The comparison of a city which got to the beginning of 20th century on regrettable condition with the thriving National State Capital arising from Spanish Civil War, has thrown over Madrid the suspicion that its huge transforming has not been but the result of an artifice, of the will of the regime established by General Franco of endowing with a big capital, an Imperial Capital.

All its recent growth, as well as its election as capital of the Spanish Monarchy of Felipe II, would not be more than the result of a political decision, of the forced transformation of Madrid into the capital of a tumbling-down Empire, and several centuries after, into the mirror of the empty grandiloquence of pro-Franco regime.

Madrid, the filthy capital of the Old Regime had become the flourishing capital of the New State, achieving the rank of big city and peak of the urban Spanish hierarchy, always competing with Barcelona, due to the only will of the winners of Civil War.

Madrid the artifice, Madrid guilty. Over this artificial capital has fallen the weight of the guilt for all the historical failures of the nation to which it should have served as dynamic urban centre.

Since ancient times has gravitated over Madrid the veredict of not having knowing nor have been able to carry out that function, bundle from its origin to the false of its election, permanent subjected to that reproach.

Travellers arriving centuries later to its threshold judged it as idle city, exclusively dedicated to the performance of court issues, with a population lazily lying in the middle of arid plain, predatory on its environment, germ where to look for the origin of the actual Spanish decadency.

Residence place of Court and landowner nobility, of bureaucrats and functionaries, industry lacking, without a enterprising bourgeoisie, lost the Empire, Madrid would have been the big brake for Spain to become a modern nation.

Madrid the artifice, Madrid guilty. Happens so Madrid a historically frustrated capital in the double sense of not being able to fulfil its capital function and growing, itself, frustrated as city.

It is not new, as can be seen, the reproach, but surely the most elaborated theory of a Madrid guilty of Spain's historical frustration proceeds from the first intellectual generation that, even looking at Madrid with critic eyes, pretends to make of it a big capital.

From professionals and intellectuals of 1914 comes indeed the vision of a Madrid who, because of been court instead of capital, has lacked of an idea to guide it growth and finds itself, after loosing the Empire, disorientated, without knowing which way to turn, locked up on its fence, without means to become European capital.

Madrid for the more conspicuous members of such generation, among which Manuel Azaña may be the one to make the most confirming veredict, looked as undone city, grown in liberty, like a blackberry on a path, a capital as "frustrated as the political idea to which it owed its rank".

That Madrid had to change from court of a ruined imperial monarchy into capital of a modern and prosperous nation was evident, mainly due to its incapacity of setting itself up as Spanish economical capital.

Unique among European cities of its same rank exclusively communicated by heavy roads or stagecoaches, Madrid was kept away and isolated from the most dynamic manufacturing and merchandising centres on the peninsula until advanced on 19th century, the road network was improved and first railway network was completed.

Without strength to become centre of a national market, Madrid kept on living of its historical function of consuming agricultural incomes generated on its region and proceeding from Spain all.

The predominance of consumption over production and services discouraged the economical growth of the region from which it was centre and did not give any impulse to those on the surroundings.

Besides not stimulating a national economy, Madrid had ruined Castilian economy, remaining until 19th century as an isolated urban centre, in the middle of a rural desert.

This is the reason why this city offered the visitors on middle 19th century an image of negligence and indolence.

As it did not find a dynamising destiny for industry and commerce of the rents which capital was consuming, Madrid gave the impression of a lazy gentleman, rural as the most one, living of lands, his or another's and what an small store on behalf of a poor relation coming from abroad rented.

Laziness is, actually, the sensation its social classes gave, organised around a circle of nobles, landowners, merchants and bureaucrats, and an unsteady mass of immigrants.

If Madrid promoted such sensation, it was not because they would consume too much at the city and very few was produced, but because those who consumed were mainly the nobility, people modely lazy, who literally had nothing to do from the moment they woke up late in the morning until they went to bed late at night.

The renters and bureaucrats did not take much advance on them regarding diligence nor tight timetables, not to mention the small dealers who watched time passing by behind their shop counter.

The incapacity of Madrid to become Spanish economic capital got the first step on its frustration as politic capital.

On the Modern Age already, instead of preside over the integrity of an Empire, Madrid just "registered the sinking of squadrons and lost of reigns".

Chosen as capital of the spaniards Habsburgo Empire, due to its geometrical centre on the peninsula, crown never felt it truly as the capital and even did as much as they could to avoid it when moving, non venturing on its streets.

If it is true that only Madrid was Court, it is also true that Madrid was only a Court!.

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