Calle de Fuenterrabía

The street takes its name from Fuenterrabía, a town in Gipuzkoa at the mouth of the Bidasoa river, now officially known as Hondarribia. It was granted town status in 1203 by Alfonso VIII of Castile and rose to historical fame after the siege of 1638, when some 1,100 defenders held off a French army under the Prince of Condé for 69 days. The street belongs to the Pacífico district, laid out in the Castro expansion during the last quarter of the 19th century. Its most visible landmark is the Neo-Mudéjar building of the Royal Tapestry Factory, built between 1881 and 1889 by José Segundo de Lema.

Calle de Fuenterrabía belongs to the Pacífico district, one of the areas Madrid urbanised from the 1870s within the Castro expansion. The area’s street names filled with Spanish cities and territories, a common custom in the 19th-century expansions. Fuenterrabía is the Castilian form of today’s Hondarribia, in Gipuzkoa. Alfonso VIII made it a town in 1203, and its position on the border with France turned it into a stronghold fought over for centuries. The episode that lodged deepest was the siege of 1638: the Prince of Condé’s troops besieged the city for 69 days, and some 1,100 defenders held out until the relief army of the Admiral of Castile forced the French to withdraw. Philip IV rewarded the resistance with the title of “very noble, very loyal and very valiant”. The building that gives the street its character is number 2, home to the Royal Tapestry Factory since 1889. José Segundo de Lema designed the Neo-Mudéjar premises, declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 2006.

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