Calle de Walia

Wallia came to the Visigothic throne in 415, right after the fall of Sigeric, who had reigned barely seven days. He came from the Balthi line. Some accounts present him as a brother of Ataulf, though that kinship is not confirmed in the sources. His first plan was to leave Hispania by the south: he gathered a makeshift fleet to cross the strait toward Africa, and a storm wrecked it before it reached anywhere. So he changed strategy. In 416 he signed a pact with Constantius, who controlled the court at Ravenna: Wallia returned Galla Placidia, half-sister of the emperor Honorius, and in exchange received grain and the status of federates of the empire. Now allies of Rome, Wallia’s Visigoths turned on the other peoples of the peninsula. Between 416 and 418 they wiped out the Silingi Vandals in Baetica and decimated the Alans. Wallia died in 418, the same year Constantius offered the Visigoths a permanent settlement in Aquitania Secunda, with Toulouse as its capital. He was succeeded by Theodoric I. Madrid’s street map places him within a series of twenty-seven Gothic kings arranged by chronology. Calle de Walia lies in the Niño Jesús district, in the Retiro borough.