Calle del Recodo

Calle del Recodo hides its origin in the very word that names it: a “recodo”, the sharp turn a road takes. The street bends at a right angle behind a single block, wedged between Calle de la Flor Baja and Calle de Isabel la Católica, in the Palacio quarter. In the 18th century someone set this land aside to open a passage at the back, and the angle it drew gave it the name. It has no house numbers: it was left as a scrap of the parcel plan. It never had shops or doorways opening onto it, and it soon began causing trouble. In 1866 the neighbors asked for more policing because boys lit bonfires; the press of 1879 already describes it turned into a dump of filth. Mesonero Romanos listed it among the names he found odd, and Pedro de Répide cited it as an example of a street that owes its name to its pure physical shape. Today it survives as an alley through which almost no one passes.