Ronda de Atocha

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The street takes its name from the former Glorieta de Atocha (today Plaza del Emperador Carlos V), at whose northern end it begins. The place name Atocha comes from the site and sanctuary documented there since at least the 12th century: an area of atochares, or fields of esparto grass, whose name comes from the Mozarabic taucha, with a pre-Roman antecedent in taucia or tautia. The original name of this stretch was Ronda de Valencia, after the Valencia gate that opened there in the Wall of Philip IV.

Before anyone passed here in a hurry, the watchmen passed. The Ronda de Atocha began as a patrol path against a wall, and that wall had an unromantic purpose: to collect taxes. In 1625 the Crown raised the Wall of Philip IV, a rampart ten kilometres in circumference that defended not against armies but against evasion: nothing entered Madrid without paying. The patrol paths ran along the outside. The revolution of 1868 did away with the wall. The council knocked it down and opened a tree-lined avenue around the city; this stretch was first called Ronda de Valencia and only later took the name of the roundabout where it begins, Atocha. The episode hardest to imagine today came in 1968: the Atocha “scalextric,” a tangle of flyovers carrying some 200,000 cars a day, until mayor Tierno Galván managed to bring it down. At the northern end, Jean Nouvel built the extension of the Reina Sofía in 2005, with its great roof of red-lacquered aluminium.

Its names

  • Camino de ronda (sin denominación oficial)Siglo 17th — c. 1868
  • Ronda de Valenciac. 1868 — primera mitad del 20th century
  • Ronda de AtochaPrimera mitad del 20th century — 1941
  • Paseo del General Primo de Rivera1941 — 25 de enero de 1980
  • Ronda de Atocha25 de enero de 1980 — actualidad
Sources (11)

Crossings