At the northern end of Madrid River we meet the Queen Victoria Bridge. It was inaugurated on June 13, 1909, coinciding with the festival of San Antonio de Padua. The inauguration was presided over by the kings Alfonso XIII y Victoria Eugenie, in honor of the queen it was named Queen Victoria Bridge.

Replaces a previous bridge known as Florida Green Bridge, because of the color of its railing. A pedestrian bridge with a wooden deck, the work of Pedro de Ribera which began to be built in 1728. They lived together for some time but the Pedro Ribera bridge was very deteriorated since a terrible flood in 1906.

The bridge connects the streets of Aniceto Marinas with the Ribera del Manzanares, connecting the light bulb park, the hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida and its twin, with the Colonias de San Antonio de La Florida and Manzanares, which is located on the other side of the river. It is also called Victoria Bridge.

The engineer built it José Eugenio Ribera Dutaste, on a project by the architect Julio Martínez-Zapata Rodríguez. The bridge, with modernist decoration as corresponds to its construction period, is composed of two elliptical and parallel reinforced concrete vaults. It is one of the first concrete bridges built in Spain. It is decorated with four vases and eight cast iron lanterns with rampant bears of Francisco Iglesias.

During the II Spanish Republic changed the name to Galicia Bridge, this area suffered greatly from the effects of the Civil War in Madrid. After the war it recovered its original name.

The bridge is suffering from a trend that is spreading throughout the world: love locks. This phenomenon that is threatening the integrity of many bridges, some of them of enormous heritage value, arose from the book by the Italian Frederick Moccia "I desire you" (Ho voglia di te), and the film of the same title that was made into a movie in 2006. In the story, its protagonists attach a padlock to one of the lampposts on the Milvio Bridge in Rome, as a symbol of eternal love. The bride and groom close a padlock on the railing with a phrase of love and their names and then throw the key into the river. A way to declare that your love will be eternal. Let's hope that fashion is not eternal and our bridges stop suffering from this situation.

A abrazo.