Map - Las Rozas de Madrid (Las Rozas de Madrid)

Las Rozas de Madrid (Las Rozas de Madrid)
Las Rozas de Madrid (or simply, Las Rozas; ) is one of the largest townships and municipalities in the autonomous community of Madrid, Spain, with an area of 59 km² (22¾ sq. mi.). It is located 20 km (12 miles) northwest of the city of Madrid itself, on the A-6 freeway to A Coruña. Las Rozas is the beginning of this freeway, near the fork road M-505 to El Escorial, which marks the southern boundary of this 'comarca' or rural district (although it is no longer rural).

The municipality is served by four Renfe railway stations– Las Rozas, Las Matas, El Pinar and El Tejar. A fifth stop, at Peñascales was closed. The municipality shares borders with Torrelodones to the north, Villanueva del Pardillo and Galapagar to the west, the park of Monte del Pardo in the east and Majadahonda (south).

Las Rozas has one of the highest average per capita incomes in the Community of Madrid.

During the final decades of the 20th century the town has experienced a vigorous building program, mostly as a dormitory town for Madrid, with a correspondingly strong population growth, which more than doubled between 1991 and 2005 (from 35,137 to 76,246 inhabitants).

The provisioning for local services (such as schools and new dwellings) has at times been outpaced by the locality's high birth and immigration rates. However, by 2010 the community was well served in all health, education and social sectors.

Rozas means clearings in Spanish. Various theories exist, for example: The clearing by Romans for military exercises, the collection of firewood or the creation of farmland. According to some historians Las Rozas could be the old Miacum, the name associated with the city of Madrid, dating from about the third century.

Las Rozas is situated near the river Guadarrama (which flows all year round) and along the ancient road between Segovia and Titulcia (two of the most ancient settlements in the area). The part of this ancient road near Las Rozas is now approximately the A6/M505 route.

During the Spanish civil war it became the site of major battles, a reminder of this time are the concrete forms of bunkers that remain in the Dehesa of Navalcarbón and along the valley of the river Guadarrama.

In the winter of 1936 the pro-Franco troops advanced for the west of Madrid from their bases at Brunete, Villaviciosa de Odón and Campamento. In the middle of a dense fog with freezing temperature, Franco's rebels, supported by the air force, engaged the republican forces in one of the bloodiest battles of the civil War. The inhabitants of Las Rozas took refuge in other places of the nearby Sierra (mountains) such as the caves in Hoyo de Manzanares. These roceños (inhabitants of Las Rozas) who fled were nicknamed cucos, (the sly ones).

When the war was over, the Church of San Miguel and of the 270 houses of the (pre-war) settlement, 92 were severely damaged and only 13 were intact. The Ministerio de la Gobernación created the Dirección General de Regiones Devastadas for the reconstruction of towns destroyed by the war and Las Rozas was included among them. 
Map - Las Rozas de Madrid (Las Rozas de Madrid)
Country - Spain
Flag of Spain
Spain (España, ), or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España), is a country primarily located in southwestern Europe with parts of territory in the Atlantic Ocean and across the Mediterranean Sea. The largest part of Spain is situated on the Iberian Peninsula; its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. The country's mainland is bordered to the south by Gibraltar; to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea; to the north by France, Andorra and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. With an area of 505990 km2, Spain is the second-largest country in the European Union (EU) and, with a population exceeding 47.4 million, the fourth-most populous EU member state. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Bilbao.

Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The ancient Iberian and Celtic tribes, along with other pre-Roman peoples, dwelled the territory maintaining contacts with foreign Mediterranean cultures. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania) ensued, bringing the Romanization of the population. Receding of Western Roman imperial authority ushered in the migration of different non-Roman peoples from Central and Northern Europe with the Visigoths as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centered in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre made an intermittent southward military expansion, known as Reconquista, repelling the Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion, and eventually the converts were expelled through different royal decrees.
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