Calle de San Enrique

The name honours Saint Henry II, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, who died in 1024 and remains the only saint of the Church to have held the imperial title. Tradition remembers him as a man given to founding and endowing churches. The street opened in the working-class Cuatro Caminos of the late nineteenth century, when low houses and factories were weaving blocks north of the old northern road, today Bravo Murillo. That street map mixed the names of Spanish provinces with the names of saints, and San Enrique belongs to this second group. The municipal decree that fixed the dedication left no record of its reasons. The saint has nothing to do with the kings named Henry of Castile: the dedication belongs to the German emperor, whose feast day falls on 13 July.