Calle del Ventorrillo

El Rastro·Embajadores

The street owes its name to the Ventorrillo del Sol, a small roadside inn that operated here from the 16th to the 18th century. It served the people of Madrid who walked down toward the Manzanares for the Santiago el Verde festival each 1 May. When the inn vanished, the street kept its name.

Calle del Ventorrillo, in Embajadores, is one of the shortest in Lavapiés: a few meters between Calle de la Huerta del Bayo and Calle del Casino. It is named after the Ventorrillo del Sol, one of the stops along the road that the people of Madrid walked each 1 May toward a hermitage on an island in the Manzanares. They called it Santiago el Verde, and the king and the humblest laborer alike went to the festival, gathering around the same inn. The celebration filled the 16th and 17th centuries — Lope de Vega devoted a play to it — and faded away around 1800. At number 7 survives a corrala tenement from 1900 that served as a set for the series Antidisturbios.
In 2007, eight elderly women aged between 62 and 85 at number 7 —⁠known in the press as the “Grandmothers of Ventorrillo”⁠— refused to leave their rent-controlled homes despite systematic harassment by the property company Sistemas 23: power cuts, disruptive works and eviction notices. The conflict lasted more than a decade and generated coverage in El País, Telemadrid and other media. In 2019 the city council opened expropriation proceedings; in 2021 the last residents left, rehoused with their contracts.

Its names

  • Calle del VentorrilloSiglo 18th (figura en Espinosa 1769) – actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings