Plaza de Herradores

In the old San Martín suburb, Plaza de Herradores took its name from the trade that filled it. The farriers set up their benches in the middle of the space and worked the livestock there, until the council, tired of the trouble the animals caused, expelled them. The craftsmen left, but the name stayed, already recorded in the first third of the seventeenth century. Emptied of its guild, the square became one of the busiest corners of the Court: a stop for sedan chairs, a hiring point for servants without a master, and, in 1607, one of only two places in the city where snow could be bought. Golden Age theatre recorded its juiciest detail: here you could rent not only chairs but fictitious companions — fake relatives who lent a veneer of respectability. Vélez de Guevara noted the custom in El diablo cojuelo. Two centuries later, Mesonero Romanos watched a crowd here celebrate Ferdinand VII’s return by tearing down the symbols of the Constitution, the most shameful spectacle he ever saw in Madrid.