Puerta del Sol, Madrid, Spain, 1958

About this postcard

Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid, viewed across a crowded paved plaza with a landscaped island and fountains at its middle. Multi-story buildings with neon signs line the edges, and automobiles and pedestrians fill the open space. The sender, an English-speaking traveler four months into a stay in Spain, describes it simply as a square in the center of Madrid and notes that the days were sunny while the nights stayed cool. The square has long been Madrid's central meeting point, the hub from which the city's radial streets and roads run, and the place where crowds gather at the clock on New Year's Eve. By the late 1950s the square carried the neon advertising and heavy traffic of a modern capital alongside its older facades.