Calle de los Tudescos

Malasaña·Universidad

The name refers to the Central European mercenary soldiers⁠—⁠mostly Saxons⁠—⁠who settled on this street during the reign of the Habsburgs. “Tudesco,” from medieval Latin teutiscus, denoted natives of Lower Saxony and, by extension, any German. The presence of captains of the Tudesque regiments as residents around 1552 is the oldest explanation; a second hypothesis points to the College of Saint George, whose faculty⁠—⁠twelve Jesuits brought from the Saint-Omer seminary in Flanders⁠—⁠was popularly given the same name. Neither excludes the other. The 1656 Teixeira map already records the name.

Calle de los Tudescos runs down from Gran Vía to plaza de Santa María de Soledad Torres Acosta. It once reached much farther, near Santo Domingo, but the Gran Vía works begun in 1910 amputated its northern end. In the 16th and 17th centuries Madrid’s German community settled here, worshipping at the church that in time came to be called San Antonio de los Alemanes. The origin of the name faded quickly from memory: by the mid-19th century Mesonero Romanos was describing it as a very narrow street named “de los Tudescos” without anyone knowing why. The street always kept an underworld reputation. The Traganiños tavern passed for a thieves' refuge and a school for pickpockets; at number 5 lived the bandit Luis Candelas, who posed as a prosperous Peruvian merchant to slip into high-society salons.

Its names

  • Calle de los Tudescosanterior a 1552 – actualidad
Sources (9)

Crossings