Calle de la Arganzuela

It runs down from Calle de Toledo to the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, at the southern edge of Embajadores, and already appears by this name on Texeira’s 1656 map. Before, it gathered others: it was Calle de la Encrucijada and then Calle de la Mancebía, because until 1623 a brothel ran nearby, watched over by a court bailiff. Mesonero Romanos treated it without mercy: no church, no notable building, just “after an inn a tavern, then a barber’s, further on a pack-saddle maker”. It was a thoroughfare of minor trades, the cord between the old town and the municipal slaughterhouse. In the small square where it begins stands La Fuentecilla, a monument to Ferdinand VII from 1814, assembled from parts of mixed origin: the central body from a vanished fountain, the lion from a demolished convent, the bear and the strawberry tree from Madrid’s coat of arms. The tile that marks the street shows Sanchica la Daganzuela, the legendary version of the name that historians reject as the true etymology.

The ceramic tile placed by the City Council on the street reproduces the legend of Sanchica la Daganzuela as though it were the proven origin of the place name. Several historians —⁠among them the authors of the blog Caminando por Madrid and María Isabel Gea in Los nombres de las calles de Madrid⁠— have pointed out that this explanation is an invention of Antonio Capmany (1836) with no documentary support, later perpetuated by Répide. The official plaque certifies, in passing, the error.