The success of beer as a mass-consumption product in the city of Madrid was definitively consolidated during the 19th century, thanks to the advances that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in the development of production, pasteurization, refrigeration, and distribution techniques. All of this led to the emergence of significant large-scale industrial production infrastructures which, while facilitating greater accessibility to beer consumption, also contributed to a progressive disconnection between the consumer and its production process; between the consumption of the product and the knowledge of its production, as well as the spaces in which it takes place. Therefore, today, thanks to the emergence of a new aesthetic-ecological paradigm in response to our delicate environmental and urban context, it seems essential to reclaim and, above all, recover that original relationship between the spaces of production and consumption in our cities; with the ultimate goal of preserving and returning to the entire population the knowledge of food and its cycles.

The former El Águila brewery, built by the architect Manuel García Morales (in collaboration with his son, Manuel García López) between 1960 and 1990 in the southern part of Madrid’s Villaverde district, is one of the many examples of industrial architecture built on the city’s outskirts during the second half of the 20th century. However, it is a particularly unique case due to its isolated location relative to the surrounding urban fabric, the formal qualities of its volumetric composition and, above all, the great complexity of the social dynamics underlying its production activities.

Because of its location on the city’s periphery, where the urban landscape dissolves into farmlands and railway lines, this brewery offers a glimpse into the complex, but evident historical and spatial relationships between the city and the countryside. As Professor Teresa Bullón Mata has pointed out, it is interesting to note that the idea of ​​integrating agricultural and urban areas is very close to what the geographer Manuel de Terán has always proposed, regarding the development of cities as urban spaces truly rooted in the surrounding territory. He argued that, since the entire city could be considered as a major center of consumption and as large market in itself, its entire periphery could specialize in supplying it. In this way, the transition from the urban core to the rural area would occur gradually, and the city would become integrated into a much more diversified space.

The immediate surroundings of the El Águila brewery in Villaverde potentially reflect this transitional condition between the urban and the rural, between industrial and agricultural, both productive landscapes. Therefore, the inclusion of this site in the future Metropolitan Forest of Madrid could be considered not only as a response to a clear environmental need, but also as an interesting opportunity to recover, absorb, and preserve—both physically and symbolically—this type of borderland space, asserting its importance within the material legacy of industrialization and allowing its reinterpretation as part of the complex system of historical, spatial and infrastructural relationships between the city and the environment.