Technical University of Madrid - History

History

The Technical University of Madrid (UPM) was founded in 1971, although the majority of its centres are over hundreds of years old and were founded in the 18th and 19th centuries. Each of them maintained its independence until being grouped together to form the UPM in 1971. It is no exaggeration to state that over one and a half centuries great part of the history of Spanish technology has been written by the Schools of Architecture and Engineering of the UPM. They have been during a lot of years nearly the only and in some cases actually the only schools. All of the important personalities in the area of teaching and research passed through the respective centres as students or lecturers.

One of the oldest records of technological studies in Spain is the Royal Academy of Mathematics in Madrid, leaving aside the Quatrivium of arithmetics, geometry, astronomy and music, the four liberal arts, that form the base of the technical disciplines, which were studied in the monastic and cathedral schools and later in the medieval and renaissance universities. The Royal Academy of Mathematics was created after the idea and personal initiative of King Philip II after his return from a visit to Portugal in 1582, where he realised that the Portuguese cartographers were more advanced than those in Spain. The Academy did not award qualifications that entitled to exercise a profession. Its prestige was based on the lecturers and subjects taught. Cartographers, pilots, architects and engineers were trained in a way that the latter two started to gain a certain degree of recognition. In 1643 the Academy was closed down. The second relevant record of technological studies was the Body of Army, Cities, Ports and Frontiers Engineers founded by King Philip V in 1711. This date marked the foundation of the Spanish engineers as an organised profession. In 1716, for their training, the Royal Military School of Mathematics in Barcelona was created, even if it was not opened until 1720 and besides was limited to a strictly military context.