• 25 unpublished and guided routes to discover a new Madrid

In the month of Women we propose

two historical routes through the center of the capital in honor of those who were pioneers

in the world of work, regardless of discipline.

From the laundresses, seamstresses or mondongueras to the first female member of the Royal Academy of History, the itineraries follow the trail of these true heroines of the past by the hand of the two official guides who have devised them.

Madrid workers (from the 17th to the 19th century)

and the

Las Letras neighborhood in the key of a woman

are part of the

Original Visits of Madrid program

, an initiative of the City Council, which aims to show the most interesting, anecdotal, historical and unknown aspects of the city. capital.

To participate in them it is necessary to book on the website www.madrid-destino.com (the tickets for March are sold out, on the 15th of this month those for April will go on sale at a price of 3 euros).

Until then, we discover some keys to these two itineraries that represent a true tribute to women.

Madrid workers (from the 17th to the 19th century)

The two-hour walking route has the Plaza Mayor Tourism Center as a meeting point.

There, the guide Beatriz Quirós, director of BeaExplorer, explains to the participants the objective of the tour that will take place through the neighborhoods of La Latina, El Rastro and Lavapiés: to

learn about the different trades and labors of popular-class women from Madrid

throughout

the centuries. XVII to XIX.

Saleswomen, maids, artisans, seamstresses, laundresses, buttocks, cigar makers, mondongueras, wet nurses, madronas ... made up the true female working class, many in a clandestine and unpaid way.

"Women did not join the world of work in the 20th century, as we have been led to believe; women have always worked, many times in those jobs that men did not want, what happens is that they were not recognized for it," he says Beatriz.

Corrala from Sombrerete Street, Beatriz Quirós.

After explaining the work that women did in the Mercado de Abastos that was in the

Plaza Mayor

(in the back rooms of the workshops and shops run by men, there was a whole team of workers who carried out the businesses), the tour begins in the

Plaza de la Santa Cruz

, place of street vending where they set up their stalls.

There you could find the chalanas, the egg cups and even maids and broodwives.

If a nobleman needed one, he would go there to find it.

The itinerary continues through

Cava Baja

, a street full of inns in the past, whose business

competed

with that of widows who clandestinely rented rooms to survive, and through

Plaza de la Cebada

, in front of the market of the same name.

In the 18th century, what is now

El Rastro

was the largest meat market, located next to the Matadero de la Villa.

There were the butcher shops of the city and the women, almost unlike today, were the butchers and the mondongueras, while the men were the ones who were in charge of buying the meat.

The route continues along the

Ribera de Curtidores

, where businesses that were dedicated to tanning the leather from the skins of the animals that left the slaughterhouse were established.

In the street

Embajadores

were located in the eighteenth century workshop schools, free patriotic schools for low-income girls to learn to sew, spin and embroider.

The tour passes through the emblematic building of

Tabacalera

, the old tobacco factory, where the cigarette women worked, pioneering women in the workers' struggle and who staged countless strikes and riots against poor employment conditions.

The TabacaleraBeatriz Quirós building.

After touring the

Corrala de la Calle Sombrerete

, near where the school for orphan girls of La Paz was located, and the

Plaza de Lavapiés

, where the washerwomen are remembered, who until the 30s of the 20th century filled the banks of the Manzanares To wash the clothes of the nobles, hospitals, monasteries and convents for a very small salary, the route ends at the

Reina Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art

(Plaza de Juan Goytisolo), the Old General Hospital, where there was also the women's prison, where they came to beg.

The neighborhood of Las Letras in the key of a woman

The guided tour organized by María Madrid aims to

give visibility to the figure of women and their contributions in the world of letters

, from the 16th century to the present day.

It will also talk about the restrictions they have had to face due to being a woman.

María Calderón, Emilia Pardo Bazán, some actresses or the writer María de Zayas, among others, will be remembered in this two-hour itinerary through the Barrio de las Letras, which starts in the

Plaza Mayor

.

La Calderona.

On the way to the Plaza de

Santa Ana

, the guide tells the story of María Calderón, called

La Calderona

, a seventeenth century actress and singer who was never recognized for her profession but for being the lover of Felipe IV, with whom, in addition , had a son and finally ended up in a convent.

At that time, the Plaza de Santa Ana, the heart of the Barrio de las Letras, was already famous for the comedy corrals that were in the surrounding streets, where you could see La Calderona and other actresses, who had to be married and always play the role of a woman, never a man.

Among the outstanding artists that are remembered on the route are also María Riquelme, María de Córdoba (17th century), María del Rosario Fernández, la

Tirana

, an 18th century actress portrayed twice by Goya, and María Guerrero, a 19th century playwright .

Continuing along

Calle Huertas

, a stop is made in front of the plaques dedicated to María de Zayas y Sotomayor and Elena Fortún.

The first, born in 1590, was a Spanish Golden Age writer whose short novels were highly successful, including

love

stories

and exemplars

, which were banned in the 18th century by the Inquisition.

The second was the pseudonym of María de la Encarnación Aragoneses y de Urquijo, a 19th century writer dedicated to children's and youth literature.

Nearby is the

Royal Academy of History

, an institution that did not have a woman as its director until 2014. It was Carmen Iglesias.

Currently, of the 36 members, only five are women.

Not far from there is the

Convent of the Trinitarians

, whose congregation was a member of Sor Marcela de San Félix, a Spanish playwright and poet, daughter of Lope de Vega and her lover Micaela de Luján, who wrote some works that she finally had to burn by indication of his confessor, as they are not religious writings.

The itinerary arrives at the

Ateneo de Madrid

, on calle del Prado, 21, where the figure of Emilia Pardo Bazán stands out, a renowned writer, journalist and feminist who was the first woman to be a member of the literary and cultural institution in 1905. A She was followed by Clara Campoamor, Victoria Kent ... The route ends in the

Plaza de las Cortes

, in front of the statue of Cervantes to review the women who appear in

Don Quixote

.

Library of the Ateneo de Madrid.

Tickets to participate in these visits, which will be weekly until June 27, can be purchased in person at the

Plaza Mayor Tourism Center (Plaza Mayor, 27)

and

online

from the Madrid Destino portal.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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