A Bomb in a Bouquet

On 31 May 1906, this street was packed with people hoping to catch a glimpse of a wedding procession. That morning, Alfonso XIII had married the British princess Victoria Eugenia in the church of San Jerónimo, and just after two o'clock the carriage came past here on its way to the royal palace. From a balcony across the way, above what is now number 84, a twenty-six-year-old named Mateo Morral dropped a home-made bomb, hidden inside a bouquet of flowers.

The bouquet caught in the electrical wires and fell beside the carriage. The newlyweds climbed out unharmed, though blood had spattered the queen's gown. Twenty-three people in the crowd and among the ranks of soldiers died, and more than a hundred were injured. It was the bloodiest attack Spain had ever seen up to that point.

Morral, a librarian involved in anarchist circles, managed to slip out of the city and died two days later near Torrejón de Ardoz.

The monument beside you was only put up in 1963, more than half a century after the attack, and it names the victims who had nothing to do with a coronation or a wedding themselves.

We keep walking until the street opens onto a large square, with the palace on the right and a cathedral of pale stone on the left.