Nuestra Señora de la Glorieta - Madrid, España
Posted by: 
Ariberna
N 40° 28.062 W 003° 34.921
30T E 450659 N 4479832
The hermitage dedicated to the Virgen de la Soledad sees cars passing by from the center of a roundabout. A symbol of the Barajas district
Waymark Code: WM19PHW
Location: Comunidad de Madrid, Spain
Date Posted: 03/27/2024
Views: 0
"On one side, an airport connects Madrid with 156 destinations. On the other, the Field of Nations hosts numerous national and international fairs. In the middle, as a symbol of what was once the Villa de Barajas, a 17th century hermitage dedicated to its patron saint, the Virgen de la Soledad... inside a rotunda.
Since Barajas lost its independence as a municipality in 1949, consumed by the immensity of a capital that was growing more and more, the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad has become one of the district's landmarks. Especially when she found herself stuck in traffic, thanks to the construction of a new road.
It all started with the plans to connect the Plaza de Castilla with the Barajas airport, in 1995. At that time, the sanctuary was located on the edge of the Vicálvaro road, surrounded by an immense garden, something that clashed with the ideas of the engineers, who intended the route of the new M-11 to pass through there. The first project considered the possibility of moving the hermitage to another point in the neighborhood, but the inhabitants of Barajas - especially the usual ones - refused to allow it to be moved from its original site. "It would have been a mistake to throw it away and build it somewhere else," says Father Jorge Javier, current parish priest of Barajas.
There was no choice but to redesign the project. Several options were considered, but the decisive one was to drill a tunnel under the hermitage and have the road pass through there. However, the idea of ??connecting the M-11 with the current Logroño avenue was not completely ruled out and the best option was to build a roundabout that would leave Soledad in the center.
It was not easy, because the land surrounding the sacred building was property of the Church. The City Council proceeded with the expropriation and destroyed the wish of a Barajas resident, who had transferred his property to the Church at a ridiculous price, almost as a donation, in the mid-1950s. The decision had been made and the church was going to being surrounded by a sea of ??cars, something that has ultimately helped the hermitage become "one of the emblematic monuments of the district," according to the parish priest."
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