Madrid Hotels
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The Community of Madrid (Spanish: Comunidad de Madrid) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is located at the center of the country, the Iberian peninsula, and the Meseta Central or Central Plain. The community is also conterminous with the province of Madrid and contains the capital of Spain, which is also the capital of the community. It is bounded to the south and east by Castile-La Mancha and to the north and west by Castile and León.
The territory of the Community of Madrid has been populated since the Lower Paleolithic, mainly in the valleys between the rivers of Manzanares, Jarama, and Henares, where several archaeological findings have been made. Some notable discoveries of the region the bell-shaped vase of Ciempozuelos (between 1970 and 1470 BCE).[5] During the Roman Empire, the region was part of the Citerior Tarraconese province, except for the south-west portion of it, which belonged to Lusitania. It was crossed by two important Roman roads, the via xxiv-xxix (joining Astorga to laminium and via xxv (which joined Emerita Augusta and Caesaraugusta), and contained some important conurbations. The city of Complutum (today Alcalá de Henares) became an important metropolis, whereas Titulcia and Miaccum were important crossroad communities.
During the period of the Visigothic Kingdom, the region lost its importance. The population was scattered amongst several small towns. Alcalá de Henares was designated the bishopric seat in the 5th century by orders of Asturio, archbishop of Toledo, but this event was not enough to bring back the lost splendor of the city.
The center of the peninsula was one of the least-populated regions of the Al-Andalus until the 11th century when it became important and a strategic military post. The Muslim governors created a defensive system of fortresses and towers all across the region with which they tried to stop the advance of the Christian Kingdoms of the north.
The fortress of Mayrit (Madrid) was built somewhere between 860 and 880 AD, as a walled precinct where a military and religious community lived, and which constituted the foundation of the city. It soon became the most strategic fortress in defense of the city of Toledo above the fortresses of Talamanca de Jarama and Qal'-at'-Abd-Al-Salam (Alcalá de Henares). In 1083, king Alfonso IV of Castile conquered the city of Madrid, and two years later, Toledo. Alcalá de Henares fell in 1118 in a new period of Castilian annexation.
The recently conquered lands by the Christian Kingdoms were desegregated into several constituencies, as a consequence of a long process of repopulation that took place over the course of four centuries. The feudal and ecclesiastical lords came into constant conflict with the different councils that had been granted the authority to repopulate.
In the 13th century, Madrid was the only city of the region that preserved its own juridical personality, at first with the Old Fuero (Charter) and later with the Royal Fuero, granted by Alfonso X of Castile in 1262 and ratified by Alfonso XI in 1339. On the other hand, the town of Buitrago de Lozoya, Alcalá de Henares and Talamanca de Jarama, which were rapidly repopulated until that century, were under the dominion of the feudal or ecclesiastical lords. Specifically, Alcalá de Henares was under the hands of the archbishopric of Toledo and remained so until the 19th century.
Around the town of Madrid, an administrative territory was created known as Tiera de Madrid (Land of Madrid), the origin of the province that included the areas of the current municipalities of San Sebastián de los Reyes, Corbeña, Las Rozas de Madrid, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Torrejón de Velasco, Alcorcón, San Fernando de Henares, and Griñón. This council was in constant strife with Segoviawhich was one of the most influent cities of Castileas they both fought for the control of Real de Manzanares, a large comarca (shire) that was finally given to the House of Mendoza.
The Castilian monarchs showed a predilection for the center of the peninsula, noted by the abundant forests and hunting game. El Pardo was a region visited frequently by the kings, since the times of Henry III, in the 14th century. The Catholic Kings started the construction of the Real de Aranjuez Palace. In the 16th century, San Lorenzo de El Escorial was built and became another royal site of the province.
The town of Madrid, which was one of the eighteen cities with the right to vote in the Courts of Castile, was seat of the Courts themselves on several occasions and was the residence of several monarchs, amongst them the emperor Charles I who reformed and expanded the Alcázar or Castle of the city. Besides its growing political importance, it also became a cultural center with the foundation of the University of Alcalá de Henares on 1508.
In 1561, king Phillip II made Madrid the capital of the empire. As such, the surrounding territories of the town of Madrid became economically subordinated to the town itself, even beyond the current limits of the Community of Madrid. Nonetheless, it was not a unified administrative entity since several jurisdiction of lords and churches existed, some of them controlling vast territories.
During the 18th century, the fragmented administrative situation of the region was not solved despite the several attempts. During the reign of Phillip V, the intendencia was created as a policial and administrative division. Nonetheless, the intendencia of Madrid did not fully solve the problem, and the region was still fragmented into several small dominions even though some processes were centralized. This territorial dispersion had a negative effect on its economic growth; while the town of Madrid received economic resources from the entire country as the capital, the surrounding territoriesin hands of noblemen or the clergybecame impoverished.
During the eighteenth century, the town of Madrid was transformed through several grandiose buildings and monuments as well as through the creation of many social, economical, and cultural institution, some of which are still operating. Madrid grew to a population of 156,672 inhabitants by the end of the eighteenth century.
In 1833, a new administrative division of the country was set in place, and the province of Madrid was created. The province belonged to the region of New Castile (today Castile-La Mancha), a region that, just like the rest, had only the purpose of classification, since regions were not autonomous political-administrative divisions.
In the 20th century during the process that preceded the creation of the autonomous communities of Spain, a fear of a political inequality amongst the proposed constituent provinces of the community of Castile-La Mancha led to the creation of the autonomous Community of Madrid, which was the last autonomous community of Spain created.
Despite the existence of a large city of 5 million people, the Community of Madrid still retains some remarkably unspoiled and diverse habitats and landscapes. Madrid is home to mountain peaks rising above 2,000m, holm oak dehesas and low lying plains. The slopes of Guadarrama mountain range are cloaked in dense forests of Scots Pine and Pyrenean oak. The Lozoya Valley supports a large black (monk) vulture colony, and one of the last bastions of the Spanish Imperial Eagle in the world is found in the Park Regional del Suroeste in dehesa hills between the Gredos and Guadarrama ranges. The recent possible detection of the existence of Iberian lynx in the area between the Cofio and Alberche rivers is testament to the biodiversity of the area. When looking at a map of the Province of Madrid, it can be seen that it is almost an equilateral triangle, in whose center would be the city. It seems that Madrid's geographic limits turn out to be those of nature: on the western side the "Sistema Central" (the Guadarrama mountain range), the south represents the desire to include (the Royal Site of) Aranjuez, and finally the eastern edge of the triangle comes from the rupture of the fluvial river basins.
Province of Madrid occupies a surface area of approximately 8,028 km² (1.6% of all Spanish territory). More specifically, the exact position of Madrid is 3º 40´ of longitude
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