The history of the Puerta del Sol represents an essential part of the memory of the City of Madrid (capital of Spain), not only because the Puerta del Sol is a point of frequent passage, but also because it constitutes the "center of gravity" of Madrid's urban planning. The square has been acquiring its character as a place of historical importance from its uncertain beginnings as a wide and impersonal street in the sixteenth century, to the descriptions of the first romantic travelers, the receptions of kings, popular rebellions, demonstrations, etc. It has been the scene of major events in the life of the city, from the struggle against the French invaders in 1808 to the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931, and it has also retained its place as the protagonist of the custom of serving Twelve Grapes on New Year's Eve, to the sound of the chimes struck by the Correos clock. Nowadays it is a communications hub, a meeting point, a place of appointments, a place for celebrations and the beginning of demonstrations in the Capital. Puerta del Sol is beautiful.
During this intense historical evolution, the Puerta del Sol has been gathering the popularity of Madrid in its various periods. Since its beginnings, its position in the urban geography of Madrid has given it a leading role as a social meeting place, sometimes referred to as forum matritense. It has also been defined as "Plaza y foro" of Spain by Antonio Machado, and Ángel Fernández de los Ríos mentioned that "There is not an inch of land there that is not watered with the blood of patriots, factious or revolutionaries."
From the architectural point of view, the Puerta del Sol is a widened, oblong-shaped passageway, a point of convergence of streets that took on the appearance of a square in the mid-nineteenth century. In this space, a dozen streets converge, which in the eighteenth century were only eleven. The Puerta del Sol has undergone various urban improvement works throughout its history, the most important being the one undertaken in the mid-nineteenth century. In many cases, the urban development carried out throughout its history has gradually erased important buildings of the past. Of all of them, the only survivor is the old Casa de Correos, which was later the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior and is now the headquarters of the Community of Madrid. It is the oldest building in the Puerta del Sol today. The second oldest is the Casa Cordero, which throughout the history of the square has been changing its use.
The Puerta del Sol has excited several writers since the beginning of its history, and many of them have included this space in their literary works. Ramón Gómez de la Serna and the Generation of '98, in their works about Madrid, have described the social atmosphere of this center. In them they describe the existing animation of its daytime activities. From Lope de Vega to Ramón Gómez de la Serna the literary descriptions are frequent, perhaps because of the literary gatherings of the nineteenth century in its famous cafés.
Origins Historians specializing in the origins of Madrid show that the first settlers of the Madrid area were the pre-Roman tribes of the Carpetani. Their settlements were established in the area near the current Royal Palace. Little is known about the Roman settlements that invaded Hispania and settled in Madrid, and the customs and ways of inhabiting the ancient settlements that proliferated in the surrounding area are unknown. The first news of the primitive settlement, which was called Magerit, dates from the time of the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, when they established themselves in the area by building a walled fortification that surrounded and defended the town from possible attacks. Subsequent attempts by Ramiro II of León and Fernán González, Count of Castile to take the fortified square were momentarily successful in the year 932. During the years of the Reconquista, the center of the Muslim Magerit was the Plaza del Alcázar, which was located in the middle of olive groves, and probably on the site of the building known as the Alcázar, which burned down in 1734 and on whose site the present Royal Palace was built. Finally, the square was taken by the Christians during the reign of Alfonso VI in 1085.
More than a century later, in the twelfth century the growth of the hamlet made it necessary to build a wall fence that had the Puerta de Guadalajara (on the road to Guadalajara) located approximately at the current San Miguel Market. Another gate from medieval times, relatively close, belonging to the same fence as the Puerta de Guadalajara, was the Puerta Cerrada (now converted into a square).
Madrid is considered to be a city from the Charter of Population of the Vicus Sancti Martini, granted by Alfonso VII in 1126. This letter makes the new population emerges as administratively dependent on a prior:
Since then, as it was normal at the time, the hamlet extends outside the walls and, to the right of the Puerta de Guadalajara, the Plaza del Arrabal was born, which would become the Plaza Mayor centuries later. The hamlet grew to the point that it was necessary to build another fence, already in the fourteenth century when the new gate facing the rising sun was called Puerta del Sol (for the same reason as the almost contemporary gate of the same name in Salamanca), and the Guadalajara gate was moved to the east.
Three centuries earlier, in an area near what would become the Puerta del Sol was the Arenal stream, where a population center would later emerge, the arrabal of San Ginés. The other area was located in the northern area near the Postigo de San Martín (near the current Plaza del Callao) and was initially very devoid of buildings. The arrabal of San Ginés settled on the southern bank of the stream. This area would have an intense craft and hospitality activity in the form of inns, an immediate consequence of being an important access route to the new city. Around 1420, it can be assumed that a discontinuous row of houses began to form the section of the Calle Mayor.
All these streets would end up having a common exit from the city in the gate that the people would call Puerta del Sol, which was located at the entrance of the current Calle Preciados (Cava del Arrabal). The description made by the documents of the time seems to give greater relevance to the Puerta de Guadalajara (located in the current Calle Mayor) to the detriment of the incipient "calle ancha" that would be the Puerta del Sol. To know the size of such a street, some chroniclers mention that the width of the gate barely exceeded that of two carriages. Many of the historians of Madrid (as is the case of López de Hoyos) mention the Puerta del Sol, in medieval times, as a "transit, road and entrance to Madrid".
There are references that assure that in the fourteenth century the entrance of the wall gate was located approximately in the middle of the entrance of the current Calle Preciados to the Puerta del Sol. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the downtown area of the city began to grow, and as a result, the area of Postigo de San Martín began to populate and expand towards the area near the Puerta del Sol. The area, due to its flat and well leveled character, was very suitable for meeting and as a starting point for other possible roads.
In 1478 Puerta del Sol is mentioned as an urban entity and in 1481 it is mentioned in documents, for the first time, in the description of a popular trial regarding the demarcation of the jurisdictions of the parishes of San Ginés and San Martín, both in dispute since long ago. The parish of San Ginés had expanded its area to occupy the arrabal of Arenal (today Calle del Arenal), extending its influence to what is now Calle Preciados. This expansion threatenedly extended towards the limits of the parish of San Martin (located further north, in a place near the current Plaza del Callao), which gave rise to the aforementioned trial.National Historical Archive (Spanish: Archivo Histórico Nacional, (AHN)), Clero, San Martín, 8503.2 Also dating from this period are the writings on the requests made by Juan de Madrid for a plot of land located in the Puerta del Sol (also one of the first documents to explicitly mention it as such). In 1498 it was ordered to surface the "calle grande de la Puerta del Sol" (referring to what would later become the square), and in 1501 a municipal provision ordered the "paving of the calle grande de la Puerta del Sol for the entrance of the princes". The space, due to the large number of citizens, was used to make official announcements to the city.
One of the theories about the origin of the name dates back to 1520 when the Junta de Madrid meets to organize the uprising against King Charles V (born in Flanders), a rebellion led in Madrid by the Comuneros of Castile, under the command of Zapata. In this meeting they decide to build a fortification with a gate facing east, where the sun rises. The comuneroshad spread their rebellion throughout the different territories of Castile against the "foreign king", and the population of Madrid defended itself against the imperial troops by building fortifications. This assumption, although documented and validated by several scholars, has been called into question by recent research. Another theory about the origin of the name mentions how an anonymous painter made a painting or relief of a sun on one of its gates, giving rise over the years to the current name.
The space does not take on the appearance of a rectangular square-like area, remaining a crossroads of several streets until after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In 1570 the wall of the fort was demolished and the area was cleared in the form of a square, frequented by water carriers and peddlers. A fountain appears in its center, the Mariblanca fountain. The image of the Puerta del Sol in the middle of the eighteenth century was that of a conglomerate of unequal houses, most of them with only one floor. The streets were swept weekly, there were often dead horses in the pens, and the smell was unbearable in some areas due to putrefaction and the prolonged accumulation of garbage. The situation changed gradually during the reign of Ferdinand VI, the most significant change being the one experienced with Charles III.
First large buildings
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Puerta del Sol area was a widened passageway with several important buildings, each one with "lonjas" where the inhabitants gathered to trade different products, socialize with neighbors, learn about new things, spread news, etc. The importance of the Puerta del Sol in the sixteenth century was scarce compared to other areas of Madrid, being more relevant the Plaza del Salvador (predecessor of the Plaza de la Villa), the Puerta de Guadalajara, and especially the Plaza Mayor, as shown in the chronicles of the time. The name "Calle Grande" was common in the documents of the time. The "Calle Ensanchada" (which was the Puerta del Sol at the end of the fifteenth century), was paved and the consequence of the final cost of such improvement ended up in a dispute between the first neighbors of the Puerta del Sol and the City Council. The neighbors claimed that the work should be paid for by the City Council, while the latter refused to do so. The official interest was to improve the decorum and aesthetic appearance of the street for the royal retinues that usually entered Madrid through the Puerta de Alcalá on their way to the Alcázar. The neighbors were interested in improving the comfort of access and transit through the streets.