Calle de la Abada

“Abada” is a word of Portuguese origin for rhinoceros, and especially the female. The street took it, in the most accepted version, from a female rhinoceros that Portuguese showmen displayed in a booth beside the threshing grounds of San Martín in the 16th century. The name already appears on Texeira’s 1656 map; of what it was called before, no trace remains. Pedro de Répide remembered it narrow and winding, full of secondhand bookshops, pawnshops and hairdressing salons. The Café de la Alegría and the Fonda de Barcelona gave it life by day; by night it drew bohemians and rogues. Around 1910, when the second stretch of the Gran Vía was cut through, the new avenue swallowed the street’s northern end. In what remained stand the Palacio de la Música, from the 1920s —⁠whose façade collapsed during construction⁠— and the Cine Avenida, opened in 1926.

Pedro de Répide records that a boy from a nearby bakery offered the animal a bun fresh from the oven; the heat of the bread enraged the “abada” and the lad died of the attack. The prior of San Martín expelled the Portuguese and, according to legend, the rhinoceros released in reprisal caused several deaths before being captured on the threshing floors of Vicálvaro. A wooden cross marked the spot where the boy died.