Madrid

Madrid is the capital of Spain and the Comunidad de Madrid, single-province autonomous region. Also known as the Village and Court, is the largest and most populous city in the country, officially reaching as the population census to January 1, 2010 the 3,273,049 inhabitants in the municipality, two and correction at the end of year Town Hall official figures to be approved in Congress by the end of this year is 3,284,110, while the number of people including its metropolitan area totals 6,043,031 inhabitants according Audes, thus being the third most populous city in European Union behind London-and Berlin and the third largest metropolitan area, behind those of Paris and London.
As the state capital, Madrid is the headquarters of the government, Parliament, ministries, agencies and partners as well as the official residence of the kings of Spain. At the economic level, Madrid is the fourth richest city deEuropa, after London, Paris and Moscow. It is the main financial and business center od Spain currently 50.1% of the income of the 5,000 major Spanish companies are generated by companies with headquarters in Madrid, representing 31.8% of them. Hosts the 3rd largest stock market in Europe, the 2 nd Latin American context (Latibex) and several of the largest corporations of the world.

 
At the international level, houses the headquarters of the World Tourism Organization, belonging to the United Nations Organization, the headquarters of American General laSecretaría, and the headquarters of the Organization of Iberoamerican States for Education, Science and Culture . It also houses the major international regulators and broadcasters of Spanish: the Standing Committee of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, and headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy, the Cervantes Institute and the Foundation of Urgent Spanish. Madrid organizes fairs as FITUR, Fusion, bow, SIMO TCI, the Motor Show and the Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week. It is an influential cultural center and has internationally prestigious museums among which the Prado, surely one of the largest in the world, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemisza, which deal, respectively, 9 th, 15 th and 56 th among the most visited museums of the world.
 
According to INE data, 2007, the regional human development index, is the 2nd largest in Spain, and is ahead of Norway, the country with the largest HDI. It also claims the British magazine Monocle, the 10th largest city in the world with quality of life.

 Its History

The conquest and colonization of the Iberian Peninsula Rome, carried out initially as a Roman military maneuver in a long series of wars with Carthage, takes almost 200 years since the Second Punic War until 27 a. C. in completing the pacification of the northern territory and divide it into three provinces. The region now occupied by Madrid would be located in Tarragona.
While it is possible that during the Roman period the territory of Madrid does not constitute more than a rural region, benefited from the situation a crossroads and natural wealth, the discovery of the remains of a basilica of Spanish-Visigoth period in the environment the church of Santa Maria de la Almudena has been presented as evidence of the existence of an urban settlement in that period. Other archaeological evidence of the presence of a stable population in Madrid are the remains of two Visigothic necropolis, a former colony of the Conde de ExtremaduraVallellano  next to the House and one in Tetuan de lasVictorias. Within the medieval quarter, there was a very deteriorated stone with the legend, never completed and interpreted in several ways, but it could indicate the presence of stable population and in the seventh century.

Its culture

Although there are few references to Madrid in medieval literature,and there are even famous locals in it, as Ruy González de Clavijo,is from the Golden Age literature where references to Madrid are abundant, either because the scenario literary works appear in their titles or by referring specifically to the village, its customs and inhabitants, among whom were themselves Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Góngora. The streets between Atocha and the Carrera de San Jerónimo concentrate most of the places of life and burial of these geniuses, including the place where Don Quixote was printed, and are known as Barrio or Barrio de las Letras de las Musas. The eighteenth century marked a decline in the quality of literature, including the scenic, but the Madrid public was delighted with the sketches of  Ramon de la Cruz, castizo environment more intellectual or Moratín productions.

Tourism

Madrid was in the year 2006, the fourth most visited city in Europe and the first in Spain to host more than 3.9 million tourists this year.LaOrganización is also home to the World Tourism andInternational Tourism Fair.
Most of the tourist attractions of Madrid are within the so-called central area, mainly in Central districts, Salamanca, Chamberí, Retiro and Arganzuela. At the heart of Madrid is the Puerta del Solit in front of the Real Casa de Correos, is kilometer 0, the starting point of the numbering of all roads in the country. The reason is that when you made ​​the numbers, in the nineteenth century, the Royal Post Office was the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.