Moncloa's Lighthouse

This guide to Moncloa's Lighthouse in Madrid follows the tower from its 1992 opening, when it gave the city a beacon over the university district for the year Madrid was crowned European Capital of Culture, to a night a decade later when a fire broke out far away in one of Madrid's tallest office blocks. It traces how that unrelated blaze burned for about twenty-four hours as firefighters worked through the night, and how it reached across the city to shut this observation deck's doors. Look through the glass at the skyline it once watched over, empty, for years.