Calle de la Fresa

Sol

The name refers to the strawberry sellers who had their stalls on this street, whose fruit came first from Villaviciosa de Odón and, by the late eighteenth century, from Aranjuez. The name was officially fixed on 11 January 1835, as part of the street-naming reform led by the widowed Marquis of Pontejos.

There was a time when this street’s name changed with whoever lived on it. Narrow and short of sunlight, Calle de la Fresa drops between Calle de Zaragoza and Plaza de la Provincia, and its history reads in the succession of trades that passed through it. First the old-shoe cobblers; then eating-houses and candle sellers, so much so that it came to be called Calle de las Velas (“street of the candles”). When those businesses faded, it was some sellers who gave it its lasting identity. Village women from Villaviciosa de Odón set up with their strawberries and supplied the tables of the court. In the late eighteenth century the fruit changed origin: the strawberries of Aranjuez won out, and Madrid’s “majas” took over the stalls. The present name was fixed by the Pontejos reform of 1835, to undo the duplication with another Calle de las Velas. Soon after, Mesonero Romanos was already mentioning it in El Antiguo Madrid, walking that tangle of trade lanes between Calle Mayor and the rise to Santa Cruz.

Its names

  • Calle de las ZapateríasAnterior al 18th century
  • Calle de los Bodegones / Calle de las VelasSiglo 18th (fecha exacta no documentada)
  • Calle de la Fresa11 de enero de 1835 — presente
Sources (5)

Crossings