FCC Construcción

Where the seven-lane M-30 ring road used to lie, Madrid now has an easily reached, tight-knit recreational space that enriches the city's cultural resources by close to 150,000 square metres of park, in a neighbourhood formerly sundered by traffic (The traffic has now been rerouted underground). This is the construction of the "Madrid River" project, which consists in the creation of a broad environmental, athletic and cultural corridor extraordinarily well-stocked with recreational spaces and facilities and covering a six-kilometre stretch of land parallel to the Manzanares River.

The project calls for 53,000 square metres of land sandwiched between the slaughterhouse and the river to be transformed from thoroughfare into garden. In the environs of the old city slaughterhouse, the target zone measures 89,000 square metres. Here there will eventually be 932 trees (833 newly planted), more than 18,000 square metres of grassland and close to 6,000 shrubs. One major part of the work will be to take 53,000 square metres of land formerly covered by roads between the slaughterhouse yard and the river and to transform them into a garden, which will carry on where the 232,000 square metres of La Arganzuela Park leave off. Artistic bridges will span the river to connect the project to the Usera district of the city.

To improve connections and accessibility between the two banks of the river, seven crossings have been either built from scratch or refurbished. They include the new twin bridges of Matadero (Slaughterhouse) and Invernadero (Greenhouse), the enlargement of La Princesa Bridge, the refurbishment of lock number 9 and the construction of three new footbridges. Two of these footbridges will do duty as the means for pedestrians and cyclists to reach El Manzanares Linear Park.

Today there are already more than 830,000 square metres of Madrid River that citizens can enjoy. Through this vast area there wind more than ten kilometres of pedestrian and cycle paths, and 8,360 trees, more than 100,000 shrubs and 66,000 square metres of grassland have been planted. Work will be finished by mid-April.