In this setting, the usual saying " De Madrid al cielo" (From Madrid to heaven) applies, Today, Madrid is considered an Alpha World City, one of the top ten most powerful cities in the world, and is usually regarded in Spanish media and culture in three flavors:Ĭhamartín and the Sierra, as seen from the south Prior to that, Madrid had been mainly populated by societal elites, aristocrats and the military higher ranks as well as the royals, all of them getting severely broken by the time the war started, and got worse during the war. Madrid's growth was substantially slow compared to other European capitals, and only skyrocketed after the Spanish Civil War, where it got the bulk of the industrialisation after the Eisenhower-Franco agreements of 1959. Valladolid (the cultural and political center of Castile) and Toledo (the cultural and political center of former visigothic Spain, and so that of the territories acquired by Castile from the Moors, aptly named New Castile) were regarded as possible settling for a capital, but Madrid was chosen because it was equally distanced to both north, south, east and west and, probably, because it allowed to build a city from scratch.Ĭapital was moved to Valladolid under Felipe III, which managed to cause an economic and demographical meltdown in Madrid as well as a kind of cultural-political thriving in Valladolid, which fell apart once the crown's seat was reverted to Madrid under certain political schemes and political unrest, which caused a similar meltdown in Valladolid and is regarded as a disastrous and bad move altogether.