Calle del Vado de Santa Catalina
Recalls Saint Catherine, the patronage that named an old ford of the Manzanares where the river was crossed before there was a bridge.
Long before a bridge spanned the Manzanares here, people forded the river on foot at a shallow spot they called the ford of Saint Catherine. To that crossing leads Calle del Vado de Santa Catalina, which drops from the Plaza de Legazpi toward the water and marks the southern edge of La Chopera.
A ford is just that: the shallow stretch where you tread the riverbed and pass from one bank to the other without a boat or arches. This one lay in the low strip of Arganzuela, pasture and grazing land that occupied the riverside for centuries. The patronage of Saint Catherine —the martyr of Alexandria, tied to the spiked wheel meant to execute her— stuck to the place, a common habit when a nearby chapel or devotion named a river crossing.
In 1909 Alfonso XIII opened the Puente de la Princesa here, linking the Paseo de las Delicias with the road from Madrid to Cádiz. The ford ceased to be trodden; the name stayed, downstream of its own meaning.