Calle Nuestra Señora de la Paz

The street takes its name from the Marian title Nuestra Señora de la Paz, the same under which the neighbourhood parish operates, built between 1953 and 1958 by Rodolfo García-Pablos at Calle Valderribas 35-37. The title has medieval roots: in 1085, after the reconquest of Toledo, Alfonso VI ordered that the cathedral be taken possession of on 24 January and that the Virgin be venerated as ‘la Paz’ in memory of the peace restored. In Madrid the devotion took institutional root in the Colegio de la Paz, founded in 1679 by the Duchess of Feria for the girls taken in by the foundling home, and three centuries later in the neo-Gothic church built in 1905. The street in the Pacífico neighbourhood extends that place-name into the fabric around the García-Pablos parish.

The name was born in Toledo, in 1085, just after the city was recovered. Alfonso VI had agreed with the Muslims to respect the great mosque, and when a group of Christians tried to take it by force, the king stopped them and kept his word. Moved, it was the Muslims themselves who gave up the temple willingly. Alfonso ordered that the next day the cathedral be solemnly taken possession of and the Virgin honoured with the title Nuestra Señora de la Paz. The devotion travelled across Spain and crossed the Atlantic: La Paz in Bolivia and La Paz in Mexico owe their names to that Toledan episode. In Madrid the devotion took root along two paths. The first begins at the Colegio de la Paz, founded in 1679 by doña Ana Fernández de Córdoba, Duchess of Feria, to educate the girls who left the foundling home. The second lies in the Pacífico neighbourhood, where the parish of Nuestra Señora de la Paz, built between 1953 and 1958 on Calle de Valderribas, fixed the title as a mark of the district. The street next to it inherited the same name.

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