Santa Cruz

Between the Puerta del Sol and the Plaza Mayor opens the Plaza de Santa Cruz, in the shadow of a church whose tower was among the tallest in Madrid: from it the whole town could be watched, and so they called it the watchtower of the Court. On one side rises its palace, a seventeenth-century work that began as the Court prison. Behind those walls half the history of Madrid awaited sentence, before the building traded prisoners for papers and became a ministry. Nearby, the names still tell the trade: Esparteros, for those who plaited esparto; la Bolsa, for the dealing of money. Today you cross it without noticing, on the way to the Plaza Mayor, among arcades and old taverns. But whoever stops in the square still hears, if they wish, the echo of a Court that kept its prisoners here and measured out its hours.