Las Cortes

The official barrio is called Cortes after the parliament that has met since 1850 on the site of the former convent of the Espíritu Santo, on the Carrera de San Jerónimo: the Congress of Deputies, with its two lions at the door. Here politics and the pen brush against each other: on one side the Cortes; on the other, toward Huertas, the Barrio de las Letras. Deputies climbed the Carrera de San Jerónimo to the chamber, and printers and booksellers lived on the neighboring streets, down to a sieve-maker who left his trade hanging on a corner. Today you enter Congress through Jovellanos, among photographers and plenary mornings. The surrounding streets bear the surnames of politicians and poets —⁠Zorrilla, Ventura de la Vega, the Madrazos⁠—⁠, depending on whether the neighborhood leans toward the law or the pen. And you need only cross Calle de la Cruz, or climb up Sevilla, to be in Sol already.