Calle de la Torrecilla del Leal

Calle de la Torrecilla del Leal runs down from Santa Isabel towards Lavapiés. Its name already appeared on 17th-century maps, long before any council bothered to make it official: the street named itself, not the paperwork. To understand the name one must go back to 1366, when Henry of Trastámara besieged a Madrid still swearing loyalty to Peter I. The families that ruled the town shared out its defence gate by gate, and the siege was lifted without surrender. To that climate of resistance belongs the legend: on a farm outside the walls, crowned by a little tower, someone made a gesture that cost him the gallows. Oral tradition kept the story, and from it came the name: the loyal man of the little tower. It did not stand alone in the neighbourhood’s memory. The nearby calle de la Esperanza was born of the same episode. These are the only two street names that Madrid tradition ties to that siege: two plaques that, together, still tell the same night of 1366.