Plaza del Granado

The square occupies a bend in the old heart of the Morería, the Mudejar quarter left enclosed south of the wall after Alfonso VI took Madrid in 1083. It sits a few steps from the maze of alleys already drawn on Texeira’s 1656 map. The name comes from a tree. A sturdy pomegranate survived the clearing of the Luján family’s gardens, which looked onto the calle de la Redondilla. When the land was handed over to open the street, the pomegranate stood on in the middle of the new layout, giving its name first to the street and then to the little square. Earlier it was called plaza de Merlo, after the second surname of Saint Isidore the Laborer —⁠Isidro de Merlo y Quintana⁠— who is said to have walked these parts, though no document confirms it. On 1 January 1881 the council erased that name and kept only del Granado, which locals had already used for over a century.