Travesía del Almendro

The Travesía del Almendro bends between the calle del Almendro and the calle del Nuncio, in the Palacio quarter. Whoever crosses it treads, unaware, on the foot of the Christian wall Madrid raised around the 11th or 12th century. The name has a clear culprit. An almond tree grew in the garden of Rodrigo de Vargas, a descendant of the Iván de Vargas served by the labourer Madrid would come to venerate as its patron saint. When the street was opened, the tree ended up planted in the middle of the passage, getting in everyone’s way, until in 1742 the magistrate ordered it felled. The alley was born of that very bend: the angled stretch left separate when the street opened its straight exit toward the Cava Baja. Two centuries after the felling, in the 1980s, the city planted almond trees on the street once more. The tree that gave meaning to it all had returned to the place it should never have left.