The street of the head

The street you're standing in is called the Calle de la Cabeza, the street of the head, and the name belongs to a story that chroniclers of Madrid have been passing down for centuries, even though nobody has ever found it in an archive.

It goes like this. Under Philip III, a servant murdered his master, a wealthy priest, to rob him of his gold, and then he fled to Portugal. Years later he came back to Madrid dressed as a gentleman, bought a sheep's head at the market and carried it under his cloak, and when he pulled it out it was the head of the priest. He confessed on the spot and was hanged. In the fuller version, they carried that head ahead of him on a silver platter all the way to the scaffold, after which it turned back into a sheep's head.

What a story like this does is more interesting than whether it's true, because it divides the world up neatly: crime comes out, no matter how long you stay away. In a city where the real justice system was slow and arbitrary, that was a reassuring thought to hear out on the street.

We head back to the square and take the Calle de la Colegiata west, where a church with two towers rises above the rooftops at the far end.