Calle Vedia

The street is named after Petra Vedia y Reguera, who owned the land here in the early twentieth century. She donated the plot on the extension of Calle Jorge Juan, at number 75, to the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to build the Sagrada Familia schools, opened on 17 November 1922.

At the eastern edge of the Ensanche, where the Fuente del Berro neighbourhood now stands, Petra Vedia y Reguera owned a sizeable stretch of land. When the extension of Calle Jorge Juan reached her holdings, she gave the plot to the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sagrada Familia school opened there on 17 November 1922. Calle Vedia runs thirty-nine metres and holds the only public trace of that landowner. Of Petra herself almost nothing is known: owner of the ground, benefactor of the neighbourhood, and little more made it into the record.

The first pavilion of the Colegio de la Sagrada Familia, built on the plot donated by Petra Vedia y Reguera, was inaugurated on 17 November 1922 and blessed by the bishop of Madrid, Prudencio Melo y Alcalde. The pupils attended free of charge and came “especially from the Vedia and Iturbe colonias”, the two residential complexes that flanked the establishment.

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