For progress to get a hand in the work of that extraordinary man, whose portrait, due to the brush of D. Vicente López, we have admired with satisfaction in the hall of his illustrious descendants, Madrid had to be entirely transformed first; the  Spanish confiscation had had to build a new city on the ruins of the convents; that the Marquis of Pontejos to redevelop this place; the tariff reforms of 1849 and 1868 had to turn all Madrid’s trade upside down; the great genius of Salamanca had to conceive the first railways;  Madrid was, thanks to steam, forty hours away from Paris, and finally, a lot of wars and revolutions had to take place, as well as great disruptions in individual wealth.