Calle de Relatores

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name comes from two court reporters of the Audiencia who lived on this street, as recorded by Capmany (1863) and confirmed by later sources. The relatores were officials of the higher courts of Castile charged with presenting the contents of legal files aloud to the magistrates on the bench. They gained the post by competitive exam among law graduates and were forbidden any contact with the parties to a case. The Cárcel de Corte and the Sala de Alcaldes, seed of the future Palace of Santa Cruz, were built from 1629 a short distance away, which explains the concentration of judicial staff in the area.

Calle de Relatores joins Calle de Atocha with Plaza de Tirso de Molina over some 165 metres, along the northern edge of the Embajadores district. On Teixeira’s 1656 map one corner is dominated by the Convent of the Trinidad Calzada, which took up a whole block. When the disentailment emptied the convents in 1836, the building became the National Museum of Painting and Sculpture and was finally demolished in 1897. Here too stood the houses of the Countess of Miranda, one of the richest ladies at court. She could not walk, so her servants wheeled her about in a velvet-lined chair trimmed with silver. Her house shone so brightly that Philip IV lodged there between sessions of the royal bullfights in the Plaza Mayor. The Casa-Palacio of the Marquis of la Vera, documented since 1615, still survives on the street; before being a palace it had been a convent.

Its names

  • Calle de los Relatores17th century (al menos from 1656, plano Teixeira)
  • Calle de Relatoresnombre oficial vigente
Sources (8)

Crossings