“Taking into account the damage that the common people of Madrid are suffering, and particularly commerce, due to the lack of a capable customs office where the goods and fruits that arrive there can be safely stored… he has deigned to resolve that at the expense of the royal treasury “A Customs House is built for the custody, security and dispatch of goods and to this end it has been useful to point out the location occupied by the Cavallerizas de la Reyna on Alcalá Street.”
These lines justified the need, published in a royal order of January 14, 1761, to build a new building to house the Madrid Customs. The old customs house, also known as the old customs house, was built in 1645 in the missing La Leña square. It was soon overwhelmed by the growing number of powers that were successively entrusted to it. During the XNUMXth century he took charge of the different General and Provincial Revenue Directorates of the kingdom and the no less important watertight revenues of the Crown (tobacco, salt, playing cards, spirits, glass, etc.). Carlos III commissioned in 1761 to Francisco Sabatini the construction project of a new customs house on Alcalá street. The building was conceived as an Italian palace, but without neglecting the functional character that the institution required. The exterior had a façade of good proportions (considered among the best Madrid examples of the neoclassical) topped with a balustrade, composed of a padded plinth and a succession of different orders of windows and pediments arranged with order and symmetry. The interior was organized around three large patios, two of them separated by a spacious hall that connected with a double-flow staircase, and had spacious rooms and large basements that also served as warehouses.
The Ministry of Finance was transferred in 1848 to the Royal Customs House, as its number of officials and offices had considerably increased, while the old fiscal services of the monarchy were being vacated.

It seems that due to the solidity of the building and its labyrinthine basements, the general Miaja He made it the headquarters of the General Staff and Defense Board of Madrid starting in November 1936. The photographs, in the basements, of General Miaja, head of the Board, and of Indalecio Prieto, Minister of Defense, are documents of great historical and documentary value.

But its importance continued during the Civil War. Between 7 and 8 in the afternoon on Sunday, March 5, 1939, the colonel met in the Ministry of Finance building on Alcalá Street in Madrid. Married and the rest of the conspirators in the coup d'état: military, representatives of the political parties (Republican Left, Republican Union, the Trade Union Party and the “anti-Negrinist” sector of the PSOE) and the committed anarchist and socialist trade union organizations (UGT and CNT-FAI), and the socialist Julián Besteiro.

With the capital controlled by the “Casadista” forces, around midnight on that same Sunday, March 5, Colonel Casado and Julián Besteiro addressed “anti-fascist Spain” by radio, reading manifestos in which they justified the coup that They had just attacked the government of Negrin. The main manifesto of the National Defense Council insisted on the "lack of legal basis of the government" and in his speech Besteiro emphasized the illegitimacy of the Negrín government as the Presidency of the Republic was vacant due to the resignation of Manuel Azaña.

On the morning of March 6, all the political parties and organizations of the Popular Front, except the Communist Party of Spain, made public manifestos and statements in Madrid in which they lent their support to the coup. Likewise, the National Defense Council was officially established, chaired by General José Miaja, although its two strong men were Casado himself, who reserved the Department of Defense for himself, and Julián Besteiro, who held the Department of State. It was the beginning of the end of the Civil War.

In 1944 the architect Miguel Duran Salgado He expanded the ministerial offices with the construction of a building adjacent to the customs house, on the site of the 1730th century palace of the Marquis of la Torrecilla. In its construction, the architectural elements and decorations of the Royal Customs House were imitated and as the most prominent element, the doorway of the old palace, made by Pedro de Ribera around XNUMX, continued to be used for access.
Currently, the Ministry of Finance is still established both in the Royal Customs House and in its adjacent building occupying numbers 5, 7,9 and 11 on Alcalá Street.

A abrazo.