Alcalá de Henares

Town in the autonomous community of Madrid, Spain, on the River Henares; population (2001) 176,400. Situated to the east of the capital, near Madrid-Barajas airport, the town has attracted many international companies and is a centre for research and development. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was born here.

Alcalá de Henares was the first city to be designed and built solely as the seat of a university, and was to serve as the model for other centres of learning in Europe and the Americas. The university was founded in 1508 by Cardinal Ximenes (the Primate of Spain and head of the Spanish Inquisition), relocated to Madrid in 1836, but was re-established in Alcalá in the 1970s.

The town has Roman, Visigothic and Moorish influences, including the arabic castle Al-Qala, and the university and historic precinct were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1998. The Calle de la Imagen street claims to be the greatest centre of Cervantes culture in the world. The first polyglot Bible (containing the same text in several different languages) was printed in Alcalá in 1517.