Calle de la Galería de Robles

The name combines two references whose exact link has not been documented. “Galería” describes the shape of the street: a narrow, semi-private passage that, before the 1869 development, gave access to workshops installed in the ruins of the old Monteleón artillery barracks. “Robles” refers, on the most widespread theory, to an owner or tradesman of that surname who worked in the passage, though no such person has been identified; an alternative theory links it to oaks (robles) that may have grown in the palace gardens. None of the classic chroniclers left an entry on this street.

It would fit in a photograph: little more than a hundred paces without pavements linking Monteleón with Ruiz, in the heart of Malasaña. What is today an alley was for centuries the southern edge of the Monteleón Palace, which the State turned into an artillery park in 1807. In 1844 the Catalan industrialist José Safont Lluch bought it, and here is the surprise: he set up on this plot Madrid’s first great machinery foundry, with ninety-five workers among the first steam engines built in Spain. The barracks ended fast: in February 1869 its walls fell in fourteen days, and on the cleared plot were laid out all at once the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, Calle de Ruiz and this Galería de Robles, once a private passage with a small fountain. It was officially named in 1885. If a visitor looks down, they will understand its recent fame: this street’s bollards have become canvases thanks to the Pinta Malasaña initiative, which turned those iron cylinders into small works of urban art.

Its names

Galería [o pasaje privado sin nombre oficial]anterior a 1869
Galería de Robles (trazado abierto)1869
Calle de la Galería de Robles (nombre oficial)1 de enero de 1885

Sources (8)