Travesía Serrallo

The name comes from the War of Africa of 1859-1860, the campaign that named nearly the whole street map of Tetuán de las Victorias. The neighborhood grew as a map of that conflict: Tetuán, Castillejos, Wad-Ras and, in this corner of Berruguete, the Serrallo. The Serrallo was an old fortified palace on the outskirts of Ceuta. In late 1859 Spanish troops under General Rafael de Echagüe took that position, from which the advance on Tetuán set off. The Crown rewarded the feat: in 1871 Echagüe received the title of Count of the Serrallo, which still echoes in another street of the district. The word holds a journey of centuries. Serrallo came into Spanish from the Italian serraglio, that from the Turkish saray and, at the very root, the Persian sarāy: “palace, sumptuous dwelling.” Through the friction between East and West it also came to name the harem. Barely thirty-seven meters of travesía, and its sign holds a war, a fort taken before Ceuta, and a word that crossed Persia, Istanbul and Venice before landing in the north of Madrid.