Calle de Echegaray

A narrow street running from the Carrera de San Jerónimo to Huertas. Before it was named after a playwright, it was named after a wolf. And not a real wolf, but one of straw. The story goes that a hunter hung on his cabin wall the hide of a wolf stuffed with straw, as a trophy. A boy tore it, and the furious hunter wounded him gravely. The mother brought the child before a sacred image and prayed; the boy recovered, and that carving came to be called Our Lady of Wonders (Maravillas). From that tale came the name the street bore for centuries: del Lobo (“of the Wolf”). In 1888 the City decided that Spain’s most famous writer deserved a street. The juicy detail is that Echegaray was still alive when it was named for him: he strolled through a Madrid where a street already bore his name.