Embajadores

This was the southern end of Madrid, the setting-off ground toward Toledo, with the wād al-kabír in the distance and here nearby only orchards, threshing floors and convents that were being planted on the outskirts. Beatriz Galindo, la Latina, the Latin tutor of the children of the Catholic Monarchs, founded in 1509 a convent of Hieronymite Conceptionist nuns on the vineyard of her husband, Francisco Ramírez, the Crown’s master of artillery; hence comes the calle de la Concepción Jerónima. It was an area of humble trades and working people, the sort that in time would give the neighborhood its castizo fame. Many of the names look to the Church and to teaching, because the Jesuits settled here in force. On the calle de Toledo they raised the Colegio Imperial and, attached to it, the Casa de los Estudios, a town institution that they governed: hence the calle de los Estudios, which was formerly “del Estudio” and for a time “de San Dámaso.” When Charles III expelled the Society in 1767, he turned their church into the Real Colegiata de San Isidro and brought there the body of the patron saint of Madrid; along its side façade runs the calle de la Colegiata. Later came the names of politicians and poets. The calle del Conde de Romanones recalls Álvaro de Figueroa, the liberal boss whose title comes from a village in Guadalajara where his family held lands; before, this street was called simply Barrionuevo. And where the convent of Beatriz Galindo stood, demolished in 1890, the calle del Duque de Rivas was opened, after Ángel de Saavedra, the Romantic poet who lived in the palace on the corner, later called the Viana palace. The Latin tutor placed the convent; the poet came to inherit its plot.