Calle de Gerona

Barely a stretch separates the Plaza Mayor from the Plaza de la Provincia, but it was an unavoidable passage between two of the most important civic spaces of Habsburg Madrid, and that was enough to fill it with trades. Its old names tell the story well. Glaziers worked under the arcades, and the street was called Vidrierías. Then came the cloth merchants and it became Portales de Sedas (Silk Arcades), a sign that by the mid-18th century the fabric trade still shaped its character. The present name arose in 1835, within a liberal urban plan that turned several central streets into tributes to the War of Independence. Bailén, Zaragoza and Gerona were named in the same commemorative batch. Since then, Gerona recalls the heroism with which the city withstood the French siege of 1809.

During the siege of 1809, the military governor Álvarez de Castro issued a proclamation threatening to put to death anyone who uttered the word surrender; the city held out for seven months before capitulating on 11 December, its ammunition and provisions exhausted. It is this specific episode that Peñasco and Cambronero cite when explaining the street’s name.