Calle de San Benito
Honors Saint Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western monasticism and patron of Europe, whose rule summed up monastic life in the motto “pray and work.”
The name evokes Benedict of Nursia, the Italian monk who around the sixth century ordered life in the monasteries of the West. Born in Umbria around the year 480, he withdrew young to a cave in Subiaco and ended up gathering whole communities. At Montecassino he wrote the Rule that would bear his name, a manual that divided the day between prayer, reading, and manual work. From it came the motto associated with him, ora et labora. The Church proclaimed him patron of Europe in 1964.
Why the street adopted this saint has gone undocumented. It belongs to la Ventilla, the old suburb of Almenara that grew at the edge of the official city, built house by house by neighbors of little means, where saints' names were handed out without the reasoning being preserved.
Whoever walks east today along San Benito moves parallel to the Avenida de Asturias and comes out, almost without noticing, at the Plaza de Castilla and its leaning towers.