Calle de Arlabán

The name of this street comes from a mountain pass between Álava and Guipúzcoa, the scene of fighting during the First Carlist War. At the heights of Arlabán in 1836, the Isabelline troops — with Espartero and the British Auxiliary Legion among their ranks — clashed with the Carlist positions. Of those engagements, the action of May left the most vivid memory. Madrid wished to commemorate the victory and renamed a lane that had borne another name: the travesía de los Gitanos. So that alley came to carry the name of a battle in the Pyrenees. Here, too, opened one of the doors of the café de la Iberia, a famous progressive gathering place of the nineteenth century.