Calle Alcántara
The street takes its name from the Military Order of Alcántara, founded around 1176 as the brotherhood of San Julián del Pereiro. The place name comes from the Extremaduran town that Alfonso IX ceded to the Order in 1218, whose Arabic name al-qantara —‘the bridge’— refers to the Roman viaduct over the Tagus.
The name of calle de Alcántara honors one of the great military orders of medieval Spain, and carries with it an Arabic word that traveled from a Roman bridge to the streets of Madrid’s Ensanche.
It all began around 1176 beside the Côa river, where a group of knights formed a community under the name of San Julián del Pereiro. When the town of Alcántara, in present-day Extremadura, was taken from the Muslims, Alfonso IX of León ceded it to the order in 1218. With the new seat came a new name: by around 1253 the masters styled themselves solely of Alcántara.
Alcántara comes from the Arabic al-qantara, “the bridge.” Not just any bridge, but the six-arched Roman bridge that Trajan had built over the Tagus around the year 105, still standing today. An order of Christian knights ended up calling itself, without quite knowing it, “those of the bridge” in Arabic.
Today that long history fits into some 876 meters. The street crosses the Lista neighborhood diagonally between calle de Alcalá and calle de Francisco Silvela.