El Pardo

The Royal Palace of El Pardo (Spanish: Palacio Real de El Pardo, pronounced [paˈlaθjo reˈal de el ˈpaɾðo]) is a historic building in Madrid, Spain, in the present-day district of Fuencarral-El Pardo. It is owned by the Spanish state and administered by the Patrimonio Nacional agency. It serves as the state guest house of the Spanish Government.

Francoist Spain (Spanish: España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (dictadura franquista), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title Caudillo. After his death in 1975, Spain became a democracy. During this time period, Spain was officially known as the Spanish State (Estado Español). The nature of the regime evolved and changed during its existence. Months after the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Franco emerged as the dominant rebel military leader and was proclaimed head of state on 1 October 1936, ruling a dictatorship over the territory controlled by the Nationalist faction. The 1937 Unification Decree, which merged all parties supporting the rebel side, led to Nationalist Spain becoming a single-party regime under the FET y de las JONS. The end of the war in 1939 brought the extension of the Franco rule to the whole country and the exile of Republican institutions. The Francoist dictatorship originally took a form described as "fascistized dictatorship", or "semi-fascist regime", showing clear influence of fascism in fields such as labor relations, the autarkic economic policy, aesthetics, and the single-party system. As time went on, the regime opened up and became closer to developmental dictatorships, although it always preserved residual fascist elements.During the Second World War, war-ravaged and starving Spain did not join the Axis powers (its supporters from the civil war, Italy and Germany) but supported them in various ways throughout most of the war while maintaining its neutrality as an official policy of "non-belligerence". Because of this, Spain was isolated by many other countries for nearly a decade after World War II, while its autarkic economy, still trying to recover from the civil war, suffered from chronic depression. The 1947 Law of Succession made Spain a de jure kingdom again, but defined Franco as the head of state for life with the power to choose the person to become King of Spain and his successor. Reforms were implemented in the 1950s and Spain abandoned autarky, reassigning economic authority from the Falangist movement, which had been prone to isolationism, to a new breed of economists, the technocrats of Opus Dei. This led to massive economic growth, second only to Japan, that lasted until the mid-1970s, known as the "Spanish miracle". During the 1950s, the regime also changed from being openly totalitarian and using severe repression to an authoritarian system with limited pluralism. As a result of these reforms, Spain was allowed to join the United Nations in 1955, and during the Cold War, Franco was one of Europe's foremost anti-communist figures: his regime was assisted by Western powers, particularly the United States. Franco died in 1975 at the age of 82. He restored the monarchy before his death and made his successor King Juan Carlos I, who would lead the Spanish transition to democracy.

The Casita del Príncipe (Spanish for 'Cottage of the Prince') is an eighteenth-century house near the Royal Palace of El Pardo which is set in a hunting estate north of Madrid.

The Cristo Yacente (Dead Christ) of El Pardo, is a life-size polychromed sculpture by Spanish sculptor Gregorio Fernández, executed between 1614 and 1615. Housed in a chapel of the Capuchin Monastery of El Pardo (Madrid), the sculpture was commissioned by King Philip III to celebrate the birth of his son Philip IV. The Cristo yacente of El Pardo is the most famous of the fourteen "Cristos" produced by Fernández and his workshop. As devotional images, many of them were processed during Holy Week with other “pasos” (elaborate religious floats adorned with sculptures depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ). All these images were created in accordance with Counter-Reformation ideology that required realism in religious images to impress and move the believer.

The Mingorrubio Cemetery (Spanish: Cementerio de Mingorrubio), also called the Cemetery of El Pardo (Spanish: Cementerio de El Pardo), is a municipal cemetery in Madrid, Spain, located in the Mingorrubio neighborhood in the northern district of Fuencarral-El Pardo.

José Miguel Vega Rodríguez (19 December 1913 – 30 May 1992) was a Spanish military officer. He served in numerous positions, most notably as President of the Supreme Council of Military Justice, Chief of Staff of the Army and Director General of the Civil Guard. Additionally, he served as the last colonial governor of Ifni.

Carlos Ignacio Martínez de Campos y Serrano, 3rd Duke of la Torre (6 October 1887 – 20 May 1975) was a Spanish military officer, historian and academic.

The Torre de la Parada is a former hunting lodge that was located in present-day Monte de El Pardo in Fuencarral-El Pardo, near the Royal Palace of El Pardo, some way outside Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama. It was mostly destroyed by fire when taken in 1714 by Austrian troops in the War of Spanish Succession, though the ruins remain.

The Monte de El Pardo is a large forested area in Madrid, Spain, extending roughly across one quarter of the total municipal area. The Monte de El Pardo has an area of 15289.12 ha. It was already mentioned as hunting ground in the Alfonso XI's Libro de la Montería (mid 14th century). Reputed to be one of the best preserved mediterranean forests in Europe, it is protected as Special Protection Area (ZEPA in Spanish) since 1987. It is owned by Patrimonio Nacional.To a large extent, it is an holm oak forest, featuring also another tree varieties such as cork oaks, Valencian oaks, junipers, ashes, Montpellier maples, kermes oaks and willows and scrub plants such as cistus, retama broom bushes, Phillyrea angustifolia, rosemary and Spanish lavender.

Fuentelarreina is an administrative neighborhood (barrio) of Madrid belonging to the district of Fuencarral-El Pardo.

Casa de Campo ([ˈkasa ðe ˈkampo]) is an administrative neighborhood (barrio) of Madrid, Spain, belonging to the district of Moncloa-Aravaca.

On 22 February 2019 at the Embassy of North Korea in Madrid, the political group Free Joseon, which is opposed to Kim Jong Un and the current government of North Korea, is alleged by Spanish and American authorities to have attacked the embassy. Free Joseon maintains that they were invited in to facilitate a high-level defection. A group of individuals stole mobile telephones, two USB flash drives and a hard drive from the embassy and handed them over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. The event took place after the Singapore summit between North Korea (DPRK) and the United States and prior to the Hanoi summit. As of early April 2019, one person had been arrested in connection with the incident and two international arrest warrants had been issued by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional. The suspected perpetrators are citizens of Mexico, the US and South Korea, although the latter two governments denied any connection with the incident. The incident is alleged to have been violent; the suspected perpetrators purportedly possessed knives and replica guns, and a number of embassy staff were treated for injuries. Another member of the embassy staff injured herself by leaping from an upper window before alerting police. The Spanish authorities' investigations were kept secret for the first month; when they released their findings—including the names of the suspected perpetrators—they were criticised for possibly endangering the named peoples' lives. The Spanish privately briefed the media that they suspected but could not prove Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement because the attack was professional in its precision. One former CIA agent, however, said the timing of the attack and its high-profile nature would have made it impossible for the CIA to have condoned it or taken part. The Government of North Korea described the incident as an act of terrorism and demanded an international investigation; the embassy and its attaché, however, did not report the attack or any injuries sustained by the staff to the Spanish police. Free Joseon has denied allegations that this incident was a break-in raid of the compound, and accusations of being directed by foreign intelligence services. Rather, the group asserts that it was invited in by some undisclosed number of embassy staffers who wished to defect. In order to protect their family members in North Korea, who would ostensibly be punished for a relative's defection, these embassy staffers reportedly requested a staged kidnapping and physical injuries to absolve themselves of suspicion from the North Korean government. It is alleged that a staffer's panic around the plot being discovered precipitated the botched defection effort.