Plaza de la Cebada

La Latina·Palacio

The name comes from the barley trade carried on in the square from the sixteenth century. According to Pedro de Répide, the grain destined for the king’s horses was separated here from that given to the local parish priests as tithe and to the sexton of San Pedro as payment for ringing the bells. Earlier the square was called Plaza del Viento, after the winnowing of the grain in the air to sift it, which confirms that the link to cereal predates the current name.

Plaza de la Cebada grew up outside the Puerta de Moros and from the sixteenth century served as the town’s secondary market, dealing in grain, pulses and bacon. While the Plaza Mayor cornered the great trade, this corner supplied the south of Madrid. Its darkest chapter began in 1790, when a fire wrecked part of the Plaza Mayor and public executions were moved here; an 1805 decree made it the town’s only scaffold until 1834. Through its gallows passed names Madrid has never let go: General Riego, dragged here on a pannier in 1823, and the bandit Luis Candelas, garrotted in 1837 before a crowd that already treated him as a legend. In 1868 a covered market inspired by Les Halles in Paris was commissioned; it opened in 1875 with Alfonso XII among those present: 166 iron columns brought from London, beneath which throbbed one of the busiest markets of early twentieth-century Madrid. It was demolished in 1956 and replaced by the present building.

Its names

  • Plaza del VientoAnterior al 16th century
  • Plaza de la CebadaSiglo 16th
  • Plaza del General Riego / Plaza de Riegoc. 1854–1868 y episodios posteriores
  • Plaza de la Cebada (nombre actual restituido)Segunda mitad del 19th century en adelante
Sources (12)

Crossings