Calle de Blanca de Navarra

Blanca was born in Olite in 1424, daughter of John II of Aragon and Blanca I of Navarre. At sixteen she was married to the infante Enrique, the future Henry IV of Castile, a match designed to weave alliances between crowns. Thirteen years later the marriage was annulled without issue. Blanca’s misfortune was only beginning. On the death of her brother Charles, Prince of Viana, Navarre should have passed to her. Her father, at odds with the children of his first marriage, chose instead to hand her over as a hostage. She ended up locked in the castle of Orthez, in the hands of her sister Leonor and the Count of Foix, who coveted the kingdom. There she died in 1464, poisoned according to the version that clings to her memory. Her name reached this corner of the Ensanche when Castro’s plan laid out the grid of the Almagro district. The street runs briefly between Zurbano and Monte Esquinza. At number 8 the premises of an old dairy survive, a witness to when cows grazed here to supply milk to the newly expanded Madrid.