Calle de las Infantas

Calle de las Infantas runs down from Fuencarral to plaza del Rey, parallel to Gran Vía, and was already laid out on Texeira’s 1656 map. Its history begins with a religious crime: in 1630, according to the Inquisition files, a family of Portuguese crypto-Jews lived here, accused of desecrating a crucifix. The trial ended in an auto-da-fé in 1632, with Philip IV among the crowd. The house was torn down and on the plot rose the Royal Convent of the Patience of Christ. On 13 December 1639 an inaugural procession crossed the city, and before the new convent a platform was set up so that Philip IV’s infantas could watch it pass; from those stands the name is said to come. The dates, however, strain the story: that December the king had only one living infanta, fifteen months old, so perhaps the tradition meant the women of the royal house in a broad sense. At the plaza del Rey end stands, since 1574, the House of the Seven Chimneys, now seat of the Ministry of Culture, where the Marquis of Esquilache lived, whose residence the crowd stormed in the 1766 riot.