Calle del Siete de Julio

This short street in the Sol district links Calle Mayor with the Plaza Mayor, more passageway than street. It was once called Calle de la Amargura (Street of Bitterness), a name some traced to the bitter herbs of a vanished pond and others to the condemned who passed here on their way to public execution in the square. On 7 July 1822 four battalions of the Royal Guard came down from El Pardo at dawn to dissolve the constitutional government. The National Militia stopped them in a fierce fight around the Plaza Mayor, leaving three militiamen dead and forty wounded. Above the arch that opens onto the square, a ceramic plaque with two angels honors “the heroes of 7 July 1822.”