Calle de Manuel

Conde Duque·Universidad

The name preserves the memory of a servant called Manuel, of extraordinary strength and kindly nature, who served some Irish scholars settled on the stretch that now bears his name. According to tradition, in the 17th century he killed a wolf with a club as it attacked a market gardener in the Amaniel woods, and carried her into the city on his shoulders. The story has no direct documentary basis; it is the popular legend set down by Peñasco and Cambronero (1889).

In the Universidad quarter, where the centre brushes against Argüelles, hides Calle de Manuel: short, quiet, trapped between the wall of the Conde Duque barracks and the edge of the Liria Palace. Its layout was already on Texeira’s 1656 map, unnamed. In 1761 one map labelled it Calle del Jabón, a name that reappears in no other document: a cartographic ghost that lasted a single map. With Manuel, history leaves the archives and enters oral tradition. The traces point to the 17th century and a young servant of enormous strength who served in the house of some Irish scholars. One day, in the Amaniel hills, a wolf was chasing a market gardener; Manuel killed it, threw the woman over his shoulder and entered Madrid carrying the dead beast. The scene was enough to make him a doorway legend. Neither Répide nor Mesonero gave him an entry. The authority who set the legend down in writing was Peñasco y Cambronero, in 1889. The rest, for centuries, was supplied by the neighbourhood’s memory.

Its names

  • Sin nombre registrado1656
  • Calle del Jabón1761
  • Calle de Manuel1769 — actualidad
Sources (5)

Crossings