Calle de la Fé

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name comes from the theological virtue of faith, adopted —⁠according to the chronicle tradition⁠— to replace an earlier place name, “de la Sinagoga” or “de la Judería”, after the expulsion of the Jews by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. The legend recorded by the leading 19th-century chroniclers places on this street the entrance to the synagogue of Madrid’s Jewish quarter, whose site is said to have become the church of San Lorenzo. Contemporary historians doubt that Lavapiés was a medieval Jewish quarter, and the documentary replacement of one name by another is not attested before the 1769 map.

This street runs from the plaza de Lavapiés to calle del Salitre. It was already laid out on Texeira’s 1656 map, still unnamed; on the 1769 map it appears christened “de la Fe”. The story told about it is centuries old. Here, outside the walls, lay a suburb called “la Judería”, the Jewish quarter. The most repeated version says that when the town council stopped the Jews from selling their synagogue-house to Christian hands, it renamed the area “de la Fe” (of Faith); some add that the church of San Lorenzo rose over the site of that supposed synagogue. The tale is seductive, but the dates don’t add up. San Lorenzo was not begun until 1662, one hundred and seventy years after the expulsion of the Jews, and researchers place the true medieval Jewish quarter beside Santa María de la Almudena, on the other side of town. What does fit is the district’s devout air: calle de la Fe shares its ground with Ave María and Amor de Dios, a cluster of names exalting Christian faith. The legend still circulates, but the map tells another story.

Its names

  • Calle de la Sinagoga / Calle de la JuderíaHasta c. 1492 (según tradición crónica)
  • Sin nombre registrado1492–1769
  • Calle de la Fe1769–actualidad
Sources (9)

Crossings