Travesía de Belén

Travesía de Belén owes its name to the same Christmas devotion as the street it branches from. At this edge of the town, Beatriz Ramírez de Mendoza, Countess of Castellar, held her estate — a deeply devout woman who had a hermitage built there to the Nativity. Every Christmas a pilgrimage was held at which she gave out alms to the poor who came. The corner holds a story that gave the language a phrase. On the corner of Barquillo and Belén stood, until 1850, the famous Casa de Tócame Roque, a blacksmiths' tenement. Two brothers, Juan and Roque, are said to have fallen into such a quarrel over their inheritance that the household chaos ended up naming the expression we still use for utter disorder. Since 1911, number 1 has hidden, in the basement of a nineteenth-century building, the Cachito de Cielo chapel of the Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament. It could be set underground thanks to the Canalejas Law, which then forbade building new churches in the city.

The jewels adorning the image of the Virgin in the hermitage of Belén were stolen. Suspicion fell on the poor who frequented the Christmas pilgrimage, whom the Countess Beatriz Ramírez de Mendoza herself relieved with alms. They proved innocent: the thief was caught trying to sell the jewels to a silversmith on Calle de Santiago.