Calle del Espejo

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name comes from a medieval Latin confusion: the Moorish watchtowers were called specula in Latin; when transcribed, the word was read as speculum (mirror), and the place name stuck. Nicolás Fernández de Moratín confirmed this in 1779, writing that the street is called del Espejo “mistakenly.” A minority view attributes the name to the explorer Antonio de Espejo (c. 1540–1585), said to have lived there before leaving for New Spain, but no records support it over the etymological theory.

To walk along calle del Espejo, in the Palacio district, is to tread on Madrid’s first boundary. Its course, between calle de Santiago and calle de la Independencia, follows the line of two overlapping walls: the ninth-century Arab wall, from when this was Mayrit, and the twelfth-century Christian one. At number 12, behind a pastry shop, survives a stretch of the Castilian wall with a semicircular flint tower, brought to light between 1999 and 2001. The street lost much of its body in 1810, when Joseph I ordered whole blocks torn down to open up the area around the Royal Palace and lay out the future Plaza de Oriente. Notable people passed through these houses. Goya lived at number 1 between 1777 and 1779, while painting cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory; his son Vicente Anastasio was born there, marked by a 1992 city plaque.

Its names

  • Trazado de la muralla árabe de Mayrit9th century
  • Muralla cristiana (segunda cerca)12th century (c. 1085–1200)
  • Calle del Espejo (nombre documentado)15th–16th century (documentación más antigua conocida)
  • Demoliciones de José I Bonaparte1810
  • Formalización de la Plaza de Oriente1844
Sources (9)

Crossings