The FCC Construcción project “Plaza de España Remodeling” has won the Albert Serratosa City and Territory award in its 5th edition, awarded by the Foundation Civil Engineering.

It is a unique urban regeneration project that, together with Madrid Río, constitutes one of the main transformations of Madrid in this century. Thus, mobility in the area returns to normal both on the surface and in the tunnel, which has also been reopened to traffic after its expansion.

The new Plaza de España, is a new tourist center for the city, it gives rise to a greener, more sustainable and accessible environment that changes the appearance of the center of the capital, a space of more than 70,000 square meters that integrates all modes of mobility, but which prioritizes the pedestrian.

In this sense, one of the fundamental objectives of the reform has been the pedestrianization of the Bailén-Ferraz axis to materialize the connection between the valuable public spaces of this environment that until now had been segregated.

In this way, the underground infrastructures created allow not only pedestrian and cyclist permeability from the Plaza de Oriente to the Plaza de España and the Temple of Debod, but also the connection with the Sabatini gardens, the Campo del Moro and even Madrid Río . The new square thus becomes the green door to a transversal mesh that comes from the Manzanares river and establishes an environmental penetration point towards the center of the city. An environmental quality that is also enhanced by the planting of more than 1,100 new trees.

The great transformation of this space has been possible thanks to the channeling of vehicle traffic through a tunnel that allows traffic to be transferred to the lower level of the overpass built in the 1960s and gains space on the surface for pedestrians.

The tunnel resulting from the reform connects road traffic from Bailén street to Ferraz street. The new part of this tunnel is a continuation of the existing one and goes from the beginning of the Sabatini gardens, on Bailén street, to Ferraz street, beyond Ventura Rodríguez. The union of both tunnels generates an underground infrastructure of more than 1,150 meters from its entrance in Bailén, at the height of Calle Mayor, to the exit of Ferraz. In addition, it is connected to the San Vicente slope, which allows you to go both to the M-30 and to the Gran Vía.

The improvement of cyclist mobility is another of the axes of the new space, since it connects in a segregated way the north-south and east-west axes of the area. The segregated bike path, which runs through an area to which private vehicles have no access, connects Ferraz street with Bailén street, linking the cycle lanes of San Quintín street with those of Ferraz street and Paseo del Pintor Rosales. For its part, the other east-west cycling axis connects the San Vicente slope with the Gran Vía through a segregated lane that runs next to the road under the pedestrian platform.

This configuration turns the Plaza de España into a cycling network connector capable of linking the itineraries that until now were disconnected. In this way, no movement is devoid of the possibility of being traveled by bicycle. In total, more than three kilometers of cycle paths have been implemented on roads and almost 400 meters of cycle paths on car-free spaces.

Until now, the square lacked measures that would allow the safe movements of people with reduced mobility or vision, cognitive limitation or any other disability or difference. In this sense, it was an obsolete space. The new Plaza de España, however, has the necessary conditions to guarantee its full use by all kinds of people, regardless of their abilities.

In addition, the project integrates most of the archaeological remains found during the excavations for the construction of the Bailén-Ferraz tunnel, such as the two floors of the Godoy Palace and the buttresses of the old Royal Stables next to the current Sabatini gardens, as well as like the remains of the 'camino de ronda' of the old San Gil barracks. These remains will not only be able to be visited by citizens and scholars, but an archaeological itinerary will also be implemented and an interpretation center of the monumental cornice will be built to explain and help understand the evolution of the city very close to the place of its birth.