Calle de Santa Águeda

Chueca·Justicia

The name comes from the Ward of Santa Águeda, one of the sickrooms of the Hospital of San Antonio Abad, whose windows faced this street. The hospital was founded as a plague lazaretto in 1597 by don Lope Gallo de Abellaneda, commander general of the Order of San Antonio Abad (the Antonines), to tend plague victims during that year’s epidemic. The centre’s wards were dedicated to different saints; the one facing this alley bore the name of Agatha of Catania, a 3rd-century martyr. The adjoining street, Santa Brígida, took the name of the neighbouring ward by the same mechanism.

Calle de Santa Águeda drops from Santa Brígida to San Mateo, in the heart of the Justicia neighbourhood. On Texeira’s 1656 map it still went by another name, Calle de San Antonio, lent by the Antonine hospital that closed off its northern flank. That hospital dedicated its sickrooms to different saints, and the one facing this street bore the name of Santa Águeda; by the 18th century the sign was settled. When Pius VI suppressed the Antonine Order in 1787, the building fell empty, and in 1793 Charles IV handed it to the Piarists, who turned it into the Escuelas Pías de San Antón. Through the 19th century the street lived on small industry and printing. Its great neighbour was the Teatro Martín, raised in 1870 and remodelled in 1919 to seat 1,300: its stage saw everything, from light zarzuela to the concerts of the Movida, with Nacha Pop and Alaska y los Pegamoides on the boards. It closed in 1989. Whoever strolls here today walks through a Galdós set; the novelist used the street in El amigo manso and in Ángel Guerra.

Its names

  • Calle de San Antoniohasta mid 17th century (documentado en el plano de Texeira, 1656)
  • Calle de Santa Águeda18th century en adelante, nombre actual
Sources (10)

Crossings