Calle de la Montera

Sol

The name most likely comes, on documentary grounds, from the neighbours Juan Carlos and Francisco Lamontera, whose house is recorded in the area in the mid-sixteenth century, as noted by Isabel Gea in Los nombres de las calles de Madrid. Mesonero Romanos suggested instead that Montera was a corruption of “montería” (the hunt), since royal hunting parties set out from here; and a third tradition, recorded by Francisco Azorín and expanded by Pedro de Répide, attributes it to the widow of a royal huntsman, nicknamed “la Montera”, whose beauty caused such disturbances that the Inquisition had to step in.

Calle de la Montera, once Madrid’s fashionable promenade, joined the Puerta del Sol to what is now the Gran Vía. It already appears on Texeira’s 1656 map, though only the lower stretch bore the name Montera; the upper one was called Red de San Luis, after the bread stalls protected with nets (redes) beside the church of San Luis Obispo. In the eighteenth century it was where elegant Madrid strolled. Mesonero Romanos compared it to the Parisian Vivienne and Richelieu, and its commercial calling continued in the nineteenth century with jewellers and fabric shops. Whoever walks its upper stretch today treads on literary ground: here Valle-Inclán set the Pica Lagartos tavern of Luces de Bohemia.

Its names

  • Calle de San Roquelate 16th century (c. 1533–h. 1600)
  • Calle de la Inclusa / Calle de San Luis17th century (h. 1600–h. 1700)
  • Red de San Luis17th–19th centuries (tramo superior, h. 1650–1900)
  • Calle del Patriota Manzanares1843–1845 (efímero)
  • Calle de la Monteradesde mid 16th century, nombre consolidado para toda la calle desde el reinado de Felipe 4th
Sources (9)

Crossings