Plaza del Comandante Las Morenas

This tiny square of Habsburg Madrid changed its name three times before settling on the present one, and each name says something about the place. On the 1769 map it appears as Callejuela de las Aguas, a narrow passage between houses. Through the first half of the 19th century it was called Plazuela de la Caza, after the stall selling freshly hunted game. The space one treads today was born in 1876, when the block that choked the passage and turned it into little more than an alley was pulled down. The final name came in 1901, amid the wave of tributes that followed the colonial disaster of 1898, when the city renamed several streets after those who had defended Cuba and the Philippines. Now the square beats as a pedestrian junction in the heart of the old town, a step from the Mercado de San Miguel, just where the calle Mayor sets off toward the Plaza de la Villa.