Although there are few references to Madrid in medieval literature, and there are even famous locals in it, as Ruy González de Clavijo, is from the Golden Age literature where references to Madrid are abundant, well to be the scenario literary works appear in their titles (The Madrid Steel Fairs Madrid, Lope de Vega) or by referring specifically to the village, its customs and inhabitants, among whom were themselves Cervantes, Lope de Vega (himself a native of Madrid), Quevedo, Góngora (tenant and one deadly enemy, who was pleased to evict). The streets between Atocha and the Carrera de San Jerónimo concentrate most of the places of life and burial of these geniuses, including the place where Don Quixote was printed, and are known as Barrio or Barrio de las Letras de Las Musas (unless confused with the same name located in San Blas). Two pens of comedies (the Corral del Principe, above the Spanish Theatre, and the Peral, preceding the Opera de Madrid) were distributed the popular audience to brand competing in Tirso de Molina or Calderón de la Barca (both locals). The eighteenth century meant a decline in the quality of literature, including the scenic, but the Madrid public was delighted with the sketches of Ramon de la Cruz, castizo environment (one of whom coined the term Manolo), or more intellectual Moratín productions (father and son).

More brilliance was the music scene, in which apart from national figures such as the castrato Farinelli foreign and composer Luigi Boccherini, who became identified with the city enough to produce the very famous Ritirata Notturna di Madrid. Also noteworthy is the presence of Domenico Scarlatti, who lived and composed some of his most famous works in Madrid, where he died in 1757.

The nineteenth-century romanticism Madrid is in Madrid's Mariano José de Larra its principal exponent. His suicide and burial (with an epitaph reading by José Zorrilla included) can only be understood in the context and environment that perfectly reflects the Romantic Museum. With authors such as Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Federico Chueca and Tomás Breton musical drama develops indigenous, popular and folkloric atmosphere: the zarzuela, Madrid is the capital of the world, specializing in her programming and Teatro de la Zarzuela Theatre Apollo. Madrid manners environment also produced highly successful comedy groups, such as the Carlos Arniches Alicante, which only reflect popular speech, exaggerated to the point of parody which, interestingly, ended up being imitated by real speakers.
Century ended, the canary Benito Perez Galdos Episodes reflected in many national events in Madrid and in other novels catch the mood of the different social classes (Fortunata and Jacinta, Miau, Mercy). It's time (1896) in which Alexandre Promio, a cameraman for the Lumière company comes to Madrid and take the first films, where we see the Puerta del Sol early twentieth century, possibly the absurdity of Valle Inclán (lights Bohemia, a night journey of a blind poet for a sordid Madrid) that best reflects the reality of the villa. In a famous passage, quoted the distorting mirrors of Alley Cat inspiration of this vision, which has also been compared with the aesthetics of the painter José Gutiérrez Solana or the Ramón Gómez de la Serna (as famous for his work as its juicy gathering at the Cafe Pombo). A contrast would be the realistic literary Pio Baroja in his trilogy The Struggle for Life (The tree of knowledge, Weed, Aurora red) or Arturo Barea (The making of a rebel). The generation of 1927 had one of their meeting places in the Residencia de Estudiantes, where they could contact Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel.103 It is no exaggeration to speak of Silver Age. But shortly afterwards, the poets who "won who won" lost the war, 104 were on two fronts, playing "geographically" suffer the repression of the Republican side in Madrid Jardiel writers such as Enrique Ponce and Pedro Muñoz Ramiro de Maeztu Secay (who were shot) and resistance to sing "Breakwater fifty Spanish provinces" Antonio Machado

Madrid, Madrid, how well your name sounds,
breakwater all the Spains!
The land is torn, the sky thunders
lead you smile in the womb.

The "victory" 106 led to the exile (interior or exterior) to many of the survivors. Vicente Aleixandre stayed in Madrid and Gerardo Diego, according to this in a city of "something more than a million corpses." On the winning side did not see things much more cheerful, as demonstrated by The Hive by Camilo Jose Cela or grooves film by José Antonio Nieves Conde, from an ideology that denounced corruption Falangist the city had over a family of migrant farm workers. The generation of the fifties emphasized dark dyes ('s fantastic tavern Alfonso Sastre, set in the Arroyo de Abroñigal, now M-30, El Jarama Ferlosio Rafael Sanchez, who narrates the passage of time some young people who go to Madrid cooling to the banks of the river, or Time of Silence by Luis Martin-Santos, which runs through Madrid over, from the Center for Advanced Scientific Research, the Ateneo and aristocratic mansions up brothels, and slums popular festivals.) The film that portrays the time Madrid had evasion products of mass consumption, traditional values that spread more or less tinged with sweetened, like in the movies of Rafael J. Salvia (Manolo, guardia urban girls of the Red Cross, the great family, they co-directed by Fernando Palacios). Another tallest aesthetics and social commitment masked in black humor can be seen from Luis Garcia Berlanga (A happy couple, the executioner), Edgar Neville (Domingo de Carnaval and the last horse), Marco Ferreri (The little flat and the buggy). The Madrid scene, while the last period includes the genus tiny (the couplet and the music magazine, closely under censura107) represents the dye works of Antonio Buero Vallejo pessimistic, from Historia de una escalera (1949) and other set in Madrid (The blast, at the time of Larra, a dreamer for a village on the Esquilache).
The gray color may not be cleared from the artistic to the outbreak of the Madrid scene between the late seventies and early eighties. The films of Pedro Almodovar and the new comedy called Madrid (Fernando Colomo) reflect Madrid's definitely overcome the death of a cyclist Juan Antonio Bardem twenty years earlier. In the late 80's and early 90's the death throes of the move gave way to a widespread urban degradation, due to the rise of heroin, which was felt in Chueca (now open presence of gay district), Villaverde, San Blas or Vallecas and surrounding shantytowns. Some of this goes beyond the song Say I'm talking about Madrid Joaquin Sabina or in the movies Day of the Beast (1995) and humorous, Torrente (1998), where the concept of dandruff-term with an extremely Madrid something decadent and stale, either mentality, fashion or environment-cobra full meaning. The whole history of the city is reflected in a minute at her!, La Puerta de Alcala sung by Victor Manuel and Ana Belén