Calle de la Priora

Calle de la Priora is barely a breath between the Costanilla de los Ángeles and calle de los Caños del Peral, in the Palacio quarter. Its short, crooked course comes from the medieval plots that formed along the edges of a garden, and that garden had more lives than a cat before it turned to asphalt. Alfonso VIII fitted it out as a pleasure estate for his English wife; then Ferdinand III gave it to the monastery of Santo Domingo el Real, under the rule of its prioress. Hence the name: the Huerta de la Priora, an orchard that reached as far as the Alcázar. Philip II took it around 1556 and made it a palace garden, until Joseph Bonaparte ordered the whole complex pulled down to open the future Plaza de Oriente. When the street was finished, it was flanked by two grand neighbours, among them the palace of the Infante Enrique de Borbón, who died in 1870 fighting a duel against the Duke of Montpensier.

The Infante don Enrique de Borbón, Duke of Seville, lived in the palace that flanked the street on the side of the Caños del Peral. He was the most politically turbulent member of the Spanish royal family of his time: he went over to liberalism, supported the Revolution of 1868 and aspired to the vacant crown. On 12 March 1870 he died in the Carabanchel duel, felled by a pistol shot to the forehead by the Duke of Montpensier. When the Cortes voted for a king of Spain weeks later, Montpensier obtained only 27 votes against the 191 of Amadeo of Savoy: the shot cost him the throne.