Calle de Clara del Rey

Clara del Rey lived in the Maravillas neighbourhood, a step from the Monteleón artillery park, when the uprising of 2 May 1808 brought war to the streets of Madrid. That day she went to the barracks with her husband and children, while the women of the neighbourhood hauled ammunition and tended the wounded amid the smoke of the cannon. Clara fell there, struck by French fire in the assault on the position. Little record of her earlier life survived: an ordinary woman whose name entered history only through those hours, a symbol of the anonymous heroism that sustained the resistance. Madrid honours her with a bust in the plaza de las Comendadoras and with this street in the Prosperidad neighbourhood.