Madrid Climbs The Global Literature Rankings

That Madrid is one the great centres in Spanish literature is no surprise – its rich legacy stretches back to its founding as the capital of Spain with such maestros as Miguel de Cervantes and continues through the centuries to the likes of  Benito Pérez Galdós and Almudena Grandes.

It also of course where the guardians of the language meet at the Royal Spanish Academy.

It has also reached into the English language with writers such as Ernest Hemingway who made such a deep impression on the capital during his many years living and visiting Madrid.

The appearance of Madrid being written about in the English language has also been gaining traction in recent years.

The printing experts at Aura Print combed through the vast expanse of the Google Books corpus (a repository boasting 25 million books) to identify the cumulative mentions of 31 prominent European cities across books spanning from 1920 to 2019 and Madrid amassed a respectable 9,883,636 literary mentions, securing 13th place with its awe-inspiring culture and architecture entrancing novelists for decades.

Famous books set in Madrid include Winter in Madrid and Leaving the Atocha Station.

That Madrid is considerably behind Paris in 2nd place and Rome in 3rd with 95 million and 48 million respectively its still ahead of many such as Munich, Prague and Copenhagen whose heyday was from the 1920s to 1960s whilst Madrid started making the international waves from the 1990s – and gaining ground – fast!