Calle del Granado

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name comes from a pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) that survived on the street when the gardens of the Luján family, on calle de la Redondilla, were given over to lay out the road. The plant, the last remnant of that private orchard, stood long enough to fix the place name, which already appears in its current form on the Espinosa de los Monteros map (1769).

Calle del Granado begins deep in the morería, the quarter where the Mudéjars withdrew when Alfonso VI took Mayrit in 1083. It runs between calle de la Redondilla and plaza de la Morería, keeping the twisted plan of Islamic town-building: no straight lines, abrupt changes of level, alleys that give no warning of their turns. The name comes from vanished gardens that belonged to the Luján family. Of all that greenery a single tree survived, a pomegranate. It was no deliberately chosen emblem, just the last remnant of a private orchard turned public street. The first documented houses appear around 1742. The nearby plaza del Granado was earlier called plaza de Merlo, after the first surname of Saint Isidore the Labourer, Isidro de Merlo y Quintana, whom local tradition tied to these grounds.

Its names

  • Calle del Granadoanterior a 1769
Sources (6)

Crossings