Calle del Mediodía Grande

If you walk along calle del Mediodía Grande, between calle del Humilladero and calle del Águila, you tread the south-western flank of Habsburg Madrid, the part that grew far from the main axes and on its own terms. Since the seventeenth century it has carried a reputation that the chroniclers repeat: Pedro de Répide painted it as a picturesque street, famous for its humble inns and doss-houses, where rogues and the destitute would stop. On the 1656 Texeira map it is already drawn, but unnamed; on the Espinosa de los Monteros map of 1769 it appears already named as today. The “Mediodía” comes from its orientation: the southern slope of the promontory where the Islamic medina rose ran down towards the Manzanares orchards, facing the sun. It is said that at its foot there were Mozarabic settlements, though no chronicler backs it with documents: only oral tradition, set down on paper well into the nineteenth century.