Calle de la Regalada
The street takes its name from the Colonia del Retiro, popularly known as “La Regalada”, a group of 203 single-family houses built between 1925 and 1932, promoted by Los Previsores de la Construcción and the insurer La Mundial under the Cheap Housing Act, to a design by the architect Fernando de Escondrillas y López de Alburquerque. The council named the street on 11 November 1932. The origin of the nickname “La Regalada” is not documented in any source consulted.
The inner street of the Colonia del Retiro carries a name no one has managed to explain: la calle de la Regalada. It was officially named this on 11 November 1932, when the estate was already raising its little houses on the slope between the Retiro park and the old Paseo de Ronda, on the plot enclosed by the streets of Walia, Martín Sarmiento, Juan de Urbieta and Conde de Cartagena.
The architect Fernando de Escondrillas built 203 small houses here in seven regionalist styles: Castilian, Basque, Mudéjar, French, Italian and two paired types. The houses were sold in instalments, meant for civil servants, soldiers, workers and tram and postal employees.
And the nickname remains unsolved. “La Regalada” may point to an earlier name for the land, to how affordable those homes were, or to something that escapes us entirely. No record of the reason survives, and that small gap is part of the charm of walking through it.