Enrique Tierno Galván

Enrique Tierno Galván (Madrid, 8 February 1918 – Madrid, 19 January 1986) was a Spanish politician, professor, lawyer and essayist, best known for being the Mayor of Madrid from 1979 to 1986, at the beginning of the new period of Spanish democracy. His time as Mayor of Madrid was marked by the development of Madrid both administratively and socially, and the cultural movement known as the Movida madrileña.

He fought in the Spanish Civil War in the Republican faction. After the war ended, he continued his studies and got a Ph.D. in Law and another in Philosophy. He held a Chair of Professor at the University of Murcia from 1948 to 1953, and at the University of Salamanca from 1953 until 1965. Afterwards, he worked as a lawyer and occasional professor at

Princeton University, Bryn Mawr College and the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan.

As a writer, he authored over 30 books, and translated important works such as the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 1978 he was chosen to write the preamble to the Spanish Constitution.

Statue of Tierno Galván in Madrid, in the park named after him

He founded the Popular Socialist Party (socialdemocrats) in 1968 and was its President until 1978, when they merged with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. In 1979 and 1982 he was one of the members of that party elected to the Congress of Deputies.

He was elected Mayor of Madrid after the polls of 3 April 1979As a candidate from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, he was the first leftist Mayor of Madrid after four decades of Francoist government. Reelected in 1983, he would remain in office until his death in 1986.

During his time as Mayor of Madrid, in addition to his support of the cultural changes of the Movida Madrileña, he promoted or finished many improvements to the city such as the traffic tunnels by the Atocha railway station, the development of incentives to use buses and other mass transports, the cleaning of the Manzanares river, the main market of the city (Mercamadrid) or the reorganization of the Districts of Madrid.