Plaza de Matute

Two explanations have been fighting over the name of this quiet square in the Barrio de las Letras for centuries. The most accepted is the simplest: when this was the outskirts of Madrid, a landowner named Matute held sway here, and his name stuck to the place. It already appears on 17th-century maps. The other has more flavour. Matute was the term for goods slipped in on the sly to dodge taxes, and a matutero was someone who made a living at it, working the dawn hours by the gates of the wall that ringed the city. The square sits near that perimeter, hence the temptation to tie its name to the smuggling of those hours. But no document backs it. In the late 19th century, at number 5, the newspaper El Imparcial had its offices, one of the great dailies of the age.