Founding of Madrid

• Somebody out there?

In the Inferior Paleolithic Era (400,000 years ago) indigenous people were already in Madrid. In a zone surrounded by extensive rivers (today Manzanares, Henares and Jarama) that allowed for abundant fishing and surrounded by extensive zones of rich vegetation in which reindeer, horses, bulls and elephants hid, (some of up to five meters tall) these ancestors made practical utensils for their daily tasks.

Advancing forward through history, we must go to the times of permanent existence of Muslim community to be able to speak seriously about Madrid as a city. Despite knowing that in the Copper and Iron Ages the first "Madrileños" left numerous artifacts behind, most were not recoverable until much later in history; artifacts that we can find in the Archaeological Museum.

• Alongisde the Manzanares

But, as we said, this is in the times of Abderramán II, son of Mohammed I (850-886), when they had already constructed a bunker for defense to hold off the constant attacks by the Christians, called the Reconquest. This fortress was atop a hill to the left of the Manzanares River. It was peculiar to locate defensive elements in that zone, since it formed a block with the central bulk and Toledo.

With the existence of this fortification we can think that all the inhabitants of, what today it is, our city centered around cattle and agricultural activities, along with some lay persons who complemented the military population (blacksmiths, tailors...). We can conclude that few modifications and changes took place throughout a long period of time.

• The first name: Mayrit

We cannot forget to mention the first document of the famous geographer Al-Himllari, who says: "There is in Mayrit a clay which stew pots are made of, which can be used, putting them in the fire, for twenty years without breaking. Food, once deposited inside, never alters with the atmospheric heat."

The village changed from Muslim to Christian hands several times due to the continuous assaults. It's current location in the central zone was not established until well after the Reconquests that consolidated it as a stable city by Alfonso I in 1083. This situation produced a quite important coexistence of cultures of current day Madrid.

With the arrival of the Reconquest with its characteristic impetus of that time, all symbols of the Muslim world were removed from the city. The mosques soon "were sanctified for occultism" and we lost many of the cultural elements that we would enjoy today.