Calle del Duque de Liria

Barely two hundred metres separate Plaza de Cristino Martos from Calle de la Princesa, in the Universidad quarter. Almost the whole north side of Calle del Duque de Liria is taken up by the wall and garden of a palace that shares its name and remains the Alba family’s Madrid home. The title was born on a battlefield. James Fitz-James Stuart, natural son of James II of England, served as marshal to Philip V when he won at Almansa in 1707, and the king rewarded him with the dukedom of Liria and Jérica. The name came from a Valencian town where his heir had been born. The 3rd duke commissioned the Madrid mansion around 1767, a neoclassical building that Madrileños ranked alongside the Royal Palace. Since the titles of Alba and Liria were united in a single person in 1802, the house answers equally to Palacio de Liria and Casa de Alba. And there remains the best story, on the corner with Conde Duque: the “goblin house”, where for decades tales were told of bearded dwarfs who terrorised the neighbourhood by night. When it was torn down, a clandestine workshop of short-statured forgers appeared in the cellar. They were the goblins, paid to keep the building empty over their secret.