Calle de la Cruz Verde

Narrow and short, Calle de la Cruz Verde drops from Calle de la Luna to Calle del Pez, in the Universidad district. Its tight layout betrays its origin: a street squeezed by force into the crowded fabric of the old Maravillas quarter. The name holds a chilling memory. Outside the old Santo Domingo gate, the Inquisition held its minor autos and executions here, and a large green-painted cross stood driven into the ground, marking the burning place and serving as the Holy Office’s emblem. After the tribunal was abolished in 1834 the cross vanished, but its name had already stuck to the map. The Teixeira (1656) and Espinosa (1769) plans record it exactly as it is. Alongside runs a short cross-street linking it to San Bernardo, once called del Nabo (“of the turnip”) for the vegetable stalls that came down from Fuencarral. The street was home to the Café de Prada, a refuge for students of the Central University and for figures of early-twentieth-century literary Madrid, among them Emilio Carrere and Eugenio Noel.