Calle de los Cañizares

A street opened between Atocha and the Magdalena, some 150 metres in Embajadores, over what were once riverside orchards south of medieval Madrid. Olive groves and reed beds grew there, and from those thick reeds comes the name: a cañizar is a dense reed plantation. The estate of Juan Antonio de Luján, lord of Almarza, was known by that name even before the street existed. It was not always so called. On Texeira’s map (1656) it appears as calle de San Sebastián, after the nearby church. It should not be confused with the calle de Cañizares in the Universidad neighbourhood, which refers to the playwright José de Cañizares. In so few metres two notable churches gather: the Oratory of the Santo Cristo del Olivar, dating from 1608, and, bordering it behind, the vanished Convent of the Magdalena, founded in 1560 among the same olive groves that gave the street its name.

On the estate of Juan Antonio de Luján there was a crucifix with a perpetual lamp. According to the tradition recorded by Peñasco and Cambronero, one night a gallant took a woman of loose life to the spot and, as he tried to put out the lamp before the image, the Christ’s crown of thorns fell upon them. The man fled on horseback and the animal carried him alone to the doors of the convent of La Trinidad, where it stopped. On returning to the spot, a servant gave him back his fallen plumed hat and the crown of thorns itself. The crucifix was later moved to the hospital of the Aragonese at the initiative of the Marquises of Cerralbo, during the reign of Charles II.