Plaza de España is a large public square in central Madrid, at the western end of Gran Vía, where the city’s main shopping street meets Calle de la Princesa and the edge of the old royal quarter. It is dominated by two mid-20th-century towers, a monument to Cervantes, and — since 2021 — a rebuilt pedestrian park where a traffic interchange used to sit.
What is Plaza de España, exactly?
Plaza de España sits at the boundary of Madrid’s Centro and Moncloa-Aravaca districts, closing off Gran Vía at its western end and opening onto Calle de Bailén, the street that runs past the Royal Palace. It has functioned as a major square since the early 20th century, but its current form — building stock, monument, and layout — is largely a product of the 1920s through the 1950s, with a substantial overhaul completed in the early 2020s.
Administratively it is one of Madrid’s best-known orientation points: taxi drivers, delivery addresses, and transit maps all use it as a fixed reference the way Puerta del Sol or Cibeles are used elsewhere in the centre.
Why do two towers dominate the square?
The skyline of Plaza de España is set by two buildings from the same architects, Julián and Joaquín Otamendi: the Edificio España, completed in 1953, and the Torre de Madrid, completed in 1957. Both were, at the time of construction, among the tallest buildings in Europe, and they were built in the years of Madrid’s postwar reconstruction as showpieces of the regime’s building programme.
The Torre de Madrid remains an office and residential tower. The Edificio España had a longer, more public afterlife: after standing empty for years, it was redeveloped and reopened as a hotel operated by the Riu Hotels group, with retail space at street level. Readers wanting the fuller architectural context of Madrid’s mid-century towers, rather than this later contemporary skyline, can compare them with the Cuatro Torres business district further north, built half a century later under a different economic model.
What is the monument in the middle of the square?
At the centre of Plaza de España stands the Monumento a Cervantes, a monument to the writer Miguel de Cervantes unveiled in the late 1920s, with sculptural work by Lorenzo Coullaut Valera completed and added to over subsequent years. Below the seated figure of Cervantes, bronze statues show Don Quixote on horseback and Sancho Panza on his donkey — the best-known single sculptural image of the two characters anywhere in Spain.
The monument long sat at the head of a formal garden bisected by traffic lanes. It is now the anchor of the redesigned pedestrian plaza, reachable on foot from all sides rather than only from fixed crossing points.
What changed in the recent redesign?
The redesign, carried out by the Madrid city council (Ayuntamiento de Madrid) and completed in 2021, removed the road network that had cut through and around the square for decades, including lanes that ran beneath and beside the gardens, and replaced it with a continuous pedestrian surface.
- Surface traffic that previously crossed the square was rerouted, and part of it was moved underground into a new car park beneath the plaza.
- The paved and green area was substantially enlarged, connecting the Cervantes monument to the building line on all sides without a road crossing in between.
- New water features, seating, and planting were added around the existing gardens rather than replacing them outright.
- Pedestrian routes toward Calle Bailén, Calle Ferraz, and the area near the Templo de Debod and Parque del Oeste were widened and levelled.
The stated aim of the project, as described by the city council, was to convert a square that functioned mainly as a traffic junction into a public space that could be crossed and used on foot, in line with wider pedestrianisation work the council has carried out around Gran Vía and the historic centre. Costs, exact reopening dates, and any ongoing maintenance work are best confirmed on the Ayuntamiento de Madrid’s own site, since project details of this kind are updated as work continues.
How does the new plaza connect to the rest of the city?
One effect of the redesign, noted in council material at the time, is a more direct pedestrian link between Plaza de España and the high ground above the Manzanares river valley — the same area that holds the Templo de Debod, an actual ancient Egyptian temple relocated to Madrid in the 1970s, and the wooded slopes of Parque del Oeste.
Before the works, someone walking from Gran Vía toward the temple or the park had to cross several lanes of traffic and use underpasses. The redesign folds that route into a single pedestrian corridor, which matters less to a visitor doing it once than to anyone who crosses that ground regularly on foot or by bicycle.
The square also sits within easy reach of the Royal Palace and Almudena Cathedral quarter to the south, meaning it functions as a natural western gateway to the palace precinct as well as a terminus for Gran Vía. Readers assembling a walking route through this part of the centre may want to read what the Almudena Cathedral actually is, since its modern appearance surprises people expecting a medieval building.
How do you get to Plaza de España?
Plaza de España has its own Metro de Madrid station, served by Line 3 and Line 10, directly beneath the square. It is one stop from Gran Vía’s other major interchange points and within walking distance of the Ópera and Noviciado stations.
As with all fares, ticket types and current line diagrams, the operator’s own site is the reliable source rather than any third-party guide, since fares and service patterns change. The council’s redesign did not alter the metro station itself, only the surface layout above it.
What does the square offer beyond the monument and the towers?
Plaza de España is not a museum district, and it holds no major collection of its own, but it sits within easy walking distance of several. The Museo Cerralbo, a preserved 19th-century aristocratic house-museum, lies a short walk north. Further into the centre, the square gives onto the same axis of Gran Vía that leads toward the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the wider museum quarter around Plaza de Cibeles.
Anyone building a broader itinerary around Madrid’s landmark buildings rather than its museums may find the Landmarks & Sights archive a more useful starting point than the square alone, since it groups the city’s major monuments by what they are rather than by neighbourhood.
What does the redesign mean in practice for someone visiting today?
For a visitor, the main practical change is that the square can now be crossed on foot in a straight line from any direction, and that the gardens around the Cervantes monument are larger and easier to sit in than before. There is no admission charge to enter the square or view the monument, since it is open public space, not a ticketed site.
For a resident, the redesign is part of a longer pattern in central Madrid: the same administration has pedestrianised sections of Gran Vía in recent years and reworked other traffic-heavy junctions in the centre. Plaza de España is one part of that pattern rather than an isolated project, and readers tracking how the city’s public space is changing more broadly may find it useful background alongside the Museums & Galleries archive, where several of the capital’s national collections sit within a ten-minute walk of this same square.
Access Madrid is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.