Calle de Alfonso XI

Calle de Alfonso XI arose in the last third of the 19th century, when the strip detached from the Royal Site of the Buen Retiro was developed to build the Jerónimos neighborhood. Its first stretch ended at calle de Juan de Mena: the gap up to Alcalá was taken by the Buen Retiro Gardens. Once these vanished in 1905, the street could stretch, and on 26 August 1910 the City Council stitched both pieces together under the sign of the Castilian king. Alfonso XI, “the Avenger,” took the throne at barely a year old and seized power in 1325. To subdue the high nobility he created the office of corregidor. In 1340 he beat the Marinids by the Río Salado, and his most lasting mark was legal: the Ordenamiento de Alcalá of 1348 set which laws carried more weight, and that hierarchy survived into the 19th century. He died in 1350 before the walls of Gibraltar, during the siege, not by an enemy sword but by the Black Death.