Calle Ministriles

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The street takes its name from the trade of the ministriles, a word with two meanings in 16th- and 17th-century Spanish: a lower officer of justice (a minor constable) and a wind musician hired for public and religious ceremonies. The chroniclers' tradition, led by Pedro de Répide, credits the name to the guardhouse the town’s constables kept here, with an adjoining cell for those who did not pay their fines. A revisionist current holds that when the street took shape the word meant almost only musicians, and that a policing post would have sat nearer the center of power than in this outlying quarter. Neither reading is settled by published primary evidence.

Calle de los Ministriles, in the heart of Embajadores, between Calle del Calvario and Calle de San Carlos. A short alley, Ministriles Chica, branches off it. The name was born with the street, when humble housing spilled over the old wall to the south after the court settled here in 1561. With the ministriles the quarrel begins. The word carries two lives: a low-ranking court official and a wind musician of solemn ceremonies. Each chronicler pulls one way; some placed here the guardhouse of the town’s minor constables with its cell, and others deny it, since in the 17th century the word rang mostly of music. In the 1620 beatification procession of Saint Isidore, the ministriles marched among the instrumentalists. Galdós set here, in Napoleón en Chamartín, some dance halls of his own invention.

Its names

  • Calle de los Ministriles17th century (primer tercio)
  • Calle de Ministriles19th century – actualidad
Sources (9)

Crossings