Calle de Santa Lucía

Calle de Santa Lucía drops from Calle del Tesoro to Espíritu Santo and climbs again toward Calle de la Palma, split into two stretches sloping opposite ways. The name comes from an image of Saint Lucy that hung for years on the façade of the Marquis of Rodazne’s house, which the neighbours took as the reference for naming the street. Today’s street is only the surviving half. It once formed part of a much longer way, reaching the walls of the Artillery Park, and gathered at least five old names, among them Callejón del Rey (the King’s Alley). That stretch vanished, absorbed by school buildings; back in 1645 the convent of Las Maravillas already asked to close it, because it was being used as a dump. The oldest documented building is number 4, a low house with an ashlar façade that neighbours reckoned to be about three hundred years old. The city restored it as social housing in 1989, after which it passed into the hands of investment funds, an episode that inspired the novel Malasaña Bronx, by Manuel Moreno Capa.