Calle de Manuela Malasaña

Calle de Manuela Malasaña was laid out around 1869 over the garden of the Monteleón Palace, the barracks where Daoíz and Velarde resisted Napoleon’s army on 2 May 1808. For years part of the stretch was called Calle de la Peninsular; in 1897 it was unified in honour of the craftsman Juan Manuel Malasaña, and in 1961 the council swapped the father for the daughter. Manuela was seventeen when they killed her. Her father, Jean Malesange, was a French baker whose surname the neighbours Hispanicised. She embroidered near Plaza de Monteleón, and returning home on 3 May a French patrol stopped her: they found her embroidery scissors on her. Murat’s edict sentenced to death anyone carrying weapons, and a pair of scissors was enough to shoot her. She was recorded as victim number 74 of that day. The street crosses the quarter that until the 1980s was called Maravillas, until the popular name, Malasaña, prevailed over the official one.