Calle de San Raimundo
Bears a saint’s name, but the street map has not preserved which of the several Raymonds it honours nor why it was chosen.
The street is dedicated to a Saint Raymond, though the street map does not specify which. At least two weighty figures share the dedication.
Saint Raymond of Penyafort, a Catalan jurist born around 1175 near Barcelona, compiled the Decretals that ordered medieval canon law, encouraged the founding of the Mercedarian order to ransom captives, and is patron of jurists. Saint Raymond of Fitero, a twelfth-century Cistercian abbot, founded the Order of Calatrava when King Sancho III handed him that stronghold to defend.
With no document to decide between the two, what remains is the setting: the neighbourhood of Bellas Vistas, in the old Tetuán de las Victorias, a grid of working-class blocks raised north of Madrid in the last third of the nineteenth century.