Calle del Humilladero

La Latina·Palacio

The name comes from a humilladero, a roadside shrine with a cross or holy image, that stood at the start of the street. Tradition links it to the Confraternity of the Vera Cruz, which set it as the first station of a Way of the Cross running from the area of San Francisco el Grande to the calle del Calvario, in Lavapiés. An older version credits Saint Francis of Assisi, said to have raised the first shrine around 1214–1217 while passing through Madrid on his way to Santiago, but no thirteenth-century source confirms it.

Calle del Humilladero curves gently down from its square, in the Palacio district, to calle de Toledo. That curve betrays a medieval layout: the ground was for centuries the southern edge of the Muslim suburb, and in 1928 excavations nearby uncovered an Islamic cemetery in use between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. The name comes from a humilladero, a roadside shrine of the kind once raised at the entrance to towns. This one belonged to the Confraternity of the Vera Cruz, and from here a solemn Way of the Cross set out towards Calvary. On the same plot rose the church of Nuestra Señora de Gracia, demolished in 1903 to enlarge the plaza de la Cebada. Something happened here that few would suspect. In 1616 the Discalced Trinitarian nuns received the body of Miguel de Cervantes, buried in their chapel; when the convent was rebuilt, his bones were mixed into a common grave and did not turn up until 2015, on the other side of the town.

Its names

  • Humilladero de San Francisco (o de la Cofradía de la Vera Cruz)14th-15th century (uso) / 15th-16th century (denominación documentada)
  • Sin denominación propia en planos conocidos1656 (Texeira) / 1769 (Espinosa de los Monteros)
  • Calle del Humilladero (nombre actual)Finales del 18th century o comienzos del 19th century
Sources (9)

Crossings