Our cities are not inert backdrops: the urban landscape always tells a story. Reflecting on streets and buildings also necessarily involves recognizing that these spaces are the product of human intervention and the settings for our daily lives and our collective memory. This is demonstrated by the exhibition *Madrid Under Construction, 1940–1985*, which will be open to the public free of charge at the El Águila cultural complex from June 18 to September 22 of this year.
The exhibition was commissioned by Carolina Aguado and Guillermo Enríquez de Salamanca and organized by the Subdirectorate General of Historical Heritage. In a promotional video, Aguado expressed her hope that visitors to “Madrid Under Construction, 1940–1985” will find in the photographs on display“elements in which they will recognize themselves as individuals, as a community, or as a family,” noting that“the landscape has an identity-forming component.”
The photographs are also accompanied by quotes from film and literature and come from various institutions, such as the Spanish Institute of Cultural Heritage, the Madrid History Museum, and the EFE News Agency. Most of the images are the work of photographers such as Juan Pardo Barrero, Otto Wunderlich, and Martín Santos Yubero, who documented Spanish social reality during some of the most challenging periods of our recent history.
A Visual History of Rubble, Shantytowns, and Urban Expansion
The exhibition’s proposed itinerary begins with postwar Madrid, a city crisscrossed by barricades, trenches, and rubble. During the war, the capital was ravaged by bombings carried out by the rebel army and its allies, which destroyed or severely damaged hundreds of public buildings and monuments.
Emerging from the ruins, “Madrid Under Construction, 1940–1985” recovers the visual history of the destruction, reconstruction, and transformation of the capital —and, by extension, of Madrid’s society. This architectural and human narrative of the city concludes, at least as far as this exhibition is concerned, in 1985, the year the Community of Madrid was established as an administrative entity.
The exhibition also reviews Madrid’s architectural landmarks from the second half of the 20th century: the Torres Blancas building, the Pabellón de los Hexágonos, the Bernabéu… But it does not overlook working-class Madrid, the outskirts, and settlements such as Jaime el Conquistador, in what is now the Legazpi neighborhood, where thousands of immigrant families lived in shacks they built with their own hands.
After all, the history of urban planning in Madrid is also the history of the struggle to realize the demands of residents in these outlying communities, such as those in the Orcasitas neighborhood. The exhibition presents visual evidence of the urban encroachment on the countryside and the outskirts, and invites us to remember the people who lived there and fought to carve out a place for themselves in these spaces.
Exhibition Location and Hours
The exhibition “Madrid Under Construction, 1940–1985” will be open from June 18 to September 22 in the Cristóbal Portillo Hall at the El Águila cultural complex (3 Ramírez de Prado Street, Delicias Metro Station). It will be open to the public:
- Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m . and from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
- Sundays and holidays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
In addition, you can reserve a spot on the guided tours (which are also free):
- For adults: Fridays at 7:00 p.m., Saturdays at 11:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m., and 7:00 p.m., and Sundays at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 12:00 p.m.
- Guided tours led by the curators: June 23 and 24 at 6:00 p.m. and September 11 and 18 at 6:00 p.m.
- In sign language: June 26 at 7:00 p.m.