Calle de Peña de Francia

Calle de Peña de Francia was not always called this. In the old Embajadores register it appeared as Calle de Ministriles Chica, younger sister of the nearby Calle de los Ministriles. Those ministriles held two trades in one word: minor constables of the town and wind musicians at processions and festivals. The change of name has the flavour of legend. Captain Juan Delgado is said to have lived here, a soldier of Philip II’s Tercios in the wars in France. Back in Madrid he brought an image of Our Lady of the Peña de Francia and kept it in his house. That resident’s devotion was enough to rename the place. The Virgin comes from a peak in the Salamanca sierra, where in 1434 the pilgrim Simón Vela unearthed a carving, guarded by the Dominicans since 1436. The peak’s Francia recalls the Frankish settlers who repopulated the region in the Middle Ages, not the neighbouring country. The devotion reached Madrid in the 16th century, and today the street, cobbled and nearly pedestrian, keeps the memory of a captain and his travelling Virgin.