Philip of Spain made important efforts to counter the deforestation of territory around Madrid after the settlement of the court in 1561. Between 1564 and 1566, Madrid’s town council devised a tree-planting strategy. In 1564, the town promoted the planting of trees around the boundaries of Madrid. [i] The next year, there is evidence of an incipient plantation on the esplanade outside the Alcázar (the royal palace); willows and black and white poplars were planted along the Guadarrama river bank at the city’s expense.[ii] Additionally, any inhabitant interested in planting trees on their properties could acquire one for free from the council. Philip II ratified this strategy by issuing a Real Provisión in 1566, which stipulated that any landowner in Madrid with a property of at least one square mile had the obligation to plant trees.[iii] Whilst these initiatives seem to have been instigated by the local authorities, the trees selected to landscape the streets of the city were those favored by the king.

On 20 June 1563 Philip wrote a memorandum to his secretary, Pedro del Hoyo, containing instructions concerning the works and gardens at his palace in Aranjuez. The monarch was very detailed as to the tree planting he desired and the location of the specimens. He specified that the plaza in front of his property should have black poplars and that the following year, Calle Toledo should also be planted with black poplars in front of the line of white poplars. The idea behind the lines of two different species of trees was to take advantage of the slightly different blooming period of each.[iv] Thus, the choice of black and white poplars was not incidental; both are characterized by rapid growth with a leafy crown to provide shade for passers-by. This report shows that the selection of trees in Madrid simulated the landscape of royal premises; black and white poplars and willows would transform streets and spaces of social encounter in the town. The council, in conjunction with the monarch, established a two-fold plan of action by providing trees for those interested in embellishing the city and by imposing a planting regime on the landowners with the largest holdings. The correlation between the design of royal buildings and the desired residential architecture sought for Madrid has been established, the preferred specimens of trees to embellish the capital city were also to mirror those employed at the court residences.

Local authorities reordered the orchards and agricultural lands in what was later known as the Paseo del Prado de San Jerónimo for the ceremonial entry of 1570 to receive Queen Anna of Austria (1549–1580), the fourth wife of King Philip II.[v] It has been widely discussed how Philip II tried to impose his wishes, at times forcefully but not always successfully, against the rights of the city council and private owners in Madrid. In the preparations for the entry of Anna of Austria, for example, the king sought to demolish a number of houses in the area of Sol and requested the erection of fountains and a lake in the Paseo de San Jerónimo.^[vi] In 1599, this paseo has been described as follows: “[…] very beautiful grove where the poplars form two long, wide avenues and where everyone parades on summer evenings to the sound of music which goes on until midnight.”[vii] Poplars appear to have been the preferred species for the urbanization of avenues, including the street network that formed part of the ceremonial route in royal festivals.[viii] During such events the city became the ritual tableau for the ruled and the ruler; these spaces would ideally mirror the court. After all, cities transformed for royal entries, and capital cities and those where the prince resided, were considered to be an extension of the court.

Fig. 1 Jan van Kessel the Younger (1654-1708), View of the Carrera de San Jerónimo and the Paseo del Prado with a Procession of Carriages, c. 1680, Oil on canvas. 164 x 445 cm. Carmen Thyssen Collection. Inv. no. (CTB.1998.81)

A painting entitled View of the Carrera de San Jerónimo and the Paseo del Prado with a Procession of Carriages, attributed to Jan van Kessel the Younger, depicts the Paseo as a lush tree-lined space. The buildings act as a backdrop to the procession in the foreground of the painting. [ix] The façades of the buildings present the characteristic design outlined in the legislation issued during the sixteenth century. To the right side of the canvas, the aesthetic nuance of tree-lined streets and roads embellishing the urban space is significant. Trees not only provided freshness and shade to the citizens, but also helped in directing the urban vistas towards certain buildings, either royal, religious or civic, emphasizing the visual hierarchies of the cityscape. Trees were a suitable medium by which to regularize the urban form. The creation of a homogeneous corpus of vegetation in the city also reinforced an ordered urban townscape. Sebastián de Covarrubias y Orozco defined alamedas as the spaces where poplars were planted.[x]Alamedas or paseos were not circumscribed to Madrid, as they emerged in other prominent cities of the Iberian world. The city council of Seville developed the Alameda de Hércules in 1574, Valladolid created the Alameda of Nuestra Señora del Prado in 1603, the Alameda of the Descalzos in Lima dates from 1610, and alamedas were also developed in Quito, Mexico City and in Habsburg Flemish cities.[xi]  The sixteenth-century body of legislation issued in cities in the Habsburg world that regulated domestic architecture was intended to create a quasi-homogeneous design that could be modified to suit each particular urban center. Residential architecture had to adhere to the visual hierarchies of Spanish imperial cities: it was required to reflect a civilized society, which in turn was symbolic of Habsburg authority. The regulations promulgated in Madrid aimed to achieve minimum standards of urban order and housing quality through formal and material uniformity. Claudia Sieber has argued that the architecture of Madrid in this period was the result of decades of urban experimentation in the Spanish imperial dominions in combination with an adaptation of Italian architectural theory.[xii] Indigenous master architects and builders in Quito, and the native mural artists who decorated the Casa del Deán in Puebla de los Ángeles are just some of the evidence that calls into question previous assumptions. The development of domestic architecture in locales across Iberia and America shows an array of trends and technologies as illuminated in the descriptions found in the Relaciones Geográficas. The analysis of the architectural development of major urban centers seems to offer some useful parallelisms in urban and architectural development. Within the architectural diversity present in the cities that has been examined in this chapter, there were also significant common aspects in the design, regulations, technologies and materials found in houses in the Iberian peninsula and America. Legislators, city and court officials, masons and architects contributed to the creation of a common cultural grammar, in this case an architectural lexicon, that was reflected in the built environment. In this respect it is also important to consider the manner in which information about the built environment from the Americas was mediated at the Spanish court.

[i] See Morán Turina, Checa Cremades, Las casas del rey and Álvar Ezquerra, Nacimiento Capital.

[ii] Ibid. 28.

[iii] Ibid. 28.

[iv] British Library Mss, Add. 28350, no. 17. “Memorandum Written by Philip II with Instruction for the Developments in Aranjuez, 20 June 1563.”

[v] López de Hoyos, Real Apparato. See also, Lopezosa Aparicio, “Fiesta Oficial,” 79-92.

[vi] Sánchez Cano, Festeinzügein Madrid, 171-204.

[vii] Sieber, Invention Capital, 171.

[viii] On urban interventions and ritual in Madrid, see Sánchez Cano, «Festival Interventions,” 69-86; and Rio Barredo, Madrid, Urbs.

[ix] Blasco Esquivias, La Casa, 216.

[x] Covarrubias y Orozco, Tesoro, 103 v.

[xi] Lopezosa Aparicio, Paseo del Prado; Luque Azcona, “Virreyes y cabildos,” 355-378; Albardonedo Freire, “alameda, un jardín,” 421-452; and Durán Montero, “Alameda Descalzos,” 171-182.

[xii] Sieber, Invention Capital, 105.

Para saber más:

Laura Fernández-González, Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire (Penn State University Press, 2021).

Cómo citar:

Laura Fernández-González, «Oceans of poplars and Alamedas: streetscapes and urban design in the Iberian World», Iconoteca CIRIMA: Circulación de la imagen en la geografía artística del mundo hispánico en la Edad Moderna, 2021. Consultado el FECHA. URL: https://cirima.web.uah.es/iconoteca/oceans-of-poplars-and-alamedas-streetscapes-and-urban-design-in-the-iberian-world