Calle de Santa Engracia

Engracia was a young Christian woman who, according to tradition, died under torture in Zaragoza during the persecutions of Diocletian for refusing to renounce her faith. Her cult took firm root in the Aragonese capital, where her remains rest alongside those of her fellow martyrs. Why her name ended up on a Madrid street is not settled. One version attributes it to the Quinta de Santa Engracia, an estate said to have stood on this land; another links it to a soldier who fell in Zaragoza during the Peninsular War. Devotion to the saint may have been reason enough on its own. Before taking this name it was a road and a promenade. Old maps record it as Camino de Hortaleza, then as Paseo de Bárbara de Braganza, and from 1752 as Paseo de Chamberí. It took the name of Santa Engracia around the mid-19th century. In 1940 it became Calle de Joaquín García Morato, after an aviator; the name Santa Engracia was restored in 1980, along with twenty-six other Madrid streets.