There is a macabre fascination in learning about a city’s history through the violence that has been perpetrated on its streets. Leaving aside the wholesale slaughter of the Civil War and the subsequent repression, it is difficult to walk more than ten minutes in the older parts of Madrid without passing a spot where an important historical figure has been the victim of murder or attempted murder.
Here are some of the places/events, listed in historical order:
Calle de la Almudena (murder of Escobedo, 31 March 1578)
Puerta del Sol (assassination of the Count of Villamediana, 21 August, 1622)
Calle del Caballero de Gracia (murder of Anthony Ascham, 27 May, 1650)
Plaza del Dos de Mayo (deaths of Doaiz and Velarde, May 2, 1808)
Calle Marqués de Cubas (assassination of General Prim, 28 December 1870)
Calle del Arenal (attempted assassination of Amadeus I on 18 July 1872)
Calle Mayor 84 (attempted assassination of Alfonso XII 1878)
Puerto de Alcalá (assassination of Prime Minister Eduardo Dato on 8 March 1921)
I have confined this list to events that happened more than 100 years ago, and so have not included more recent murders, such as the assassinations of José Castillo and José Calvo Sotelo on 12 and 13 July, 1936, which precipitated the 17 July Army uprising, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War; nor the assassination by ETA on 12 December 1973 of Franco’s Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco.