Kilometre 0 in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid
The city of Madrid offers those who visit it a monument that can be stepped on, jumped on and even, if you're in the mood for it, danced on. And the best thing is that it can even be funny and you can be encouraged to go further with the theme.
No, it's not an attraction, no, it's not part of a theme park. It is a place from which many take a stylish photograph, most take a selfie. It is a place that serves to certify that we have really been in Madrid, because, in its genre, there is no other like it.
The monument is a landmark, a landmark indeed. It is the plaque and tile that mark the ground at kilometre zero of Spain's radial roads. Yes, in the Puerta del Sol, the place where the chimes that announce the glamorous end of the Spanish television year ring out and resound. The point, they say exactly, which is the centre of Spain, the Kilometro Cero Madrid KM 0.
But no, there is a lot of urban myth in all this. It doesn't take long for ‘conspiracy theories’ to emerge that try to explain the truth of the kilometric point in Madrid and look for another, truer location. The latest and most authentic one.
Thus, there are those in Madrid who have spread the word that the vertex should not be in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, The new building will be located between the streets of Serrano and Goya, perhaps to provide an added incentive to commercial activity in the area.
Geometría madrileña y el Kilómetro cero (Madrid Geometry and Kilometre Zero)
The most prepared discoverers bet heavily on geometry to throw the zero point on the Cerro de los Ángeles, ten kilometres from the Puerta del Sol, south of Madrid and 666 metres above sea level. A number that could also bring, why not, one more conspiracy theory, since it is the number that represents the Devil.
There are those who still believe it to be lost behind the Prado Museum, curiously in the middle of the Golden Mile of the capital's permanent exhibition centres. A theory that supports the version of the situation, like a fixed cross and line, in Goya-Serrano, what a coincidence!
But let history do the talking and let it deliver a verdict on the matter. The designation of kilometre zero in Madrid has nothing to do with equidistances of national territory, it was simply the most central - and why not say it, somewhat arbitrary - place where it was decided to mark a starting point for six main roads, the first national ‘highways’.
With this starting point, distances could be quantified. Philip V reigned, a reforming king, who made his way with modernity. At that time, kilometres had not been standardised; distances were measured in Castilian leagues (terrestrial). Therefore, to be more exact, the place should be known as ‘legua cero’.
By the way, the radial roads are still there, more or less, on the Spanish road plan. If not, let's see: the road to La Coruña, the road to Cádiz, a road to the North, to the Cantabrian Sea and San Sebastián along the French border, the road to Barcelona and the French border via Port Bou, the road to Portugal via Badajoz, and, finally, the road to Valencia to the East. Six routes six.
Kilometre Zero as a symbol of centralism
In the times of the Dictatorship, of centralist demands, of a strong and instructive State about good practices and better customs, the subject of Madrid's kilometre zero became fashionable. It became popular.
So much so that the authorities of 1950s Spain went to the trouble of leaving a footprint in the form of a metal plaque on the pavement of Puerta del Sol. An educational and aesthetic measure to sacralise a centre of Madrid that oozed a strong whiff of ideology.
With this subliminal detail of marking kilometre zero in Madrid, Madrid's role as a city of absolute government was further emphasised. A place from which to issue orders and government with an ideology that tried to bind everything that could move.
Some researchers have gone in search of the origin of marking the zeroes kilometres back home for the ancient Romans. It is said that in the Forum of Rome there was a milestone marking the beginning of the Roman roads from the Tiber valley to the borders of the provinces. In the time of Emperor Caesar Augustus, it was called ‘la milliarium aureum’ and was situated near the Temple of Saturn. From this landmark, all the roads leading to Rome were marked out.
Renewal of the Kilometro Cero plaque in Madrid
However, the plaque on Puerta del Sol today is not the original one, so many footsteps, so many dances on it, wore it out that in 2009 it was decided to replace it with a similar one with bronze glitter and metallic inserts as colourful as they are striking.
The tile depicts the maps of Spain, Portugal and some of France. The coat of arms of the Civil Engineers can also be seen, with the details of a bridge, a canal and an anchor, and to finish off, a palm leaf and an oak leaf.
One can doubt the value of the vertex, its role as the zero of the roads or question its propagandistic mission inherited from other totalitarian times, but what cannot be doubted is the value of a key utility that can be verified. Kilometre zero serves as a reference to start the numbering of the streets of Madrid that leave the site also in a radial configuration.
And you don't need to know much about roads, highways and other engineering to understand the remarkable ingenuity involved in maintaining a slab-shaped plaque that shines in any light as an immovable icon of the city of Madrid. Exclusively.
You only have to see how queues form or how the photographed people overlap, for example, on the fifteenth of August, a place where having your photo taken is an experience in itself. An experience that tourists who come to Madrid know where to find it. Yes, where the odometers are reset to zero.
