The Spanish Credit Bank was established in 1920 in the building that had been the headquarters of the La Equitativa insurance company between 1882 and 1891 at the confluence of Alcalá and Sevilla streets, the Spanish bank of the Río de la Plata built, on Alcalá street, the Caryatids building, today headquarters of Instituto Cervantes. The Credit Lyonnais settled in 1920 in a building in the Canalejas square.

The Bilbao bank also decided to open a headquarters in Madrid and called a public competition to do so in 1919. The Bilbao architect, Ricardo Bastida. The works began in 1920 and lasted for 3 years.
The challenge was in the chosen site with a very irregular floor plan but in the very center of Madrid, a few meters from the Puerta del Sol, in front of the building The Equitable at number 16 Alcalá Street.

Bastida proposed to the City Council a change to align the main façade in a curved way, similar to what he had done Antonio Palacios with the Spanish bank of the Río de la Plata. After that change he built a monumental, symmetrical building, with six floors and crowned by two towers about five meters high that housed two cisterns and on which he placed two large sculptures.

All the decoration was commissioned from Bilbao artists: Quintin de la Torre for the four Italian marble Atlantes on the upper part of the façade. Aurelio Arteta, the twelve murals that decorate the central lobby and Higinio Basterra He was in charge of the two chariots that are the best-known element of the work, on the towers and with the legs of the eight horses in the air, above the street.

During the Civil War, the building was occupied by unions and left-wing parties. The chariots, which had been cast in the Codina Hermanos workshops, were covered in golden brass, which made them very visible and their location very close to the building of the Royal Customs House, where General Miaja set up the headquarters of the General Staff and Defense Board of Madrid in November 1936, he advised making them less conspicuous, so they were painted black and making it difficult for Franco's aviation to take them as a reference. Later it was decided that this gold was dispensable and they did not recover their original appearance.

Luckily for Madrid's heritage, the bombings did not affect the chariots or the large stained glass windowFor me, the most spectacular thing about the building, made by the Maumejean house above the circular vestibule. Outstanding are the twelve murals measuring 2 by 3 meters each, separated by double alabaster columns. Arteta used fresco and tempera techniques and represented different daily activities in the Basque Country: agriculture, harvesting, foundry, railway, shipyard, mine, loading and unloading, fishing and also intellectual and the arts.

Today it is the headquarters of the Department of Environment and Territorial Planning of the Community of Madrid and also a stop on our Madrid de Cine bike route, Alex de la Iglesia put in danger here Carmen maura at the end of the movie Community and made this splendid building even more known.

A abrazo.