Calle de San Valeriano

The name invokes a saint, Valerian, without the municipal records leaving any note of which one. Several appear in the calendar, above all the Valerian whom Christian tradition made the husband of Saint Cecilia. The best-remembered legend belongs to this last one. A Roman noble, he married Cecilia without knowing she had vowed to remain a virgin; on their wedding night, so the story goes, an angel appeared with two crowns, one of lilies and one of roses, and Valerian was converted and brought his brother Tiburtius to the faith. Both ended up beheaded for burying other Christians by night. The street belongs to the fabric of Bellas Vistas and Cuatro Caminos, raised as a workers‘ colony between the late nineteenth century and the 1920s, where several neighbouring streets carry saints’ names. Today San Valeriano runs a step from Alvarado metro station, between low façades that no one now links with crowns of lilies.