Plazuela de la Memoria Trans

At the corner of calle de San Gregorio and calle de San Lucas, a hundred paces from Plaza de Chueca, there is a leafy corner that for years appeared on no official map. Locals named it themselves: “the olive tree square.” The name it bears today was born of grief. In 2017 the Centro district council sought to dedicate the space to Alan Montoliu, a trans teenager from Rubí who died at 17 after enduring brutal bullying. His family asked that the tribute carry not a single name but the memory of many. From that came Plazuela de la Memoria Trans, approved in 2018. The ground tells another story of transformation. These streets belonged to a Madrid that in the 1970s lived amid marginalisation and neglect; from the 1980s, the LGBTI community rewrote it into a landmark. The square sits right on that frontier.