Plaza del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús

Behind this name lies one of the devotions that most shaped Spanish religious life over the past century: the cult of the Heart of Jesus, the image of a Christ pointing to his open chest as a symbol of his love. The devotion took root in Europe after the visions that a French nun, Margaret Mary Alacoque, claimed to have had around 1673, and it spread through convents, parishes and holy cards until it became one of the most reproduced religious images. In Madrid it had its great moment on 30 May 1919, when Alfonso XIII consecrated Spain to the Sacred Heart before the monument freshly raised on the Cerro de los Ángeles, in Getafe. That monument was torn down at the start of the Civil War and rebuilt years later. The square belongs to the Ciudad Jardín neighbourhood, in Chamartín, laid out in the early twentieth century on the model of colonies of low houses with gardens. A few streets away stands the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.