Monuments in Madrid: Plaza Mayor

Uncategorized — By on April 11, 2008 12:00 am

by Cynthia Blair Kane

Pick up
any Madrid
guidebook and you’ll find Plaza Mayor listed as one of the “must see”
historical sites. No doubt the article will be accompanied by photos of this grand arcaded edifice or the fresco of floating nymphs, repainted by Carlos Franco in 1992, on the interior “Casa de la Panaderia” wall.
Although you can read the history and see its beauty in pictures, experiencing Plaza
Mayor in person makes its past and present palpable.

Originally called the Plaza de
Arrabal, the Plaza Mayor was built during the Hapsburg period. In 1581 Juan de
Herrera, a Renaissance architect, was asked by Philip II, then King of Spain,
to help design the Plaza; however, construction didn’t start until 1617 under the
reign of Philip III when Juan Gomez de Mora took over the project. The Plaza
was finished in 1619. The Plaza Mayor that we see today, however, is not that
of Juan Gomez de Mora but of Juan de Villanueva, who reconstructed the Plaza in
1790 after it was destroyed by fire.

Surrounded by three-story
residential buildings, 237 balconies face the plaza, which measures 129 by 94
meters and has nine entrances making it one of Spains most impressive. In its
current Incarnation, It’s a place to enjoy a café or stroll underneath the
porticos while perusing the souvenir shops and restaurants – a place to relax
from the city’s drain. But the peacefulness of the plaza today is very
different from what one would have found here in the past.

Once
occupied by a city market, the area was bustling with people buying bread,
buttons, meat and milk. Many of the nearby streets still hold the names of the
trades and foods once sold here. Along with the market, people would gather for
royal weddings, bullfights and fiestas. It wasn’t always fun and games, though,
as the plaza was also the site of many autos-de-fe that sometimes preceded
public executions.

Auto de
Fe, which in medieval Spanish means, “act of faith,” was essentially a
religious ritual, common during the Spanish Inquisition, condemning heretics.
Because of the expulsion of Jews in 1492 and the Muslim Moors in 1502, the
Inquisition was established to ensure the orthodoxy of recent Jewish and Muslim
converts. During this time the plaza
became the site where those found guilty of heresy were sentenced. It is said
that in just one day in 1680, 118 prisoners were tried in Plaza Mayor and 21 of them were eventually burned alive,
although not in the Plaza itself.

Plaza Mayor has really seen it all;
and maybe it’s the frivolity of the square today juxtaposed with its past that
makes the history of the Plaza so present.