Calle de Atocha

The name already appears in the thirteenth-century Charter of Madrid, where it named first the site, then the hermitage, and lastly the street. Its origin is rural: an atochar is ground covered with atochas, the word for esparto grass, a pre-Roman term that reached Castilian through the Mozarabic taucha. Alongside it have grown pious explanations no one has managed to prove. One derives Atocha from the Greek Theotokos, “Mother of God.” Another makes it a corruption of Antioch, the city from which, by tradition, the image venerated in the hermitage had come. Philology prefers the esparto to the devotion. For centuries this was one of Madrid’s great arteries: the road that led to the basilica, to Vallecas, and to the hospital.