After earning a place at the Telegraph Corps, he started to work with groups that fought against the censorship of Isabel II, by printing revolutionary pamphlets, attending liberal conspiratorial meetings, fighting in the barricades and serving as a liaison between revolutionary leaders who had fled to Ostend, Paris and London.

After living in Lerida, Orense and A Coruña, he was posted to Puerto Rico in 1871 as Secretary of the Civil Government of the island, commissioned with making the approval of the abolition of slavery a reality. According to the Royal Academy of History, he managed to free 355 slaves from the hands of traffickers and landowners, to which end he had to struggle against the wealthy Creole powers and the political forces on the island. His humanitarian work prompted the gratitude of the electorate of the district of Quebradilla (Puerto Rico) and they elected him as an MP and in 1873 he became one of the MPs who voted in favour of forming the First Republic.

After abandoning political life, in 1874 he presented his first business initiative: the Tramway of Stations and Markets. His proposal was to link several markets and stations in the capital by horse-drawn trams, which could have made basic products more affordable.

In 1877, Arturo Soria applied to the State for the concession to establish in Madrid what would have been the world’s first underground telephone network, shortly after Alexander Graham Bell patented his invention. The project clashed with bureaucratic lethargy and jealously that Arturo Soria would be able to take control of such a powerful instrument. Despite receiving approval from Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, President of the Council of Ministers of Alfonso XII, the operating licence for the telephone network was awarded to another bidder, which proved not be successful.

Aside from city planning and transport, Arturo Soria had time to think up inventions. Among these was the theodolite, an automatic topographic data printer, the development of which was thwarted by the revolution of 1868. There was also an apparatus capable of warning of rising river levels, of which Arturo Soria had published a description but had never managed to turn into a reality.

Arturo Soria, who was also a journalist and a writer, analysed the problems of Madrid in the newspaper ‘El Progreso’. It was precisely through an article entitled “Madrid patched up and a new Madrid”, dated 6 March 1882, that he began to outline his city model and his greatest life-work: Ciudad Lineal - the linear city. Influenced by Ildefons Cerdá and his slogan “urbanise the countryside and ruralise the city”, Arturo Soria envisaged a city structured on both sides of a single street, with an extensive central road some 50 metres wide of unlimited length, with a railway or tram line in the centre, which would also include public services – to extinguish fires, for cleaning, security and hygiene – with parks, ponds and small municipal buildings. Furthermore, gas, water and steam conduits would be installed underground, along with a rubber tube to deliver letters and packages – which would replace postmen – and electricity and telephone cables. This would solve hygiene problems, overcrowding and transport issues in large cities of the time.

To carry out his dream, in 1894 the Madrid Urbanisation Enterprise was set up to build Cuidad Lineal, the first Spanish linear city: a growing marginal district in Madrid, in the form of a 50-kilometre ring around the capital, which joined the city centre with the villages that were then on its outskirts, and to build, repopulate and plant trees on its land.

Despite the negative reactions, indifference and personal interests of the public authorities, in July 1894 the first stone of the project was laid. Although the ambitious project, coined as the obsession of a visionary, had to be interrupted by the economic crisis stemming from World War One, Arturo Soria lived to witness the construction of 1,000 houses of three types: luxury, middle class and working class, all with very hygienic conditions and fitted out with essential services.

Beyond the initial number of houses, the efforts by Arturo Soria and those who worked on the project were titanic: more than 8,000,000 square metres of land; more than 20,000 linear metres of levelled land; 100,000 trees planted; 120,000 metres of water pipes and 150,000 metres of electricity lines; and 50 kilometres of railway lines, among other achievements.

Arturo Soria died in November 2020 aged 76 without having paused for a single day in his affairs at the company offices. And his idea and his slogan of “a linear city, with a house for each family, and each house with its own allotment and garden” lived on, designed to house 30,000 people. Although his children continued the business until 1931, what survived the Spanish Civil War was significantly changed. As from the 1970s, due to the unstoppable growth of Madrid and traffic needs, the project imitated by Arturo Soria finally succumbed.

Despite Arturo Soria’s project, which was somewhat utopian, not being fully developed, his works crossed borders and inspired other authors, such as the Frenchman Le Corbusier, in his design of the Cité Lineaire Industrielle [Industrial Linear City].

As well as Cuidad Lineal in Madrid, there are partial examples of similar projects, such as the Gran Boulevard de Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing, finalised in 1909 in France, and the attempt at this in Chile in 1914, as well as the exhibition of this city model at the International Expos of Lyon, Toulouse and Gothenburg, in 1914, 1915 and 1923, respectively.

For his part, the French city planner Georges Benoit-Levy – who founded the International Association of Linear Cities – put the idea before the League of Nations. Nicolás Milutin, in the Soviet Union, echoed the ideas of Arturo Soria and of Le Corbusier and applied the outlines and provision of public services and green areas to the city of Sotsgorod similar to Arturo Soria’s in the 1920s.

His importance for contemporary city planning is also due to his idea of fast travel and mobility as a structural base for the city, incorporated by city planners of the Modern Movement to their creation in the Greater London Plan, the American metropolis, the Tokyo Bay Plan, Brasilia, etc.

Despite one of the main avenues in Madrid bearing his name, many people are unaware of the influence of Arturo Soria on city planning and on cultural life in Spain. The Legacy of Arturo Soria Cultural Association is working to include him in the circuits of national and international cultural promotion. Its aims include disseminating the philosophy and achievements of the linear city of Arturo Soria at the end of the 19th Century, with problems and solutions that still exist today; recover pictures and historical documents; and protect and spread the heritage value of Ciudad Lineal.

As well as a commemorative plaque for the centenary of his death, which will shortly be installed at number 124 calle Arturo Soria – Villa Rubín – the house where the city planner lived and died, an exhibition is planned for the end of November on his works and his person at the History Museum in Madrid, which will include plans, models, family documents and other objects on loan.