Calle de Valencia

Barely four hundred metres separate the plaza de Lavapiés from the Ronda de Valencia, and in that short descent the street threads the most traditional heart of Embajadores to the line where Madrid’s last wall once stood. For centuries this street had no name of its own. It is already drawn on the Texeira map of 1656, but as a natural extension of the plaza de Lavapiés, merged with the road that left the neighbourhood. The name came through the gate, quite literally: in 1778 the gate at the far end was rebuilt and renamed Portillo de Valencia, facing the royal road that set off eastward. The street made the place-name its own. When the wall of Philip IV was demolished in 1868 and the gate disappeared, the name was already so settled that it outlived the stone that had created it. Mesonero Romanos portrayed this axis with an image that still echoes: the little square of Lavapiés was the Puerta del Sol of that district, and the street running down towards the gate gathered the energy of a neighbourhood so large and mixed that, in times of revolt, it made this corner what the faubourg Saint-Antoine was to Paris. The street was in fact born looking outward: towards the road that led east.