Glorieta de San Víctor

A few steps from the Manzanares and the old Legazpi slaughterhouse, this small roundabout carries the name of a saint whose local story has not survived. The street map labels it Glorieta de San Víctor without saying which Saint Victor it honours or when it was chosen. Several early martyrs share the name. The most remembered is Victor of Marseille, a Roman army officer martyred around the year 304. The story goes that, brought before the judges to burn incense to the gods, he kicked over the brazier; he was condemned to be crushed between millstones, which broke before killing him, so he was beheaded instead. That legend made him the patron of millers. The La Chopera neighbourhood grew in the shadow of the municipal slaughterhouse built beside the Arganzuela meadow between 1911 and 1925, and its streets are full of religious names. Without a document to clear it up, the exact dedication of this roundabout remains unsettled.