Calle de Dolores

Dolores comes from the veneration of the Virgin Mary as a mother who suffers beside her son, the Mater Dolorosa that art depicts with a dagger driven into her breast. The devotion gathers seven sorrowful scenes from the life of Christ, and from it came a woman’s name that for centuries was among the most common in Spain. Anyone called Lola today carries, almost without knowing it, that religious echo. How the name reached this Berruguete street was not kept. The neighbourhood grew in fits in the early 20th century, when the land north of old Tetuán de las Victorias filled with low houses and streets opened almost on the fly; many took simple women’s names, with no record of which Dolores was being honoured, whether a saint, a neighbour, or just a fashionable name. The district recalls the painter and sculptor Alonso Berruguete, who gave this area its name. Among those modest streets, Dolores names a piece of city barely a few doorways long.