Calle de la Ternera

Sol

The name comes from the commercial use the street had before it was properly a street: it was a small square with wooden platforms where veal carcasses were displayed to supply the town, as recorded by Antonio de Capmany in his Orígen histórico y etimológico de las calles de Madrid (1863). Peñasco and Cambronero (1889) add that this trade later moved to the costanilla de Santiago.

Narrow and short, calle de la Ternera runs down through the heart of the old town, from calle de las Navas de Tolosa to calle de Preciados, in the Sol district. More than four centuries ago it was not a street but a market square: here stood the wooden platforms where young cattle were butchered and sold, and the name stayed on from that trade. In one of its houses died the artillery captain Luis Daoiz Torres, mortally wounded after leading the defense of the Monteleón barracks on 2 May 1808. A plaque marked the event until the building was demolished around the 1990s.

Its names

  • Alatae1656
  • Calle del Almendro16th-17th centuries (aprox.)
  • Calle del Sombrero16th-17th centuries (aprox.)
  • Calle de Covadongafecha no precisada
  • Calle de la Ternera (con salida a calle de la Sartén)hasta 5 mayo 1900
  • Calle de la Ternerafrom 5 mayo 1900 hasta hoy
Sources (8)

Crossings