canary Islands time.
Tío Pepe
The sherry sign that everybody photographs has had a more complicated life than its permanence suggests. It first went up in 1935 on the roof of the Hotel París, at number 1. The hotel closed and demolition work took the sign down in 2011. After a public campaign, it was reinstated in 2014 on number 11, on the opposite side of the square, directly facing the Casa de Correos. So it is back, and it is not where it was.
Practicalities
- This is the busiest interchange in the city, with metro and suburban rail beneath it, and the densest crowds in Madrid above. It is correspondingly the best place in Spain to have a pocket picked. Bags in front, nothing in a back pocket.
- In summer the city rigs shade awnings across the square, which is an indication of what the paving does in August.
- The pedestrian shopping streets run north from here — Preciados and Carmen — and are dealt with on the shopping page. Galería Canalejas, the luxury gallery that opened in 2022, is a few steps east.
- The Congreso de los Diputados, the lower house of parliament, is five minutes away on the Carrera de San Jerónimo. The Plaza Mayor and the Palacio Real are a short walk west.
General practicalities for the city are on the Madrid page.