Majadahonda
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It lies alongside the motorway A6 Madrid-A Coruña.
The Puerta de Hierro university (public) hospital was relocated to Majadahonda from the western part of the city of Madrid into a newly built medical complex in 2009.
By the 16th century Majadahonda had become a proper village, with a population of about 400 inhabitants. At the end of the 16th century there were almost two hundred houses and some 800 inhabitants. Majadahonda is mentioned in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote and El Buscón by Francisco de Quevedo. The centre of the village at the time was the Church of Santa Catherine, a small hospital and a modest inn. The town extended through streets named San Roque, Calle Real, and Calle Christ. In the 18th century there was a considerable population increase, reaching a total of some 800 inhabitants, according to the census of Floridablanca. The majority of the men were day laborers, serving a minority of rich farmers and landed gentry.
In 1812, during the War of Spanish Independence, it was the site of a battle between the French and British troops which left the town in ruins. Ecclesiastical and civil confiscation enforced the sale of land, which was acquired by the rich and powerful nobility. One of them, the marqués de Remisa, used his position with the railroad company to have a train station built on his property, which is the origin of the present station, relocated from its original site at El Plantio, but still some distance from the town.
The Spanish Civil War greatly damaged the area, which, like Madrid, was mostly Republican. From 1936 to 1939 the town was mostly deserted. The town was entirely reconstructed with a more modern grid format.
Throughout the 1960s a process of urban transformation and population increase took place. Majadahonda abandoned agricultural activities, becoming a dormitory town for Madrid, and thus highly dependent upon the service sector.
The political changes across Spain have been broadly supported by Majadahonda, which voted in favor of the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In the first municipal elections, the old oligarchy lost the power, and a new City council was democratically elected.
Map - Majadahonda
Map
Country - Spain
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| Flag of Spain | |
Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The ancient Iberian and Celtic tribes, along with other pre-Roman peoples, dwelled the territory maintaining contacts with foreign Mediterranean cultures. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania) ensued, bringing the Romanization of the population. Receding of Western Roman imperial authority ushered in the migration of different non-Roman peoples from Central and Northern Europe with the Visigoths as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centered in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre made an intermittent southward military expansion, known as Reconquista, repelling the Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion, and eventually the converts were expelled through different royal decrees.
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| EUR | Euro | € | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| EU | Basque language |
| CA | Catalan language |
| GL | Galician language |
| OC | Occitan language |
| ES | Spanish language |