Metro that inspires music and arts

Madrid Metro, which turned 90 last week, is now one of the largest in the world.

When Madrid Metro was opened on October 19, 1919 by King Afonso XIII, the first line at Cuatro Caminos was just 3.48km long and it took less than 10 minutes to travel through the first eight stations.

Now, 90 years later there are 294 stations and a track network of 284km with more than two-and-a-half million travellers a day.

It is the third largest as far as the number of stations are concerned, behind only New York and Paris, and fourth behind New York, London and Moscow when the distance covered is measured.

To celebrate the 90th anniversary, the Metro de Madrid company is highlighting the cultural face of the underground and how it has affected the arts, cinema and music in the life of the capital over the past century.

Metro de Madrid has been part of the lives of millions of Madrileños, so it should come as no surprise that this mode of transport has been both a source of inspiration for dozens of musicals and the stage – often improvised – for many musicians.

The Madrid Metro has become a source of living for many travelling musicians and many prestigious musicians including Javier Álvarez have taken their first musical steps in the form of improvised performances in the metro's corridors.

Others, have performed live with their entire bands, thanks to Metro de Madrid's active interest in bringing music to the public in the early years of the new century, converting its facilities into stages for live music performances, from pop to flamenco to opera.

National artists in all genres have performed at the Chamartín, Principe Pío, Nuevos Ministerios and Mar de Cristal stations. The list is long, but some of the most notable artists include Diego El Cigala and Miguel Poveda (as part of Metro's Flemenca Summit), Luz Casal, Concha Buika, Rosario Flores and Sole Giménez (at the Metro's Creators Festival), Raphael and the dancer Antonio Canales, who performed his Torero at the Avenida de la Ilustración station. There have also been photographic exhibits focusing on rock culture or schools of dance as part of the competition titled Flamenco pa tos, promoted by Gomaespuma.

Another notable feature of the Madrid Metro is an old station that has been converted into a museum. If you are one of the many who finds history fascinating then one place to visit in Madrid would be the so called ghost station of Chamberí.

This station was part of the first underground line, but was closed in 1966 as reform and extension was considered impossible at the time as it is on a curve.

However, in 2008 it was reopened as a museum after being left untouched for more than 42 years.

The new museum at the site entails the idea of showing the public a little piece of underground life in the capital at the start of the 20th century. When the station was first opened in 1919, a Metro ticket cost 10 centimos of a peseta (Dh0.033) and the population of Madrid was just 600,000.


Metro, music and melodies

The first musical reference to the metro appeared in the 1928 musical La Chula de Pontevedra, a two-act farce written by Enrique Paradas and Joaquín Jiménez. In that work, the lead character, Rosiña, who lives in Cuatro Caminos, site of the first line of the Madrid

Metro, proudly remarks that they have a "great underground" there.

Four years later, in 1932, with the premiere of El aguaducho, one of the characters, Cayetana, complains they took away her beverage stand in the Plaza del Progreso (today Tirso de Molina) "to put in the Metro". Right after that, the very conservative Cayetana confesses she has not yet ridden in the underground.

Over the next decades there would continue to be occasional references to the Metro in songs, such as the one by the Austrian-Spanish Franz Johan Qué barbaridad, 1946, but it would not be until the arrival of democracy and the emergence of rock music in general and Madrid's urban rock and movida in particular, that the references to the Madrid underground, such an essential element in the lives of youth then and now, would abound.

El Canto del Loco and The Libertines, the first group which counted the controversial Pete Doherty among its members, have recorded video clips in the Metro.

The Madrid band recorded Eres tonto in 2008 in one of the Light Rail's modern train cars while the English group recorded the video Time for Heroes in 2003 in various downtown stations.

Kaka de Luxe, the predecessor of groups such as Alaska and los Pegamoides or La Mode, gave the ironic Viva el Metro (1978), a song filled with sarcasm in which they complained about an increase in train fares.

Madrid's leading urban rock group, Leño, one of whose members was Rosendo, had the Madrid Metro on the cover of their first single, Este Madrid (1978), which showed the members of the group coming out of the Metro.

Topo, the group from Vallecas, adopted the Metro rhombus as their logotype with their name printed inside. That logo would be prominently displayed on their first album cover in 1979.

One of the songs on their third album was titled Reina del vagón about a beauty who illuminates the "the eternal night of the Metro".

In the 21st century, Manu Chao brought the Metro de Madrid public address system to the entire world in his album Próxima estación: Esperanza, in which the announcement for the Line 4 station can be heard.

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