Calle de Don Felipe

Calle de Don Felipe slopes gently down from plaza de San Ildefonso to calle de la Madera, in the Universidad quarter, barely 107 metres long. On Texeira’s map (1656) it appears as calle del Rosario. A magistrate lived here, don Felipe de Acuña, a judge of the royal court, and neighbours gradually attached his name to the street until it shrank to today’s plain Don Felipe. Popular memory kept a fond image of him: a kind, charitable man, though firm on the bench. Galdós set part of El amigo manso (1882) on this street and called it “peaceful.” Something of that quiet still holds, and you feel it as the street spills into the bustle of plaza de San Ildefonso.

When dictating his will, Acuña left his possessions to the poor. When the notary —⁠prompted, according to tradition, by those with an interest⁠— asked whether he left anything to his servants, he replied that he left them “forgiveness for everything they had stolen from him”. The anecdote circulated as a summary of his character: severe on the bench, merciful in private life.