Calle de Caracas

The name comes from Caracas, capital of Venezuela, though the dedication was not born at the town hall nor meant to honor a distant city. The initiative came from Víctor Peñasco y Otero, developer of the first buildings raised here when Chamberí was ceasing to be an outlying quarter. Peñasco combined his post as councilman with a colonial-goods business, the shops that sold coffee, cocoa and spices brought from America. Venezuela was among his sources of income, and he named the street in gratitude to the country that stocked his counter. Calle de Caracas runs some 350 meters between Santa Engracia and Almagro. At number 15 the family of José María González Barredo lived for much of the Civil War, where Dolores Albás, mother of Josemaría Escrivá, also stayed; he took refuge there one night before moving to Calle Serrano.