Calle del Divino Pastor

The name was born of an image and two lanterns. At the entrance to a country estate that spread across the north of 17th-century Madrid, two small lights lit a carving of Jesus carrying a lamb. People began to call it the Quinta del Divino Pastor, and the nickname stuck. The estate belonged to Fernando Carrillo, treasury councillor and president of the Council of the Indies under Philip III. His enemies are said to have set fire to the property; on its ruins grew pens that inherited the name. The street was not fully opened until 1690, when Philip IV’s wall was extended to today’s Calle de Carranza, and it did not reach San Bernardo until 1869. The street also changed its name for a time: in 1936 the Republic dedicated it to the socialist journalist Javier Bueno, shot in 1939, when the street recovered the old title of the lamb and the lanterns.