Four months after fell, stood at the edge of the city. By early November 1936 almost everyone expected Madrid to fall within days. The government left for Valencia and handed the defence over to a and to the city itself. Then came what nobody had predicted, because the attack stalled in the and in the , the university campus, and the slogan , meaning they shall not pass, turned from a battle cry into fact.
From this square the Gran Vía runs east, in 1936 only twenty years old and the most modern thing Madrid had to offer. During the war it was officially renamed Avenida de Rusia, after the country that supplied with weapons. People gave it another name too, and that one had everything to do with the direction you are looking now.
We follow the Gran Vía east, as far as the crossing with the Calle de San Bernardo.
Sources. Story: Hispanopedia, Batalla de Madrid and Gran Vía (Madrid); Instituto de Historia y Cultura Militar, Ejército de Tierra, dossier on Madrid in 1936. Photos: Mikhail Koltsov, children at the defensive works in Madrid, 4 November 1936, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
