Calle Ribera de Curtidores

El Rastro·Embajadores

The street takes its name from the guild of tanners — craftsmen who turned animal hides into leather — who occupied this slope from at least the 15th century and whose tanneries ran here well into the 20th. The guild’s move from Caños del Peral, ordered by the Catholic Monarchs in 1495, made this stretch the industrial axis of tanning in Madrid. On 17th-century maps (Texeira, 1656) the street still appears as “Calle de Tenerías”; the present name first shows on Chalmandrier’s map (1761) and is confirmed on Espinosa’s (1769), coinciding with the ordinances that began pushing the tanneries out to spare the Manzanares from pollution.

The Ribera de Curtidores (Tanners' Bank) falls steeply from the Plaza de Cascorro to the Paseo de las Acacias. Its origin lies in the municipal slaughterhouse of the Cerrillo del Rastro: the hides of the animals killed there came down this slope to the tanneries, leaving on the ground, by tradition, the trail of blood (rastro) that named the whole market. Between the 16th and 18th centuries more than fifteen tanning workshops worked here, and the guild lent its name to the surrounding streets. Tanning faded in the 19th century as street trade replaced it: old-clothes sellers, auctions and secondhand goods filled arcades and pavements, above all on Sundays, until the Sunday Rest Law of 1905 officially recognized the Rastro. At number 9 survives a “house of malice,” built to dodge the burden of lodging the court that Philip II imposed in 1561.

Its names

  • Calle de Tenerías (o de las Tenerías)16th century - c. 1760
  • Calle Matadero Abajo17th century (uso paralelo)
  • Ribera de Curtidoresdesde c. 1761 hasta hoy
Sources (9)

Crossings