Torrespaña (popularly known as El Pirulí) is a telecommunications tower in Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain. It is located at the junction of O’Donnell Street with Alcalde Sainz de Baranda Street at the Salamanca district and close to the M-30 ring road. It is owned by Cellnex Telecom, having previously belonged to RTVE and Retevisión.
It is the third tallest telecommunications tower in Spain after the Guardamar Tower in Alicante and the Collserola Tower in Barcelona.
Torrespaña is 220 metres high (232 metres with the communications antenna). Construction began on 17 February 1981 and took thirteen months to complete, costing 3.5 billion pesetas. The inauguration took place on 7 June 1982, just in time for the tower to be used during the 1982 Football World Cup.
Torrespaña was built as part of the infrastructure works for the 1982 FIFA World Cup, which allowed Televisión Española (TVE) –who held the monopoly on television broadcasting in the country and was in charge of producing the official live television feed of the event– to carry out a major modernization with the construction of the broadcasting tower and the production center at its foot. Both facilities were designed by RTVE’s architect Emilio Fernández Martínez de Velasco.
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