I would have very much liked to boast -understood in a pejorative sense- of my hometown, Madrid, as another of those great Spanish capitals, of an Art, the Romanesque, which has always aroused my passion and possibly as a result of it, also the taste for Architecture in general and its different models of expression and creativity.

But although it exists, in reduced dimensions and almost all referring to the area of the nearby and erroneously called 'Poor Mountain range’ or Madrid’s mountain range’, the truth is that Madrid rejected its Romanesque past, to become, mainly, the capital par excellence of another style, much later, the Baroque, which, incidentally, spread like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of a capital, where the characteristic towers of its churches bear the implicit memory of the Madrid that attended, lived and inherited, part of the birth of the greatest cultural glories and that, not in vain, was called the Spanish Golden Age.

That said, let us now make a brief summary of the origins of this place, which is popularly called 'the church of the Sacramento' -because it is located at the confluence of this legendary street with the end of Mayor Street and a short distance from the cathedral of La Almudena and the Royal Palace - and that in its origins, well into the 16th century, was the temple of a monastery of Bernard nuns, sponsored by the Duke of Osuna, at that time Valid in the Court of King Felipe III, whose equestrian statue - popularly known as 'the sparrow cemetery', because those small birds that enter the interior through the horse's mouth can no longer come out again - is located in the center of the nearby Plaza Mayor (Madrid Main Square).

Although its construction was delayed over time, when the Duke of Osuna fell into disgrace -a circumstance that was usual, according to the love flings, the envy and the internal quarrels that always characterized the Spanish Courts- ending in the year 1744, under a design by the architect Juan Gómez de Mora in the form of a typical cross, the result, above all, referring to the interior, produces a wonderful surprise in the viewer.

Above all, if we take into account two main details: the first, that its apparently cold and lackluster cover - where, apparently, the most relevant thing may be the Cross of Twelve Beatitudes (in which some scholars and historians of the Order of the Templars, have thought they perceived a secret alphabet, among the several they possessed) and a carving, above it, that represents the glorification of Saint Bernard, a figure not only illustrious and possibly one of the most privileged minds that the Age has given Media, but also, curiously, he sponsored the aforementioned Order of the Temple, granting it statutes, which combined and justified their status as monks and warriors.

And the second detail, possibly the most relevant, is that its interior is a metaphorical 'entrance to Glory', if we take into account its magnificence, its luminosity -thanks to the light that filters through its magnificent dome- and above all, the works of extraordinary value, among which those of the González Velázquez brothers and the paintings of Luca Giordano stand out.

But the most surprising thing, at least in my humble opinion, is that far from the typical and ornate elements with which Baroque artists and architects endowed their creations and which, among others, the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer disliked so much, just a a simple look inside to have a simple 'stroboscopic vision' of the geometric conjunction of some elements, whose forces converge in that metaphorical central sun, which is the origin of its dome.

In short, how to see the different elements -transepts, pendentives, keystones, columns, crossings, etc- clearly delimited, not on a plane, as an architect would see them, but rather naturally, or at least, it is the impression that suggested to me when I visited it and as I felt it, I expose it.

On Calle Mayor, in front of Casa Ciriaco -one of the best restaurants in Madrid de los Austrias, which I recommend to lovers of traditional Madrid cuisine- and a few meters from the Cathedral Church, there is a small monument, which represents a black angel: it was put in memory of the fatalities caused by the bomb that the anarchist Mateo Morral launched from the top of Casa Ciriaco -then, there was a hotel above it-, at the passage of the wedding party in which King Alfonso traveled XIII, who had just married Doña Victoria Eugenia de Batemberg, this event occurring on May 31, 1906.

This is also where one of the Holy Week processions most venerated by the people of Madrid starts from here: that of Christ of the Halberdiers, whose image, as well as a small representation of the Black Virgin, Our Lady of Almudena, can be seen on either side of the temple transept.

As a climax, add that the interior of the church not only houses the bodies of several prestigious military vicars general, but also some of the mortal remains of the Spanish soldiers who died in 2003 in Turkey, in the unfortunate plane crash that happened to the tragic history of our country with the name of the Soviet aircraft model that transported them: the Yak-42.

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NOTICE: Both the text, as well as the photographs that accompany it, as well as the video that illustrates it, are my exclusive intellectual property and, therefore, are subject to my Copyright.