Calle del Pretil de los Consejos

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name joins two overlapping physical realities. “Pretil” here means the retaining wall that flanks the street as it drops down the sandy slope on which the Palacio de Uceda sits; without that wall, the bank would give way. “De los Consejos” comes from Philip V’s decree of 20 January 1717, by which he moved the Supreme Councils of Castile, the Indies, Military Orders and the Treasury into that palace. The street took the name of the institutions housed in the building that dominates its entire left flank.

The street drops sharply from Calle Mayor to Calle de la Villa, in the heart of Habsburg Madrid. On one side rises the wall of the Palace of the Councils; on the other, the church of the Santísimo Sacramento. The “pretil” is the retaining wall that holds up the slope; “de los Consejos”, the set of tribunals that Philip V moved into the palace in 1717. The building was raised for the first Duke of Uceda, son of Philip III’s favorite, and the people of Madrid held it to be the most imposing in the town after the Alcázar. Here the widowed queen Mariana of Austria lived and died. This narrow descent saw the birth in 1809 of Mariano José de Larra. And here too exploded one of the most violent images of the monarchy: on 31 May 1906, the bomb that the anarchist Mateo Morral hid in a bouquet of flowers to attack Alfonso XIII reached the mouth of the Pretil. Galdós knew it well and loathed it thoroughly; in La Fontana de Oro he called it sad and hideous.

Its names

  • Calle del Arco de Santa MaríaAnterior a 1656
  • Costanilla del Sacramento / Cuesta de los ConsejosSiglos 17th-18th (denominación dual)
  • Pretil de los ConsejosDesde 1717 (fijado tras el decreto de Felipe 5th)
Sources (10)

Crossings