Madrid Río Beach

Madrid Río Beach

Madrid Río is a vast leisure and cultural spot parallel to the River Manzanares, which, thanks to its restoration, has recovered its surprising fauna. Historic monuments and leisure and culture facilities alongside the riverbed that has recovered its biodiversity in giant leaps.

Here is the (other) beach of Madrid. It’s a bit seedy, true, but also quite fun. It has a frankly popular vocation. “There is no beach here, go, go,” said Los Refrescos. Having a beach is an old dream of the capital, so humiliated by not having a sea. A dream that gave rise to a beach in Madrid, in 1932. It was the first artificial beach in Spain, next to a reservoir of the Manzanares, near where the hippodrome is today. He had style, everything at the time he had. With sand, sun loungers, boats and a complex of buildings. Today it is abandoned, and the dam covered with vegetation. Another attempt that was stepped on with this one, but with a more elitist vocation, was the nearby swimming pool of the Island. This pool, nestled on an island in the Manzanares, wrapped in nautical-style architecture – like that of the swimming pool of the Hotel Emperador – it imitated a large ship that had run aground in the river. It was shattered by the fall of a howitzer in ’39. But he did not die of that, but of old age. In 54 it was decided to redirect the Manzanares and that the waters buried the island and the old building. It is romantic to imagine how today it will lie under the very opaque waters.