Calle del Acuerdo

Calle del Acuerdo, in the Universidad quarter, wraps the north side of the block of the Comendadoras de Santiago convent, the first purpose-built one in the capital. Its legal founding dates to 1584, but the nuns did not arrive until 1650, when Philip IV ordered the community moved from Valladolid. And that move holds the reason for the name. Before settling where the founders would come from, the presidents of the Council of Castile and the Council of Orders clashed over their origin: some wanted them from the Santa Fe monastery in Toledo; others from Santa Cruz in Valladolid. The document that settled the dispute in Valladolid’s favour was signed at the Quiñones printing house, held to be the oldest in Madrid, which stood on this very street. Another explanation also circulates. It is told that a devout young woman recognised, in a portrait of the apostle Saint James, the pilgrim who had guided her to Madrid, and exclaimed: “yes, I remember.” Both versions have survived without either prevailing, and each person keeps the one they prefer.

A young woman from the Montaña de Burgos arrived in Madrid around 1650 carrying an image of the Christ Child that she kept in a local hermitage. According to the tradition preserved by the Comendadoras themselves, when she entered the newly founded convent and saw the portrait of the apostle Saint James dressed as a pilgrim, she recognized in him the young man who some time earlier had encouraged her to make the journey and had then vanished without a trace. The exclamation she uttered upon recognizing him, “yes, I remember, this is the pilgrim I saw,” became fixed in the street’s name. The image she brought, the Niño Montañés, is still venerated in the monastery and is reputed to be miraculous for healing sick children.