Calle del Salitre

Calle del Salitre runs down between Calle de Santa Isabel and Calle de Valencia, in Embajadores. It crosses what was called “the Salitre quarter,” and its name is anything but poetic: it comes from the factory that marked the life of these blocks for years. The Royal Saltpetre Factory was built between 1778 and 1785 on a huge plot, from the Barranco de Embajadores to the General Hospital. It produced saltpetre for the Crown’s gunpowder works and came to employ more than fifteen hundred people, the crowd that populated and gave density to the whole quarter. The name was passing from mouth to mouth before the City Council merely made it official in 1835. The story of the carter at number 24 is worth telling. In 1929 the street was renamed Baltasar Bachero in memory of the resident who threw himself at a bolting mule to keep it from running over some children, and paid for the deed with his life. In 1967 the council gave the street back its old industrial name, against the residents' wishes. At number 34 a 1971 tiled plaque survives, recalling the years the street bore his name.