Calle de Sor Ángela de la Cruz

Behind the name is a shoemaker from Seville. Ángela Guerrero González (1846-1932) started as an apprentice in a shoe workshop at about twelve. Two convents turned her away for her frail health, so she decided to be a “nun in the world”: she took her vows on her own and, in 1875, founded the Company of the Sisters of the Cross, devoted to watching over the sick and the elderly without family in their own homes, at night and free of charge. She went down in history as Sister Ángela of the Cross, the mother of the poor. The City Council registered the street in 1960, when Sister Ángela was not yet a saint: John Paul II beatified her in 1982 and canonised her in 2003, so for decades the sign ran ahead of Rome. The calle de Sor Ángela de la Cruz one crosses today has little of that old shantytown. Around 1970 it was a jumble of embankments and low houses; the last stretch towards Bravo Murillo did not open until 1995. Where humble neighbourhoods once prayed, the Eurobuilding and the towers of Cuzco now rise.