Calle de Viriato

The name pays tribute to Viriathus, the Lusitanian chief who, between 147 and 139 BC, led the resistance of the peoples of the western peninsula against the Roman legions. A shepherd from the Sierra de la Estrella, he knew how to use the terrain and ambush warfare to humiliate, time and again, an empire that seemed invincible. Rome finished him off without beating him in the field. Three of his trusted men, bought with promises of land, stabbed him while he slept with his armor on, in the year 139. It is said that the consul Caepio, when the traitors came to collect, told them that Rome did not pay for treason. The street runs through the Trafalgar neighborhood of Chamberí, among the nineteenth-century grid that grew north of old Madrid. A few steps away stands, restored, the Beti Jai fronton, another hidden gem of these blocks.