Spaniards like to depict residents of Madrid – madrileños – as loud, proud ruffians with quick tempers and warm hearts. Unlike the soft-spoken Galicians, or easy-going Andalusians, madrileños are so in-your-face they make New Yorkers seem charming.
The Plaza Dos de Mayo (above) sits at the heart of that rough, tough Madrid. On summer nights, the square teems with teenagers, and occasionally, police arrive in force to disperse the Botellón (big bottle), which is how the youngsters describe their open-air, all-night drinking.
On May 2 1808, the confrontation here was much different – and much bigger. Large crowds had gathered that Monday morning on news that King Carlos IV and his son Fernando had been forced to abdicate in favour of Napoleon’s brother, Joseph. Outside the main gate of the royal palace, carriages waited to take the last of the Bourbons into exile. Suddenly, knives were drawn and the French soldiers guarding the palace were butchered.
The riot spread. It appeared to be a spontaneous uprising, with no obvious leaders or plan – the capital’s elite had been too much in the thrall of Napoleon to worry about being a subjugated nation.
It took two days to subdue the city. Four hundred and ten Spaniards, including 53 women and 13 children, were killed or executed by firing squad. The drama of those two days was immortalised by Goya in two paintings: “The Second of May 1808” (right), also known as “The Charge of the Mamelukes”, and “The Shootings of May Third 1808” – often described as one of the first great paintings of the modern age.
The events Goya depicted also marked a turning point in Spain’s political evolution. The uprising sparked a six-year guerrilla war – and Wellington’s better known Peninsular campaign – that ended with the expulsion of Napoleon’s forces from the Iberian Peninsula.
As Spaniards celebrate the bicentenary of one of the key moments points of their tumultuous history, the uprising’s significance is now the focus of reinterpretation. During Franco’s dictatorship, the “Dos de Mayo” achieved a kind of mythical status, embodying the values of national unity and pride he was keen to propagate after a bloody civil war. More recently, historians have emphasised the futility of the uprising. More than one million Spaniards were killed during the Peninsular war in order that a depraved Bourbon monarch could be restored to the throne.
What is not in question is the uprising’s importance to the consolidation of Madrid as the nation’s capital. Up to then, it had been little more than an adjunct to the royal court. Barcelona, Valencia and Seville were far more cosmopolitan, with a wealthier bourgeoisie, a richer culture, and a longer history than Madrid. The events of Dos de Mayo transformed Madrid’s rabble into national heroes, and to some extent, defined the character of its citizens. Today, as police half-heartedly charge those citizens with public drunkenness and disruption of the peace, history repeats itself, this time as farce. The skirmishes take place in front of the gateway to the Monteleon barracks, the only part of the building that survives in the modern square. Mornings attract another kind of drinker: winos and beggars who are fed by nuns in the convents close to the square. Observing the human flotsam, it is hard to forge a link to the fearless ruffians who defied the French occupation two centuries ago.
Leslie Crawford is the FT’s Madrid bureau chief
