Puerta de Alcalá

Charles III wanted Madrid's eastern entrance to greet arrivals as a ceremonial approach to the capital and the royal court. So Francesco Sabatini created the present gate with three tall arches for carriages and two rectangular passages; construction was completed in seventeen seventy-eight. When the city wall disappeared, Plaza de la Independencia appeared around the stone structure, and traffic began to go around it rather than pass through the arches.

The five stone openings had a thoroughly practical purpose: to let people and carriages into Madrid, and to close the city at night with iron grilles. The gate took its name from the road that led east from here toward Alcalá de Henares.

The present structure was commissioned by Charles III. The king wanted to turn the eastern entrance into the principal approach to the capital and the royal court. The court architect Francesco Sabatini left three tall arches for carriages and two rectangular passages for pedestrians. Construction was completed in seventeen seventy-eight. In winter, the grilles were locked at ten in the evening; in summer, at eleven.

In the nineteenth century, the city wall was dismantled. At the proposal of municipal councilor Ángel Fernández de los Ríos, the circular Plaza de la Independencia was laid out around the former gate. Traffic no longer passed through the arches: carriages, and then automobiles, began to go around the solitary monument. It was this curve in the road that was chosen for the murder of the head of the Spanish government.

In nineteen twenty-one, Eduardo Dato tried to stop a series of political killings in Barcelona. There, anarchists, militant trade unionists, and gunmen hired by employers were hunting one another. Dato appointed General Severiano Martínez Anido as civil governor, entrusting him with the suppression of anarchist organizations. Under him, the police used the so-called law of escape: detainees were killed, and it was then announced that they had tried to flee. The anarchists held the head of government responsible.

Pedro Mateu, a young metalworker, the mechanic Ramón Casanellas, and their companion Luis Nicolau came from Barcelona to kill Dato. For several weeks, they studied his usual route home from the Spanish Senate. Threats against the prime minister were known, but he was not given additional protection. The attackers noticed that near Puerta de Alcalá, the official car invariably slowed as it turned around the former gate. They bought a motorcycle with a sidecar and tested their plan here in advance.

On March eighth, Dato's car passed Plaza de Cibeles and began to go around Puerta de Alcalá. Casanellas drove the motorcycle, Mateu sat in the sidecar, and Nicolau sat behind the driver. They approached the rear of the car, and Mateu and Nicolau emptied their pistols into it. Dato was taken to the nearest medical aid station already dead.

Mateu was arrested in Madrid. Nicolau managed to flee to Germany, but he was extradited to Spain. Both were sentenced to death; the execution was then commuted to life imprisonment, and an amnesty freed them in nineteen thirty-one. Casanellas went into hiding abroad and sent the court a letter from Moscow in which he took responsibility for the murder. After the same amnesty, he returned to Spain.

There are no traces of this attack on the stone: they fired at the car, not the gate. The bullet-riddled Marmon is kept in the Army Museum in Toledo. What remains here is the trap itself: the circular roadway where cars still slow down today near the former city entrance.