Plaza del Ángel

The plazuela del Ángel, narrower then than today’s square, widened at a point where the oratory of San Felipe Neri once stood. It held a painting of the Holy Guardian Angel to which the neighbors were deeply devoted. When the convent came down between 1769 and 1771, with Ventura Rodríguez directing the work, the painting vanished without a trace. Some tell another story: the angel hung not from an altar but was painted on the façade of a house, in plain sight of anyone passing. Both versions point to the same guardian angel and differ only on where the image was. Since neither left records to prove it, the origin of the name remains undocumented.