Travesía de la Encomienda

Travesía de la Encomienda is a very short shortcut between calle de Juanelo and calle de la Encomienda, in the heart of Embajadores. Its name comes from the parceling of an estate that in the Middle Ages belonged to the Military Order of Santiago. The villa had storybook owners. Around 1286, Pedro Núñez, Master of the Order, bought a country house with orchard on the city’s edge and had the cross of Santiago carved over the door. On his death he left it to a commandery of the Order, and that word named the whole place. Under John II, the constable Álvaro de Luna seized the estate; when his goods were confiscated in 1453, the house was abandoned, but the doorway with the coat of arms stood on, outliving its fallen owner. The rest of the plot was divided into housing, and the street opened on the old entrance took the name Encomienda, already drawn on Texeira’s 1656 map. The travesía, listed in 1769 as calle del Sacramento, adopted the name of the main street in 1835.