Calle de Felipe III

Barely thirty metres separate Calle Mayor from the Plaza Mayor, and this passage bridges them by slipping under the Arco de Boteros, one of the square’s nine entrances. The arch’s name betrays who ruled here for centuries: the boteros, craftsmen who stitched leather wineskins and flasks to hold the musts of Arganda and the wines of Méntrida. That guild venerated the Christ of the Resurrection at San Ginés and, come Holy Week, staged its burnings of Judas effigies in the street. When the boteros moved off toward Calle de Toledo, the alley was left without the trade that had named it. The new name came by way of Mesonero Romanos. In 1848 he had moved Philip III’s equestrian statue to the centre of the Plaza Mayor, and in 1851 he proposed dedicating the street to that same monarch, the first king born in Madrid and credited with the idea of building the square he now presides over on horseback.