Calle de Valverde

The street took its present name in the 17th century because it lay on the road leading to the shrine of Nuestra Señora de Valverde, patron of the village of Fuencarral, about twelve kilometres north. Before that it was called Calle de las Victorias, after the family of Juan de la Victoria Bracamonte, who in 1542 sold the land on which the district was parcelled out.

Calle de Valverde was born from a division of land. In 1597, the heirs of Juan de la Victoria Bracamonte cut an old estate into plots, and from that subdivision several streets of the Universidad quarter emerged at once. Today it runs a little over four hundred metres from the Gran Vía to calle de Colón, one of the few wide streets in the area. For two centuries religion marked it, with the Don Juan de Alarcón convent at number 15, which holds the incorrupt body of the blessed Mariana de Jesús. In 1713, the newly founded Real Academia Española chose number 26 for its first home, where it printed the first volumes of the Diccionario de Autoridades. Goya lived here, buying the house at number 15 in 1800 and spending much of the Peninsular War there. And in 1858 the engineer Lucio del Valle installed at number 33 the first running-water tap to work in Madrid, turned into a fountain for the whole neighbourhood. The street even gave its name to a novel: La calle de Valverde, which Max Aub published in 1961 from exile.

Its names

Calle de las VictoriasSiglo 16th–17th
Calle de ValverdeSiglo 17th–actualidad

Sources (10)

Its names

Crossings