In 1969 to 1973, Vicente Mortes, the Minister of Housing (Ministro de la Vivienda), commissioned by the dictator Francisco Franco, was the first to establish and develop the town over a rural area.

Tres Cantos was built on former rural lands, about halfway from the northern outskirts of suburban Madrid to the Guadarrama mountain range, which are frequently snow-capped in winter.

It lies in a slight valley formed with two eastwards-flowing creeks, bounded to the south by a higher plateau leading to Madrid, and to the west and north by more hilly terrain, which separates the area from the watershed of the Manzanares River.

Due to its geographical location, 22 kilometers from the capital, with its altitude and proximity to the mountains, the annual average precipitation is greater than in Madrid (above 500 mm).

[citation needed] A feature of Tres Cantos' demographic profile is the large proportion of young professionals (aged 45 and under) with children, compared to Madrid and the national average.

This population structure reflects the nucleus of those who left the crowded confines of Madrid to settle in the new community of Tres Cantos in the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in a predominance of young, double-income and home-owning families of 2 to 3 children.

Again, many of the immigrant population are professionals employed by multinational companies in fields such as technology, who have settled in Spain after first arriving on work assignment, many of whom are married to Spanish nationals.

[citation needed] Educational accreditation among Tres Cantos inhabitants is also above the national average, with some 60% of prime income earners holding a tertiary qualification or higher.

[citation needed] An overwhelming majority of the employed work in the services sector, either in Madrid or in Tres Cantos itself.

Those who remain behind are joined by a daily influx of approximately 20,000 who commute from Madrid and its environs to Tres Cantos for work.

Tres Cantos' main economic activity is derived from the existence of various high-tech factories and headquarters in designated zones, including from the pharmaceutical, aerospace and computing industries.

The headquarters of both the Real Automóvil Club de España and the Spanish Metrology Centre [es] (CEM) are located in Tres Cantos.