Javillac
The early years of the automobile were an era similar to the Wild West in terms of written rules of the road. There were few laws, and each municipality had its own laws on how to drive, with the first regulations on the circulation of automobiles in Spain drawn up in 1918. At that time Most Spanish cities had already determined that they had to drive on the right, but the capital was the exception, being the last city to adopt this change, which is now one hundred years old.
Madrid was a much smaller city than it is today, as it did not yet exceed one million inhabitants. Automobiles were a recent invention that were only available to very few, and until then only 15.000 vehicles had been registered in the province.. However, the traffic was disorderly and chaotic, because, although the speed limit was 20 kilometers per hour, carriages, motorcycles, trams, pedestrians and automobiles coexisted on the streets of the town.
Added to this was the traffic anomaly that was circulating through the capital, which often generated accidents by drivers who came from other places and were already accustomed to driving on the right. The automobile industry had already begun to standardize left-hand drive cars, as Henry Ford, so it was a matter of time before Madrid ended the tradition of traveling on the left.
MIDNIGHT OF APRIL 10, 1924
It was Juan O'Donnell, the then military and civil governor of Madrid under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera who promoted a series of changes in the city's circulation that included reversing the direction in which traffic was traveled. On March 22, 1924, said regulations were published and would come into force on April 10. which also dictated how pedestrians walking through the metropolis had to walk, depending on the width of the sidewalk.
«From next April 10, all vehicles will go on the right of the roads, both in the streets and in the squares. Pedestrians must always walk on the right sidewalk of the streets, depending on the direction in which they are going, and parking within them and walking on the roads is absolutely prohibited.
Midnight on April 10 was followed by a few minutes of logical chaos while motorists drove for the first time on the right side of the streets of Madrid, and for a time it was common to see cars displaying a sign remembering “Take the right". Even more curious was the case of the trams, which interrupted their service at midnight to make the appropriate modifications that allowed them to resume their operation only eight hours later., now adapted to the direction of travel.
All this to the astonishment of the most clueless inhabitants of the city, who woke up thinking that By magic, the city had completely turned around, changing the appearance of some areas overnight.. Popular ingenuity led many to call this measure another example of Primo de Rivera's right-wing regime.
It took little time for Madrid to get used to this new way of driving, and just a few hours later the first traffic accident took place after the implementation of this rule; a collision between a car and a tram that inaugurated a way of traveling that is now a century old.
