Leganes

Leganes is a municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain, about 11 kilometers southwest of the capital and the fourth most populous municipality in the region. Founded in 1280 as Legamar during the reign of Alfonso X, its name evolved from the silt deposit that gave the area its identity, and in 1627 King Philip IV established it as an independent town under noble jurisdiction; the opening of Spain's first psychiatric asylum, the Santa Isabel Psychiatric Hospital, in 1851 helped drive its modern development. The 2024 population was 194,084, the thirty-second largest in Spain, having grown from just 5,000 residents in the 1950s to over 56,000 by 1970 as part of Madrid's post-war urbanization. Once known for cucumber cultivation, Leganes is today an industrial and residential hub hosting a campus of Charles III University, the Parquesur shopping center and an open-air sculpture museum with works from the Reina Sofia Museum collection.