What everyone should know about Spain’s capital and its largest city.

Madrid is located at the centre of the country, on a large plateau southeast of the Sierra de Guadarrama at 660 metres above sea level. It is home to 3.2 million people.

The current mayor is Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, of the conservative Partido Popular (PP). There are no less than four governments headquartered here: national, regional, provincial, and city. At the regional level, the Autonomous community of Madrid is one of Spain’s 17. It comprises the sole province of Madrid, and the cities of Alcalá de Henares, Alcobendas, Alcorcón, Aranjuez, Coslada, l'Escurial, Fuenlabrada, Getafe, Guadarrama, Leganés, Móstoles, Parla, and Torrejón de Ardoz.

This makes for complex relations between authorities, including between the national government and the autonomous communities. Each autonomous community having a particular historical relationship to the central government, attributing jurisdiction over particular matters of law has been a common point of contention. European policy as concerns integration, enlargement, EU regulation compliance, and the distribution of incoming regional aid has also kept politicians and pundits working hard.

A key facet of political life in Madrid has been an unfortunate familiarity with terrorism since the Basque Liberation Army (ETA) began direct action in the seventies. Concerns were rekindled by the simultaneous train bombings of 11 March 2004 by radical Islamists in retaliation for Spain’s support of the previous year’s US-led invasion of Iraq. However, it appears that Madrid’s tourist industry was only affected in the very short term after the event.

Tourism is a long-established industry, and Madrid is also receiving an increasing number of international students of language and other disciplines. As this Web site reflects, leisure, accommodation, and transport facilities are outstanding, making life easy for the traveller staying from a few days to a few months.