Calle del Jardín de San Federico

The name of the Calle del Jardín de San Federico keeps the memory of something that no longer exists: a private garden that occupied this corner of the Goya neighbourhood before or during the area’s development. The garden had a religious dedication, and from it the saint passed to the street sign, dedicated to a bishop and martyr of Utrecht. Frederick of Utrecht was born around the year 781 in Frisia. He reformed the customs of the clergy and travelled his diocese preaching until he died on 18 July 838, stabbed while giving thanks after Mass. Tradition laid the crime on Judith, the second wife of Louis the Pious, whom the bishop had rebuked; today’s historians point instead to a nobleman of Walcheren who could not tolerate his missionary work. In Madrid the devotion has a known date from 1929, when the Congregation of San Federico settled in the church of El Carmen. No trace of the garden that named the street survives on the maps; it vanished before the neighbourhood was finished, and the name stayed fossilised on the corner.