Plaza de Carlos Trías Bertrán

The name of this square belongs to the man who wanted to plant a piece of Manhattan on the Castellana. Carlos Trías Bertrán, born in Barcelona in 1918, became a lawyer and joined the Falange in his early years. He handled his home city’s planning before moving to Madrid, where he rose to general commissioner for urban planning. From that post he steered the most radical transformation of 1960s Madrid. His most ambitious project was AZCA, the great block of offices and skyscrapers between Orense and Raimundo Fernández Villaverde, conceived as a financial centre on a par with the Rockefeller Center. The square that now bears his name lies at the heart of that extension of towers. He died in 1969, when his name was tipped for the Housing Ministry, and the city dedicated the square to him soon after. In the 1980s, the AZCA esplanades were one of the places where Madrid’s first skateboarders gathered.