Pozuelo de Alarcón
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Pozuelo de Alarcón is a suburb of over 75,000 inhabitants near the city of Madrid, capital of Spain. It is surrounded by large Mediterranean pine-tree forests: la Casa de Campo, el Monte del Pardo and el Monte del Pilar. It is situated ten kilometres northwest of Moncloa District in Madrid.
Temperatures are cooler than Madrid's all year round due to its proximity to Madrid's Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains, about 30 kilometres northwest of Pozuelo.
Pozuelo has become a low-density residential area during the last decades as new residential urbanizations have quickly spread over formerly agricultural lands. Also, new transport infrastructures (the M-40, Madrid's bypass) cross the municipality's area. Additionally, work on a tram-link line (an open-air tube line) is ongoing. By 2007 it is expected that this tram line will connect Aluche district, in the city of Madrid, with Pozuelo.
Road communications with Central Madrid are excellent: there are three motorways (M-503,M-500 and A-6) linking straight forward Pozuelo with the very heart of Madrid (Districts of Centro, Chamberí and Moncloa). For a mostly quiet suburb, crowded and lively Madrid central areas (e.g. Moncloa-Ciudad Universitaria, Argüelles-Princesa, Plaza de España, Gran Vía, Puerta del Sol, Príncipe Pío) are so close, both by car and commuter train, that it may take even less time to get there from Pozuelo than from other areas situated within the Municipality of Madrid(e.g, Herrera Oria, Mirasierra, Arturio Soria).
According to official statistics, its average income level ranks the highest one amongst the municipalities of the Region of Madrid. The standard of living in most of its neighbourhoods is high, although some old city-centre areas, where a growing economic immigrant population has moved in to live, are excluded from such wealth.
Pozuelo is also dotted with long urban parks that separate the different urban areas. The most attractive area from an urban planning point of view is the Avenida de Europa, an urban development designed around a wide boulevard.
The Municipal Council has been ruled by political conservatives since the first democratic elections of the modern Spanish democracy took place. The current mayor, Jesús Sepulveda, was elected for the first time in the 2003 elections.
The local festivities, the "Fiestas Patronales", take place in July and in the beginning of September.
Pozuelo is twinned with the municipalities of Issy-les-Moulineaux in France and Poznań in Poland.
