Plaza de la Remonta
The square occupies the plot of the old Remonta cavalry barracks, the military service devoted to buying and breeding horses for the Army, from which it took its name.
Before it was a square, this ground bred horses for the Army. The “remonta” was the military service charged with buying, breeding and supplying the horses that fed the cavalry, and a barracks devoted to that task occupied the site from the nineteenth century. From that garrison the plaza de la Remonta inherited its name.
The Tetuán district began as a string of military installations and open ground north of Madrid, and this corner gathered barracks, tram sheds and army buildings. Once mounted cavalry lost its purpose, the site changed use, and in 1980 the Defence Ministry handed the plot to the city.
The square opened in April 1987: eleven thousand square metres of arcaded esplanade, at the time the largest with porticoes in Madrid. The exposed-brick buildings around it honour the neighbourhood’s bricklaying tradition. Where mounts were once shod, neighbours now cross beneath the arcades.