Calle Santa Sabina
It recalls Saint Sabina of Rome, a second-century matron who converted to Christianity and was beheaded for refusing to renounce her faith.
Calle Santa Sabina honors a Roman matron of the second century, among the city’s earliest martyrs. Tradition holds that her own Syrian maidservant, Serapia, converted her to Christianity; when persecution came under the emperor Hadrian, both were denounced and Sabina was beheaded for refusing to recant. Her relics rest beneath the altar of the basilica that bears her name on the Aventine Hill.
In Madrid, the street belongs to the Adelfas neighborhood, at the southern edge of Retiro, bordering the M-30 and the railway lines. It is a short stretch among other streets with devotional names, a custom of the neighborhoods that grew to the rhythm of the church calendar. No record survives of why this particular saint was chosen. Whoever walks it treads the district where working-class tenements once stood.