Calle de Regueros

The calle de Regueros, in the Justicia quarter, already appears under that name on Texeira’s 1656 map, so by the mid-17th century the name was well settled. Its origin is a very specific trade: here the town kept the watering carts, great mule-drawn tanks that kept Madrid’s promenades —⁠above all the Prado and the Retiro⁠— damp and passable. The trails of water (regueros) those carts left as they came and went named the street. The municipal yards sat on a then-remote street, as was usual with noisy or foul-smelling facilities kept away from noble houses. Around it lived the chisperos, the ironworkers whose forges filled the Barquillo quarter. Today Regueros runs about 110 meters and keeps buildings from before 1960. At number 8 the restaurant DSTAgE, two Michelin stars, opened in 2014 in an industrial exposed-brick loft that, without trying, echoes the neighborhood’s old artisanal character.