Stations have been moved, diagonal lines abolished and familiar geography junked. Residents of Madrid are confused by a new map of the city’s fast-growing Metro system that they say has redrawn the face of the Spanish capital.

Like many metro maps around the world, Madrid’s has been based on Harry Beck’s revolutionary 1933 map of the London Underground, which eschewed geographical realism for simplicity of use.

As the city’s transport network has expanded in all directions the map has turned into an awkward, multicoloured tangle of lines and symbols that has tourists scratching their heads in confusion.

Matters are getting significantly worse. The Madrid regional government is to open no fewer than 80 new stations before local elections next month. To accommodate all the new lines and stations, miniature maps are appearing like thought bubbles on the edges of the existing one.

With the map growing more complicated by the day, the city authorities decided to commission a complete redesign, the first since the 1980s. The result, by a man who has made his name designing CD covers and advertisements, is certainly radical. Rafa Sañudo has produced an even more stylised version of the Madrid Metro, doing away with any diagonal lines.

For an outsider it is much easier to read but many madrileños are outraged that their city has apparently been redrawn without their consent. “It’s a monstrosity,” one said. “Idiotic and unnecessary. The old one was more realistic,” another wrote on the website of El PaÍs.

Stations that were on a straight line now appear divided by 90-degree turns. The geographical relationship between many well-known spots appears to have been reversed. Others complain that stations that appear to be linked on the map are in fact blocks apart — a complaint familiar to users of the London Underground.

Andén 1, a group of Madrid train enthusiasts, has attacked the new map as “confusing and illegible” and called for it to be withdrawn. “Even a schematic map should have some minimal relationship to the geography of the city,” it said.

Mr Sañudo stands by his creation. “We knew that whatever we did, we would get hit from all sides,” he told El PaÍs. The old map, he said, was not geographically correct either. “But because people are used to seeing it, they think it is,” he said.

Mr Sañudo says that he has tested his new map extensively, including on his “mother-in-law and her bridge partners”, and was sure that it would be accepted in due course. “In a year people will have adopted it as their own,” he said. “No one likes new things at the beginning.” Perhaps Mr Sañudo can draw some comfort from the experience of Beck.

The now classic map of the London Underground was rejected initially as too revolutionary. Even after it proved a success and became the standard Tube map, London Underground managers refused to acknowledge Beck’s contribution.

He was paid five guineas for his historic contribution to world design — about two weeks’ wages — considerably less than the €95,000 (£65,000) received by Mr Sañudo’s firm.

The world underground

New York Subway

468 stations over 230miles (370km)

Paris Metro

297 stations over 131 miles (211km)

London Underground

237 stations over 243 miles (392km)

Mexico City Metro

175 station over 110 miles (177km)

Tokyo Metro

168 stations over 114 miles (183km)

Beijing Subway

70 stations over 71 miles (114km)

Sources: mtr.com.hk; bjsubway.com; tokyometro.jp; ktransit.com; tfl.gov.uk; metro.df.gob.mx

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