Sources
Everything here comes from somewhere you can check. When a fact is not verified, the entry says so.
The facts
The starting point is Wikipedia's appendix on the iconographic scheme of the Plaza Mayor, licensed CC BY-SA. It documents 63 medallions. There are 69 here: the five that were missing turned up in the Wikimedia Commons photographs, which carry the arch number in the file name.
We also corrected a truncated year in the original, a photograph Wikipedia used for two different medallions, and a medallion dated 1730 but credited to a sculptor born in 1930.
The "who he was" on each entry is the opening paragraph of that person's Wikipedia article, copied as it stands and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Every entry links the exact revision it was taken from, so you can open that version and read the same thing. Birth and death dates come from Wikidata. We write no biographies of our own: a text with no source cannot be checked, and checking is the whole point here. When someone has no article in the language you are reading, the entry carries the Spanish text translated by us, and says so; that happens 83 times out of 552.
Three cartouches on the San Martín side give a name the appendix does not resolve: it links to a disambiguation page or to an article that does not exist. Two could be settled from the photograph's file page on Wikimedia Commons: "Diego López de Haro" is Diego López II de Haro, and the "Rodrigo Dávila" of the cartouche is Ruy López Dávalos. The third, "Rodrigo Ponce de León", is still open, and its entry sets out both candidates instead of picking one.
The blanks, counted in the square
Where each blank spandrel falls comes from no written source: it was counted in the square, side by side, in September 2026. Before that it was inferred from the arch numbers in the Commons file names, assuming the missing numbers were blanks, and that inference was wrong. Counting them also turned up the location of Alfonso IX, the 2023 medallion, the only one still unplaced.
The 88 arches, and the two we have too many
The square has 88 arches, and that is not an estimate: the figure is inscribed in the square itself. They are numbered 1 to 88 in the stone, the count starts in the south beside the San Pablo arch, runs anticlockwise and closes at that same arch with 88. The published split is 21 for the Town Hall side, 22 for the Royal, 20 for San Martín and 25 for Petrineros.
Walking the square side by side we get 90 places. San Martín and the Royal side match the published figure exactly; the difference is on the Town Hall side, where we have three too many, and on Petrineros, where one is missing. The two that match are precisely the ones with no blank spandrels. It is unresolved, and the way to close it is to read the carved numbers: 14 should fall under the Duke of Alba's medallion.
Where each side begins
The direction of each side is documented in two sources that agree. On the Royal side: "if we stand at the Calle Toro arch and walk to the Ochavo steps, the first medallion we find is Franco's". On San Martín: the run begins at the Ochavo steps and ends with Alonso de Aragón and Alonso de Aguilar on the Corrillo arch. The other two fit the same circuit, which is also the one of the carved numbering.
The geometry of the square
The outline and the measurements come from way 78180390 on OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL), projected to metres. The four sides match the lengths Wikipedia gives to within a metre.
The footprint of the built ring and the position of the blank spandrels were measured on the PNOA orthophoto from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (CC BY 4.0).
The aerial view
The image on the front page is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph, and it is labelled as such. It has been verified against the measured geometry: the points are placed on it by calculation, not by eye.
The photographs of the medallions
The 68 photographs come from Wikimedia Commons. They have been cropped to the same framing and brought to the same tonal range so the series reads as a series; the content has not been altered.
| Basilio | 34 |
|---|---|
| Tamorlan | 31 |
| PMRMaeyaert | 3 |
Most of them are by Basilio, who walked the whole square in August and September 2012 and photographed the blank spandrels too, one by one. Without that work this site would not exist.
- 39 CC BY-SA 3.0
- 29 CC BY 3.0
What is not verified
Seven cartouches, ten sculptors and ten years are still missing, and they are published nowhere: they have to be read in the square or requested from the council's file. Nor do the 90 places we counted square with the 88 published. Every entry affected says so.