Calle de Fúcar

This street bears the name of the most powerful bankers in sixteenth-century Europe, though few would recognise it at a glance. The Fuggers, of Augsburg, lent money to the Spanish Crown, and it was Jacob Fugger who backed Charles V’s election as emperor with his fortune. Castilians found the German name unpronounceable and reshaped it by ear into Fúcar. The word caught on so well that it leapt into the dictionary: for a time, calling someone “un fúcar” meant he was immensely rich, with wealth that seemed to have no bottom. The family’s Madrid seat stood at the corner of Atocha and this street, and from those lenders it took its name.