Calle de Juan de Dios

A short, straight street in the Universidad quarter, between calle de San Bernardino and travesía del Conde Duque. In the 18th century there were only vegetable gardens and farmland here, close to the Leganitos stream, which then ran in the open. The name keeps the story of a local. A man called Juan de Dios is said to have owned property on this ground, and one night of heavy flooding the stream swept away his estate and left him destitute. The versions add that it also left him blind, and that he ended up begging at the door of a now-vanished oratory. The Leganitos stream had a bad name: it turned torrential in heavy rain and flooded these gardens until the 18th-century works channelled the water. For centuries the street kept a modest, artisan air. Galdós named it in Miau. And in 1978 what the press hailed as Madrid’s first sex shop opened here, giving it a moment of fame.