Calle de Alfonso XII

Until 1865 this strip belonged to the Royal Site of the Buen Retiro, when Isabella II ceded the western edge of the royal gardens to the State. Four years later the palace that stood there fell, and the City Council used the plot to lay a new street. It named it Calle de Granada. The name did not last long. In 1878 it became Calle de Alfonso XII, in honor of the king who had reigned since 29 December 1874, when Martínez Campos’s pronouncement at Sagunto returned the throne to the Bourbons and closed the First Republic. Alfonso XII died young, in 1885, felled by tuberculosis. The street changed its plaque to the rhythm of Spanish politics: in 1931 it bore the name of Alcalá Zamora, during the Civil War it was briefly called Reforma Agraria, and in 1941 it recovered the king’s name it still keeps. To the north it borders the Retiro Park, from which it is separated by the railing crowned by the Puerta de España of 1893.