Calle de San Ramón Nonato
Honours Ramón Nonato, the 13th-century Catalan Mercedarian who gave himself up as a hostage to free captives and whose captors sealed his mouth with a padlock.
The nickname tells of his birth before any biography. Ramón came into the world around 1204 in Portell, in the old Crown of Aragon, drawn from the womb of his already dead mother. Hence nonnatus, “the unborn,” which Spanish fixed as Nonato.
He joined the Order of Mercy, founded by Peter Nolasco to ransom Christians held captive in North Africa. When the ransom money ran out, he offered himself as a hostage in exchange for a prisoner. His captors, angered that he kept preaching, pierced his lips with a red-hot iron and shut his mouth with a padlock. Because of the circumstances of his birth he became the patron of expectant mothers, midwives and difficult births, and also of the falsely accused, those whom no one lets speak. The sealed mouth became his emblem.
Why the calle de San Ramón Nonato in Castilla bears his name has not been documented.