Calle de la Puebla

Malasaña·Universidad

The name comes from the Castilian word “puebla”, meaning a planned settlement outside the town proper. Its specific origin dates to 1542, when Juan de la Victoria de Bracamonte sold land in Madrid’s outskirts along the Fuencarral road, establishing perpetual rents. His son of the same name authorised in 1597 the division into ninety-five plots, which created the surrounding streets⁠—⁠Desengaño, Valverde, del Barco⁠—⁠and named the whole “Puebla de don Juan de la Victoria de Bracamonte”. The place name settled on this particular street, which in the seventeenth century was briefly called “calle del Barco” (Texeira’s map, 1656) and later took the name “Puebla de don Juan de Alarcón” after the convent of Discalced Mercedarians founded at its corner.

Before this street had a name, there was farmland. In the second half of the sixteenth century several noble families divided their fields north of the wall and sold plots on their own; chroniclers called these settlements beyond the walls “pueblas”. Calle de la Puebla marks the northern edge of that expansion, between calle de Valverde and the Corredera Baja de San Pablo, in the Universidad quarter. The heart of the street is a convent that has stood here since 1609, known as Don Juan de Alarcón. In 1837 the nuns brought the incorrupt body of Blessed Mariana de Jesús, co-patron of Madrid alongside San Isidro, which is put on view again every 17 April. In the twentieth century, so many lighting shops opened that the neighbourhood began calling it “the street of lamps”.

Its names

  • Puebla de don Juan de la Victoria de Bracamontec. 1542–1597
  • Calle del Barcoc. 1600–c. 1700
  • Puebla de don Juan de Alarcónc. 1609–c. 1769
  • Calle de la Puebla Viejac. 1769–19th century
  • Calle de la Puebla19th century–actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings