Calle de San Quintín

Ópera·Palacio

The street takes its name from the Battle of Saint-Quentin, fought on 10 August 1557 in the French town of Saint-Quentin. Spanish troops under Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy decisively defeated the French army of the Constable Anne de Montmorency, with some 12,000 French casualties against barely 500 on the victorious side. Philip II read the victory as a divine sign, since the battle fell on the feast of Saint Lawrence, and vowed to build the Monastery of El Escorial. The street did not predate the battle; it was opened in the 19th century when the Plaza de Oriente was formed.

The Calle de San Quintín has a peculiarity the passerby notices at once: there are houses on only one of its sides. It runs from the Calle de Bailén to the Plaza de la Encarnación, over the plots left between the Priora Garden and the Royal Palace when the surroundings of the old Alcázar were pulled down to open the future Plaza de Oriente. That garden had been the Priora Orchard, granted in 1611 to the nuns of the Encarnación. Joseph Bonaparte razed it around 1809 to create a great esplanade, but the square did not take shape until 1844, under Isabel II. From that reform came the perimeter streets, named after military victories of the Spanish Monarchy: San Quintín, Pavía, Carlos III and Lepanto. At number 8 two men lived and died, bound only by affection and work: the playwright Adelardo López de Ayala, in 1879, and the composer Emilio Arrieta, in 1894. Arrieta had set several of Ayala’s librettos to music, and in that flat gatherings of theatre, music and politics ran until dawn.

Its names

  • Calles desaparecidas del entorno (Calle del Jardín de la Priora, del Tesoro, del Juego de la Pelota, del Buey)Hasta 1809-1810
  • Apertura del vialc. 1810-1844
  • Calle de San QuintínMediados del 19th century (denominación consolidada antes de 1857)
Sources (8)

Crossings