Travesía San Fernando

Ferdinand III ruled Castile from 1217 and León from 1230, and joined both crowns for good under a single head. He carried the Reconquest into the Guadalquivir valley and took Córdoba, Jaén and, in November 1248, Seville, a city of which he remains the patron. He died in the Seville alcázar in 1252; Pope Clement X raised him to the altars in 1671, and since then his figure has brought together the crown and the altar. In the Castilla neighbourhood, within the Chamartín district, the same name reappears in a parish dedicated to San Fernando, built in the early 1970s in bare brick and sober lines. The Travesía de San Fernando belongs to that fabric of northern Madrid, a short street — barely seventy metres — that links neighbouring roads.