Ronda de Valencia

The Ronda de Valencia traces the southern arc of a Madrid that no longer exists: the one of the brick-and-earth wall that Philip IV ordered raised in 1625. It runs from the glorieta de Embajadores to the glorieta de Atocha, barely some 250 metres. That ten-kilometre rampart defended nothing: it served to collect. Along the narrow path between the houses and the wall patrolled the rondas that named all these perimeter streets. The gate of this stretch had two lives. On Teixeira’s 1656 map it appears as the Lavapiés gate; in 1778 it was rebuilt and renamed the Valencia gate, since it marked the start of the royal road towards the Levante. The revolution of 1868 swept away the wall and the gate, but the name stayed stuck to the pavement. The street still keeps memory in its façades. At number 2 the old Monte de Piedad pawnshop of 1878 still stands, home since 2002 to the La Casa Encendida cultural centre. And at the far end rises the Royal Factory of Spirits, Playing Cards and Tobacco, begun in 1781: today the cultural centre everyone knows as Tabacalera.