Take a look at that map. It's a beautiful and simple thing. This is the Madrid Metro as it existed in 1982. Looking at this map, it seems like maybe you could actually visit a good number of the stops - it's just not that complicated. This is how I saw the Madrid Metro when I first came to Spain.Is it me or does the current Metro Map give you a headache?
Sure, you can go to a lot of places but it's a mess graphically. It also has nothing to do with the actual location of the stops in relation to each other. They need to make a simple "Centro only" metro map - something that can fit on a T-shirt.Hey, notice how on the 1982 Metro map the stop for "Gran Via" on Line 1 was named "Jose Antonio" (an infamous Fascist). They changed it sometime in the late 80's? Perhaps the very first move for the future Historical Memory Law.
Alright, I will not cling to the past. Change is good, right? But it was a good looking map.
2 comments:
Hey, I've been visiting Madrid since 1990, and I never knew that Gran Via station was previously Jose Antonio. I do know that for years the area around the Gran Via station was the epicentre of muggings, low-life, prostitution, pick-pockets etc. It's not perfect even now, but back in the 90s it was a war zone.
I tried to figure out when the name for metro stop "Jose Antonio" changed to "Gran Via". There is nothing on Google about it. I found this link showing a map from after the war:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Historia_del_Metro_de_Madrid-Cartografico_1940-1954.svg
That page goes on to show the name as "Gran Via" after 1954, but that's not true. The map I posted was from June 1982. I found another from December 1983 that had the stop as "Gran Via".
So, the name changed in 1983 some time.
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