Plaza del Rastrillo

At the crossing of five streets in the Universidad quarter, the square was once part of the Calle de la Cruz del Espíritu Santo. In 1628, the story goes, lightning burned several hovels to ash, and a stone cross topped by a dove was raised there, lasting until 1820. The name that stuck comes from a market. Clothes and secondhand dealers, driven from other squares by residents' complaints, ended up settling here with their stalls of old clothes, furniture, and food. Since the Rastro of the Ribera de Curtidores already existed, this smaller one was called the Rastrillo. The square had no official name until 1969, when the Franco regime renamed it Plaza de Juan Pujol, after a regime journalist. Residents never used it. After years of legal appeals —⁠including those of the Francisco Franco Foundation against an alternative proposal⁠— the plaques for Plaza del Rastrillo, the old name, were bolted up in 2018.