Calle del Bonetero

The bonetero was the master who cut, stitched and sold birettas, those stiff four-cornered caps that set apart clergy, doctors and bachelors. The word derives from bonete, which Spanish took from the French bonnet, to which the suffix -ero was added to name the man who plied the trade. Alongside coif-makers and hatters, the cap-maker belonged to the guild of those who dressed the head, work that called for a good hand with felt and finishing. Each model changed according to the rank of whoever wore it. The name has a curious echo: in Spanish, bonetero is also the name of a garden shrub whose pinkish fruit opens into four lobes that recall the outline of the cap. There is no record of why this short street in the Nueva España quarter, beside Colombia station, was given this name. It belongs to the grid that Chamartín de la Rosa laid out before being absorbed by Madrid. The Calle del Bonetero keeps today, in a single word, the trace of a guild almost no one could name anymore.