Madrid was a Republican stronghold and was on the front line for much of the Civil War, suffering constant artillery and aerial bombardments from the Nationalists as they laid siege to the city and it wasn't until March 1939 that the capital finally fell to Franco and the rebels.

Franco set up home in the royal residence of El Pardo on the edge of the city, busying himself by eliminating potential opponents and glorifying his own memory with the megalomaniac construction of El Valle de los Caídos in the mountains to the north. Some of the Franco era monumentalist architecture remains in the shape of the Ministerio del Aire and the Arco de Triunfo in Moncloa.