Calle de Tabernillas

A five-century street in the Moorish suburb that grew outside the walls of the medieval town, it drops from Plaza de la Puerta de Moros to Calle del Águila, in the Palacio district. In Arab times the wine shops lined up here, on the left as one left the Moors' Gate. The Christian conquest did not move the little taverns: they stayed put and came to be supplied by the town of Parla, which held the privilege of stocking them. Texeira’s map records it already in 1656 as Tavernillas, and those of Espinosa and Tomás López added the surname “de Parla”, which the city removed in 1835. Wine was not its only trade. At number 13, until the twentieth century, ran the last Madrid workshop devoted to printed ballads and blind men’s verses, that old street literature. Galdós chose this street for Fortunata’s house in Fortunata y Jacinta, describing it as a corner far from the centre, peopled by day labourers and muleteers. Much later, Joaquín Sabina lived in a top-floor flat at number 23 and put the place into one of his songs.