The choise of Madrid as the settling of the Court and capital city of the state. A practical case of historical geopolitics.

Abstract

The choise of Madrid as the settling of the Court and capital city of the state. A practical case of historical geopolitics. The origin and evolution of the cities have to be theorized -explained, understood- witin the same historical development context of the societies where those cities appeared. In theoretical terma, the same mechanisms giving them birth may recur relevant guide marks in their evolution. Such is the case of Madrid, which crystallisation as an urban nucleus is due to the confluence of human movements: both commercial, miliytary and demographic. These movements are induced by the necessity or the advisability of a sedimentansation of the authority's itinerant habita. The origin of the vortex which crea tes the capital-city's phenomenom has, thus, an unquestionable political component. It would maybe be better saying geopolitical, as the geographical pomt of view is recognizable in the very concept of power, in the spatial localisation of the highest institut1on -the Court, the Councils- which represent and practise that authority, and in its projection towards the State's temtory.