Madrid

It is a nice walk of about 14 kms long. It can be done in several days considering that you can leave the walk in any of the many bus and underground facilities once you decide to stop.

The walk starts in the Ciudad Universitaria, circle or number six underground line, next to the Medicine Faculty. We go along the wide Complutense avenue to the center of Madrid taking the old path once was the tranway line until Moncloa square, at the first sight we have the huge Victory Arch. To the right the nice West Park, now in its centennial anniversary with a clear english design of open spaces and slight slopes covered with artificial grass. It is the ideal place for many students to walk and chat on the way to the different university faculties and schools.

Moncloa square it the city now in which you enter through Princesa street that invites to stroll way down to Plaza de España. On the crowded sidewalk can be seen groups of students mixed with the neighbourgs living in the district all of them busy in shops, banks, offices, bars and cafeterias.

Plaza de España, has been the point of reference to the capital seen from the outskirts, the couple of skycrapers, Madrid tower and Spain building are always in the postcards behind the monument dedicated to Miguel de Cervantes, the glory of the Spanish literature. The huge square is a nice place to relax either under the shadows of the big trees or sunbathing in the stone benches, lots of tourists as well as madrileneans share this emblematic space.

Now going up again along Gran Vía we arrive to Callao square, this street was the symbol of progress and modernity between 1920 and 1950 years. It is not any more, but its sidewalks are always crowded - day and night- more than any other in the city. Number of shops, specially for tourists, hotels, banks, change offices, cinemas with its characteristics enourmous façade film posters.
Pay attention to the entrance hall of the majority of the buildings specially on the right side of the Gran Vía. We invite to investigate and analize these halls.

Now again going down, we reach the meeting crossroad of Gran Vía and Alcalá street, from now on tere are nice buildings and famous monuments such Cibeles fountain, Post Palace and Bank of Spain buildings, Casa de América, and many others.

From Cibeles we see Alcalá's Gate, in the middle of a place with to different points of interest: a commercial and elegant street as Serrano and the once royal Retiro park, the most visited in the city because its location and the shadowy avenues scorted by thousands of centennials trees.

Goya is the new point of reference in this urban walk, a big departement store atracts thousands of customers and passersby. Now Manuel Becerra a new square, more popular than Goya and an important crossroad where to relax in the small and gentle Eva Perón park, but if we continue easily down to Ventas, we meet the Madrid famous bullfight ring in the center of a wide nude space.
That is the beginning of a new slope that climbs Alcalá street after crossing the circular M-30 highway through the pedestrian
"Ufo bridge". The street becomes commercial and popular alike until the confluence with to important ways such Arturo Soria and Hermanos García Noblejas.

The walk continues, now down again, along Alcalá street that once was called Aragón avenue. To the right, an important industrial site born in the 1970s. To the left, Suances underground, a very unknown Quinta de los Molinos park that invites to visit calmly.

The end of this long West-East Madrid walk is Canillejas, just at the junction with the road to Barcelone. We meet a crowdy place around bus and underground stations. A different way to cross Madrid.

© Traducción Juan García Vicente