Calle de Alfonso VI

A steep street in the heart of the Morería —⁠the quarter where the Mudéjars settled after the Christian conquest⁠— climbing between the plaza del Alamillo and the costanilla de San Andrés, keeping the shape of the medieval suburb that grew outside the Arab almudayna. The name came late. On Texeira’s map it has none at all; by 1769 it appears as calle de San Isidro, and the reason is at number 6: there Madrid’s patron saint lived and died. This is no legend. In 1596 a notary drew up an act before the canonization judges certifying that the house, owned by Iván de Vargas, was his home, a modest dwelling with a well in the yard. It is the only house of the saint with solemn notarial proof. Around 1834 the street took an unexpected turn: calle del Aguardiente (Aguardiente Street). The likely explanation is prosaic: while aguardiente was a royal treasury monopoly, there must have been a store of the drink here. On 29 May 1878, at the neighbours' request, the present name was introduced, honouring Alfonso VI, the king who took Madrid without any source recording a fight: the town seems to have surrendered without resistance.