History
From 1913 to 1920, the national passion (bullfighting) gained such an important status that Madrid's former main bullring in Carretera de Aragon was not big enough. It was José Gómez Ortega "Joselito" who declared that a new "monumental" bullring had to be built, to open this part of Spain's heritage and culture to the whole city of Madrid. His friend the architect José Espeliú began to work on the project.
A family called Jardón donated the land to the Madrid Provincial Council, provided that they could run the arena for fifty years. The deputation accepted the proposal on November 12, 1920. On March 19, 1922, in the exact center of the prospective arena, the first stone was placed. The construction of the bullring would cost 12 million pesetas (4.5 million over budget), and it would replace the old bullring, dating from 1874.
"Las Ventas" was finished in 1929 and two years later, June 17, 1931, a charity bullfight was held with a full capacity crowd to inaugurate it. Bullfighting stopped during the Spanish Civil War and did not resume until May 1939.
There is a Pasodoble called 'Plaza de las Ventas' and the composer Maestro Manuel Lillo dedicated to this arena.
Read more about this topic: Las Ventas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)